And fate? No one alive has ever escaped it,
Neither brave man nor coward, I tell you —
It’s born with us the day that we are born.
– Hector
From the Iliad, by Homer. Hector Returns to Troy.
Translated by Robert Fagles
Category: amreading
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What you also need to do is keep working on your judgment. Keep working on your judgment. That means—and this is something you do, but I’m not sure how many writers actually do it as rigorously as they should—that you have to read a lot. There’s no substitute for that. You have to read a lot. You have to read it with a critical mind. When you read a great piece, reverse engineer it. Read it again with that specific eye where you’re looking at the craft.
When you read a piece by someone you like but this particular piece hasn’t worked, do the same thing. Read it with a critical eye. Figure out why didn’t it work this time. What went wrong? Why did it feel off? You have to hone the reader in yourself, which will automatically make your judgment better, which will automatically lift your ability with it because then you’ll have to work that much harder to please the critic in you.
Rajagopalan, Shruti (2023, June 8). The Creator Economy (No. 81) Ideas of India. https://www.discoursemagazine.com/culture-and-society/2023/06/08/ideas-of-india-the-creator-economy/Creative judgement. For those of us without editors, it’s an essential skill to hone.
Listen to Shruti’s interview with Amit in its entirety below:
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In an age when AI can write songs and poems for you, the human edge will come not in what we generate, but in what we save, what we collect, and how we arrange the data. We find this idea in Walter Benjamin, who praises the collector as one who redeems objects, by bringing them into constellation with one another. We find it in the work of Mallarmé, for whom chance is the great anthologist. We find it in Nietzsche’s revisionist philosophy of history, according to which the task of the historian is less to remember the past as it was than to use it, recontextualize it. We find it in the art of Joseph Cornell, for whom art is fundamentally arrangement.
Atkins, Zohar. Curation Over Creation: In Praise of the Anthologist. June 6, 2023, What is Called Thinking newsletterCuration has merit. With an AI abundant world on the horizon, curation could rise in value.
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Maintenance is absolutely necessary and maintenance is optional. It it easy to put off, and yet it has to be done. Defer now, regret later.
Neglect kills.
What to do?
Here’s a suggestion: Soften the paradox and the misbehavior it encourages by expanding the term “maintenance” beyond referring only to preventive maintenance to stave off the trauma of repair–brushing the damn teeth, etc. Let “maintenance” mean the whole grand process of keeping a thing going. In that perspective, occasional repair is part of the process. Close monitoring is part of the process. Changing the oil is part of the process. Eventually replacing the thing is part of the process.
This from Stewart’s upcoming book Maintenance: Of Everything. Stewart is taking a brave approach to draft this book. He’s using Books in Progress, a public drafting tool where he collaborates with readers draft by draft.
Innovation gets all the love. Maintence is overlooked. Even in terms of status, innovators are celebrated. Maintainers are hidden. This book seeks to change that.
You can follow his progress here: https://books.worksinprogress.co/
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“The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.“
From L.P. Hartley’s The Go-Between“The past is never dead; it’s not even past.“
William FaulknerAnd from Breaking Bread with the Dead:
The decisions of our ancestors, however strange those people may be to us, touch us and our world; and our decisions will touch the lives of those who come after us. By understanding what moved them and what they hope for, we give ourselves a better chance of acting wisely-in some cases, as those ancestors did; in others, they didn’t. By understanding what moved them and what they hoped for, we give ourselves a better chance of acting wisely–in some cases, as those ancestors did; in others, as they didn’t. We judge them, as we should, as we must; but if we judge them fairly and proportionately, as we ourselves hope someday to be judged, then we may use them well with an eye toward the future.
Jacobs, Alan. Breaking bread with the dead: a reader’s guide to a more tranquil mind. New York: Penguin Press, 2020. (see page 143)You often hear “Forget it! The past is in the past.” sure, but the consequences of our decisions can reverberate longer into the future than we expect.
Social movements like Effective Altruism and organizations like The Long Now Foundation recognize this. The better choices we make today, paired with long-term preparation can give our decendants a chance to flourish.
Too deep for a Sunday morning?
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- What type of poem is it?
- What is its mode? Lyric, narrative, dramatic?
- What is the form?
- Does it have meter? Does it have rhyme? Is it in free verse?
- What is the diction or vocabulary of the poem?
- Who is the speaker of the poem?
- Is there a story line or action?
- What is the setting?
- What are the images?
- Are there figures of speech?
- Are there any allusions in the poem?
- What’s the tone?
- Does the poem have any symbols?
- What type of poem is it?
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My goal with this series is simply to collect and post sentences from the readings that struck me.
Sure, Chuck Dugan is AWOL: A Novel – With Maps isn’t Shakespeare. But who doesn’t enjoy a thrilling maritime adventure tale? It’s an underrated book, complete with illustrations. Certainly worth your time.
It was hurricane hair.
pg 63The image this renders in your mind. That swirl on the crown on a young man’s head. Hurricane hair.
His kicks popped off the bone,
pg 64This adds a bit of sound to the text. You can hear the “pop” of the kick coming off the bone. It’s both audible and visible.
He was not a defeatist. But the air was poison.
pg 127Chuck keeps a positive attitude in a hostile situation. Respect.
He was a resilient person, not given over to negativity. But at a certain point, sooner or later, he was going to either:
a) freeze to death, or
b) drown.
Whichever came first.
pg.164So much of this book is about Midshipman’s Chuck Dugan’s resilience. Floating at sea, stuck on Emergency Rescue Buoy No. 49, falling into a coma, no matter the obstacle Chuck Dugan carries on.
He passed under a wave and came up reciting the Midshipman’s Table of Priorities.
“Midshipmen –” he began, his voice cracked and faint. He spat out some water. ” – – will use the Table of Priorities when determining the precedence of one activity over another. ONE. Orders to report to the Superintendent, Commandant, Deputy Commandant.”
He went under. Slowly, he returned.
“TWO. Emergency calls for immediate medical and dental care. THREE . . .”
He disappeared.
“ELEVEN. Appointment with academic advisor
during pre-registration each semester . . . TWENTY – FOUR.
Liberty. “
pg 173More notes on the benefits of committing ideas and rules to memory. Reciting poetry, your alphabet, or the Midshipman’s Table of Priorites can help one detach in a stressful situation. Also, the Table of Priorites is another detail that Eric Chase Anderson uses to construct the world of this maritime tale.
Chuck tried to consider the situation carefully,
but his thoughts were muddled. He didn’t want to
co-operate if he was a POW. There were rules to that:
strict Geneva Convention. Don’t co-operate, don’t give out more than your Name, Rank, and Serial Number.
Since this was his first experience as a captive – –
which he assumed he was, though he couldn’t remember
whose or which war – – he wanted to get it right.
pg 179The benefits of committing rules and ideas to memory. They’ll help you handle yourself in threatening scenarios.
Chuck sat quietly for a moment. He took a sip of the coffee — Navy-style black and boiling hot. For an instant, he felt faint, his head reeling from the on-rush of heat.
pg 180What’s the recipe for Navy coffee? Brew it black and boiling hot. Keep it that way post pour. Serve it in a hand-less mug. Boom Navy Coffee. Sip and smile.
More wonderful details Eric Chase Anderson uses to ground the story.
He longed – – briefly but intensely — for a tuna-fish sandwich and a cold glass of milk. Then decided coffee was very much all right. Mainly he felt curious.
pg. 183We’ve all had those moments after a hard run, a long hike, or maybe after changing a tire, where being physically spent brings on intense hunger.
Perhaps this paid for the sin he had just committed. The sin of condemning those three boys to their deaths.
pg 195This story, while filled with quips and diagrams and illustrations, is heavy. It has weight. Death lurks throughout the pages.
Anderson, Eric Chase. Chuck Dugan is AWOL: A Novel – With Maps. San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 2004.
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In 1974, I took a series of train trips all across India, as my father introduced me to the relatives I’d never had a chance to meet in my faraway English schools and home. Every detail of The Hero clamored around our compartment: the faces at the window, waving tiny cups of tea; the moralists eager to lecture anyone on everything; the slightly obsequious waiter explaining that there was nothing to drink but Coca-Cola. None of us in the carriage would have been surprised that the man who pontificated most furiously on the importance of liberating women would prove to be the one most eager to exploit them; projection can take many forms.
Depths and Surfaces, Iyer, Pico, Feb 22, 2018: https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/5413-the-hero-depths-and-surfacesWe’ve talked about reading “upstream” with your favorite authors, but I’m finding it a helpful practice with your favorite filmmakers too. For example ask yourself, what movies did Wes Anderson watch? What movies did he love? Then go watch those movies, and you’ll soon see the inspirations reveal themselves.
Satyajit Ray was an enormous influence on Wes Anderson. With each interior train hallway shot from The Hero, I kept thinking “Oh! That shot is in the Darjeeling Limited!”
Floodlights and Goalposts 