This page renders best in Firefox (or Safari, or Chrome)
READIN
READIN started out as a place for me
to keep track of what I am reading, and to learn (slowly, slowly)
how to design a web site.
There has been some mission drift
here and there, but in general that's still what it is. Some of
the main things I write about here are
reading books,
listening to (and playing) music, and
watching the movies. Also I write about the
work I do with my hands and with my head; and of course about bringing up Sylvia.
The site is a bit of a work in progress. New features will come on-line now and then; and you will occasionally get error messages in place of the blog, for the forseeable future. Cut me some slack, I'm just doing it for fun! And if you see an error message you think I should know about, please drop me a line. READIN source code is PHP and CSS, and available on request, in case you want to see how it works.
See my reading list for what I'm interested in this year.
READIN has been visited approximately 236,737 times since October, 2007.
I've been teaching Sylvia to play chess -- in a very limited sense of the word "teaching" anyway; mostly just playing games with her every so often and winning, hoping she is picking up a bit on how I'm winning. I'm not much of a player, and don't know how I would go about explaining what is going on in the game.
Whenever I capture her Queen she gets really bent out of shape about it. Today we played and it was, according to her, "the first time you haven't been able to get my Queen -- you're always sneaking up on my Queen!"
posted afternoon of May 25th, 2008: Respond ➳ More posts about Sylvia
So my understanding of "allegory" is kind of vague, and I think mostly of examples of allegory rather than of a definition. So e.g.A White Bear was talking about The Phantom Tollbooth and The Wizard of Oz as examples of allegory, and I thought Sure -- ok, these stories tell about the main character being transported into an imaginary parallel reality where human character traits are cartoonishly represented by marvelous creatures, and learning/growing in the course of the experience. That matches up pretty well to my memory of learning the term "allegory" in high school English class.
So here's what I'm wondering about the Commedia: It fits that loose definition pretty well. But something is very different about it. In those books the lecturing about human virtue that is going on is beneath the surface, in the Commedia it is front and center. In those books the "main thing" is the story line and the character development of the main character, while the pedagogy is a side effect; in the Commedia the pedagogy is very much front and center, there hardly is a plot besides as much as there needs to be to keep the book moving. Is this a distinction between modern and classical allegory? Or just between these particular books? The pedagogy in The Phantom Tollbooth strikes me as much more effective than in the Inferno, but then I am not a 14th-C. Catholic.
posted afternoon of May 25th, 2008: Respond ➳ More posts about Inferno
I've been looking through The Portable Dante -- I must admit I'm kind of bogging down in Inferno, reading it is feeling more like a chore than a pleasure. So I'm rethinking the idea of reading the full Commedia -- I prefer reading for pleasure. I was trying to compose a post about what in Dante is putting me off -- it is something to do with the difference between allegory and pedagogy, and Inferno having too much of the latter and too little of the former, but I'm not sure enough of myself writing about
literary technique to phrase this properly.
Dante's sonnets are nice. I don't think I've read any of them before except "To Guido Cavalcante", which I've seen anthologized in several places. But the niceness of them is more to do with the imagery than with the narrative content, which seems pretty cloying to me.
...nam eorum que sunt omnium soli homini datum est loqui, cum solum sibi necessarium fuerit.
Non angelis, non inferioribus animalibus necessarium fuit loqui, sed nequicquam datum fuisset eis: quod nempe facere natura aborret.
...To man alone of all existing beings was speech given, because to him alone was it necessary. Speech was not necessary for the angels or for the lower animals, but would have been given to them in vain, which nature, as we know, shrinks from doing.
I did a couple of double-takes going back and trying to figure out what "angels" is doing in that second sentence. Still not sure, but it makes for a lovely comic effect.
posted morning of May 25th, 2008: Respond ➳ More posts about Dante
Tom Hunter, whose music I remember fondly from my childhood, is in poor health -- he has been diagnosed with a progressive neurological disease. If you remember enjoying his music, drop by his family's blog, A Time for Sharing, to wish him well.
posted evening of May 24th, 2008: Respond ➳ More posts about Music
Just downloaded from DimeADozen, this concert -- Robyn Hitchcock and The Electric Trams, 5/18/2008, Arts Theater, London, which includes a cover of "Up on Cripple Creek". Nice! I don't think I've ever heard Robyn perform a song of The Band's before; it is very pleasant to listen to. Dig the saxophone.
I had been thinking about
this combination of artists recently because I've been listening a lot to Robyn's "Serpent at the Gates of Wisdom", which includes the lines "Rolling down the frozen highway/ Like a burning tyre." Sounds to me like an obvious reference to Dylan's motorcycle accident by way of "This Wheel's on Fire". (And note that Robyn said he pictures Danko singing lead on this.)
Other good covers in this set: George Harrison's "Old Brown Shoe"; The Beatles' "I've Got a Feeling". Also, "Adoration of the City" off of "A Star for Bram", which I had never heard before.
...I love a coincidence: today a post on Catbird Records' blog features Robyn covering Every day is like Sunday, by The Smiths.
Tonight 5 (or possibly 6) 7- and 8-year-old girls will be sleeping in our house, which is 3 (or as the case may be, 4) more children than we've had sleeping over here at once before. That's right, it's Sylvia's first sleep-over party! Fingers crossed for no major problems to occur, and for me and Ellen to be able to get some sleep of our own.
...Hmm, this is not promising: more than half of the girls, including our own little girl, are picky eaters.
...Well, dinner over -- some of them did not eat much but that doesn't seem to be affecting their spirits much. They've played out in the yard, they've done some crafts (origami), they've made bags of popcorn and sweets, and they're watching their movie ("Sherlock Hound vol. I").
...And, the girls are in bed. There was quite a lot of noise a little while ago and Ellen or I had to go in and give them some talkings-to. But the noise is lower now, I think they're on their way to sleep.
Looks like putting up a wish list was a good idea -- my birthday present from my parents just arrived in the mail, and it is volumes 1 and 2 of The Music of Kentucky: Early American Rural Classics. Great stuff too -- the fiddle music is incomparable.
This is a good movie without, I think, being in the same league as Herzog's best stuff. The main two good things in the movie are: the personality and charisma of Mr. Dengler, who is kind of a natural ham; and the camera work and composition of shots. It is a good decision of Herzog's, to let Dieter talk through most of the film. Herzog's narration is not very useful; and his decision to have Laotians and Vietnamese in the film but completely without speaking parts and frequently posing as statues, just seems bizarre to me. I think I'm going to take a pass for now on watching Rescue Dawn.
posted evening of May 22nd, 2008: Respond ➳ More posts about The Movies
Today I read about two movies -- neither one will be coming out for a while yet, but they both sound like something to look forward to.
David Lynch is collaborating with Werner Herzog on My Son, My Son: a "horror-tinged thriller" based on Œdipus Rex. This has every potential to be a fantastic movie; or it could also possibly stink.
Jonathan Demme is going to be directing a biography of Bob Marley, taking over from Martin Scorsese, who is leaving the project. This is just fine with me; I like Marley and I think Demme makes the best movies about music. (Scorsese's are good too, but I prefer Demme's.)
My package arrived in the mail today! -- Well it arrived Monday, no-one was home to sign for it; I picked it up at the post office this morning. (WTF? There is now overnight parcel service from Shanghai to New Jersey! This totally boggles my mind. Makes the large sum the seller was charging for postage seem much more reasonable.)
And, well, it seems legit. I have not yet popped a disc in the player to watch it; but all the dvd's are there, and marked as region 0. It weirds me out a little that I can't find any reference to this collection (The Master of Cinema: Werner Herzog Collection) anywhere on the web except for Chinese e-bay auctions. It's a pretty recent collection, includes a movie from 2005. This seems like it might be a signal of piracy but I can't figure out what the incentive is for pirates to produce a 24-dvd collection of Werner Herzog, with obscure titles and professional-looking packaging and everything -- the target audience seems tiny. (Also weirding me out is the inclusion of disc #23, My Best Friend by Patrice Leconte. Which one of these dvds does not belong?)
Well unless somebody convinces me it's unethical, I will be buying more box sets from this seller -- s/he has collections of all the classic directors I'm interested in.
Title list below the fold.
Update: Note if you're thinking about buying this, many of the titles will not play on a US region DVD player -- the seller claims they are region 0 but this is false in many cases. Also some of the discs have screwed-up aspect ratio.
(Note: strange how the editors of the collection translated some of the titles and not others, and a few into French. Not sure what this means.)
Signs of Life (1968)
Audio: English,Dutch Subtitles: English,Chinese
Auch Zwerge haben klein angefangen (1970)
Audio: English,German Subtitles: German,Chinese
Fata Morgana (1971)
Audio: English,German Subtitles: Chinese
Land des Schweigens und der Dunkelheit (1971)
Audio: Dutch Subtitles: English,Chinese
Aguirre, the Wrath of God (1972)
Audio: German Subtitles: English,Chinese
The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser (1974)
Audio: English,German Subtitles: English,Chinese
Herz aus Glas (1976)
Audio: German Subtitles: English,Chinese
Stroszek (1977)
Audio: German Subtitles: English,Chinese
Nosferatu : Phantom der Nacht (1979)
Audio: German Subtitles: English,Chinese
Woyzeck (1979)
Audio: German Subtitles: English,Chinese
Fitzcarraldo 1 (1982)
Audio: English Subtitles: English,French,Chinese
Fitzcarraldo 2 (1982)
Audio: English Subtitles: English,Chinese
(I am assuming this disc is The Burden of Dreams: Making "Fitzcarraldo".)
Wo die grünen Ameisen träumen (1984)
Audio: English Subtitles: German,Chinese
Cobra Verde (1987)
Audio: German Subtitles: English,Chinese
Cerro Torre : Schrei aus Stein (1991)
Audio: English Subtitles: Chinese
Tod für funf Stimmen (1995)
Audio: English Subtitles: Chinese
Little Dieter Needs to Fly (1997)
Audio: English Subtitles: Chinese
Invincible (2001)
Audio: English Subtitles: English,Japanese,Chinese
Wheel of Time (2003)
Audio: German Subtitles: Chinese
The Wild Blue Yonder (2005)
Audio: English Subtitles: Chinese
The White Diamond (2005)
Audio: English Subtitles: Chinese
Grizzly Man (2005)
Audio: English Subtitles: English,Spanish,Chinese
Mon meilleur ami (2006)
Audio: English,German Subtitles: English,Chinese (I'm particularly confused about this -- this is a French film by Patrice Leconte. No idea what it's doing here. Well, one idea: that is is holding the place of Klaus Kinski: My Best Fiend, which has a vaguely similar title and which I would expect to see in this collection. But, well, that seems like a poor/incomplete explanation.)
Rescue Dawn (2007)
Audio: English Subtitles: English,Spanish,Chinese
I've been teaching Sylvia to play chess -- in a very limited sense of the word "teaching" anyway; mostly just playing games with her every so often and winning, hoping she is picking up a bit on how I'm winning. I'm not much of a player, and don't know how I would go about explaining what is going on in the game.
.jpg)
Tom Hunter
Robyn Hitchcock and The Electric Trams, 5/18/2008, Arts Theater, London, which includes a cover of "Up on Cripple Creek". Nice! I don't think I've ever heard Robyn perform a song of The Band's before; it is very pleasant to listen to. Dig the saxophone.
Looks like putting up a 
Patrick Nielsen Hayden 
