There are nine results in the google corpus for “atomic sprite” and one order of magnitude greater for “silver Lucifer.” I probably would have guessed the reverse.

2 comments  ::  Read on

I gave a talk on Wyndham Lewis yesterday, and as I was reviewing his always provoking Time and Western Man, I noticed this quite-apt passage on de Sade: Whatever the Marquis de Sade said about life or things in general, you could be in no doubt as to what his remarks would come back to [...]

 ::  Read on

I’ve been going through John Livingston Lowes’s The Road to Xanadu in preparation for teaching Coleridge this week, and I found an interesting footnote on the aforementioned phenomenon from Havelock Ellis’s The World of Dreams: There is abundant evidence of the invention of new words in dreams—see, for example, Havelock Ellis’s selvdrolla and jaleisa Lowes [...]

 ::  Read on

I look forward to reading article in the latest Science, particularly as I”m interested in the evidence for this claim: “Our findings identify a general tendency for increased rates of linguistic evolution in fledgling languages, perhaps arising from a linguistic founder effect or a desire to establish a distinct social identity.”

 ::  Read on

Is the title of the graduate seminar I’m teaching now (borrowed from Kermode’s The Sense of an Ending). Here’s the course description: The twenties and thirties were revolutionary, violent, low, and dishonest by turns. They were also haunted by the promise of a better world. This seminar will examine how writers of the British Isles [...]

 ::  Read on

Look up “mormolukee” in the OED. The weapon featured in Ocean’s 11 is named EMPusa. Also, in case this was a bit thin: “I feel an urgent need to inform you,” Wagner writes, “briefly and decisively, of both my opinion and my anxiety…. In my attempts to assess [Nietzsche]‘s condition, I have been thinking for [...]

1 comment  ::  Read on

I suppose that statements such as following, from a NYT article on the most prominent Blackwater shootings, should cause me to revise the attitudes I expressed here slightly: This flat, arid corner of the country, settled by cattle ranchers, is not different from many small towns that propel young men and women into the military. [...]

 ::  Read on

Stanley Fish has attracted significant attention, at least from those of who us who feel compelled to comment on such things, with his NYT posts on the value of the humanities. Before Fish’s posts, I read this response to an MLA panel. Dr. Crazy cogently notes that socialization to literature varies widely within different student [...]

1 comment  ::  Read on

In M. John Harrison’s Nova Swing, a character named Alice says, “We would of iced them, Vic, but what do you do?” (68) To my ear, “would’ve” and “would of” are homophones, which is why they are confused in writing. Alice, if she’s literate, very possibly would have made this mistake. But this is dialogue [...]

8 comments  ::  Read on

A number of folks have called attention to Jerry Fodor’s recent LRB columns in which he criticizes the theoretical coherence of adaptationism as an explanation. The exchange of letters in the most recent edition has Fodor writes that his critics “admit that the theory of natural selection can’t distinguish among locally coextensive properties while continuing [...]

Comments Off  ::  Read on

Where did the prosecutors [who argued in court that amateurish Al-Qaeda suspects only seemed that way] learn to think in such a way? The answer: in literature classes in the United States of the 1980s and 1990s, where they were taught that in criticism suspiciousness is the chief virtue, that the critic must accept nothing [...]

1 comment  ::  Read on

(Compare with this): Surely there is no place in the world where the inhabitants live with less labour than in North Carolina. It approaches nearer to the description of Lubberland than any other, by the great felicity of the climate, the easiness of raising provisions, and the slothfulness of the people. Indian corn is of [...]

 ::  Read on

I’ve watched almost all of the first season of this David Mamet creation over the last couple of days, and today in the public library, I noticed that the volume it is based on, Eric L. Haney’s Inside Delta Force, was held. Unable to resist, I’ve been reading it. The thing that’s left me head-scratching [...]

3 comments  ::  Read on