Kickoff For December 2, 2024
Welcome to December! It's only a few weeks until that day. You know the one I'm talking about. I hope the lead-up to it isn't stressing you out. As a diversion, a slightly different mix of articles.
With that out of the way, let's get Monday started with these links:
The MAD Files — wherein David Mikics takes us on a tour of the history of the legendary magazine, and examines why it became the touchstone for anti-establishment satire.
From the article:
MAD was, for all its cynicism, too determinedly silly to be cool, much less superior. The magazine never took on self-righteous airs, and never shared in the mean-spirited snarkiness that drives our current politically correct mud wrestling. “What, Me Worry?” was the slogan of a holy fool, wiser than the know-it-alls, and forever young.
Hemingway, after the hurricane — Wherein we learn about the author's reaction to a devastating hurricane that hit Florida in 1935 and the lessons we can learn from that today.
From the article:
This impassioned response to the disaster in 1935 still resonates. Hemingway recognized that while storms are inevitable, mass casualties do not have to be. The government can’t control the weather, but it can fulfill an obligation to protect the most vulnerable in the path of the storm.
The year is 2149 — Wherein we're treated to an engrossing piece of essay fiction that speculates how people will live in the future. I'll let you draw your own conclusions about this glimpse into the the world of 125 years hence.
From the article:
And then some of them do the most extraordinary thing: They forgo such pleasures, denying themselves even the slightest taste. They devote themselves to scrimping and saving for the sake of their descendants. Such a selfless act, such a generous gift. Imagine yielding one’s own entertainment to the generation to follow. What could be more lofty—what could be more modern? These bold souls who look toward the future and cultivate the wild hope that their children, at least, will not be obliged to imagine their own stories.
The personal has become far too political — Wherein Jacob Phillips argues that an obsession with politics, fuelled by the rhetoric with which we're bombarded, shouldn't be a centerpoint of our lives and that has helped create the fissures that are dividing us in public and private life.
From the article:
When the political saturates life, politics is indistinguishable from identity. If you grow-up in a hyper-political household, you know everyone else’s politics when you’re a kid, because your elders tell you who’s on the right side of history.
What Makes Good Historical Fiction? — Wherein George Garnett explores that question and ponders whether such novels and stories can be considered not just historical documents of a kind but also glimpses into the mental world of people who lived during a particular epoch.
From the article:
The novelist can recreate features of a long dead society through the eyes of particular individuals, whether real or fictional; and also the mental world of such characters, in a way that sticking solely to evidence largely precludes. Provided that such reconstructions are compatible with the evidence, they can deepen historical understanding in ways not available to the historian.
Do You Remember School? — Wherein Lydia Davis ponders the wonders and contradictions of memory, what our memories mean, and why some memories persist when others fade.
From the article:
I try to figure out why certain memories have remained—why the rest of my experience at the school, no matter how lively or emotional, is buried and beyond reach.