The shuddering insidious shock of the theory-vendors
hello,
It’s October. Good.
New YouTubes have arrived. Joyous interviews with Julia Whitney and Helen Castor. Like and subscribe.
And Dave ‘Funkypancake’ Simpson is coming soon. Join us.
And on with the things…
Mary Ann Evans (also known as George Elliot) wrote this in a letter to a former school teacher on 1st October 1841:
“Is not this a true autumn day? Just the still melancholy that I love – that makes life and nature harmonise. The birds are consulting about their migrations, the trees are putting on the hectic or the pallid hues of decay, and begin to strew the ground, that one’s very footsteps may not disturb the repose of earth and air, while they give us a scent that is a perfect anodyne to the restless spirit. Delicious autumn! My very soul is wedded to it, and if I were a bird I would fly about the earth seeking the successive autumns.”
Fancy your chances? A joyous, restore-your-faith-in-the-silliness-of-people episode of Why Is This Interesting? about The Pittsburgh Parallel Parking Championship.
In an FT review of a fantastic looking book about New York’s diners and luncheonettes (ordered!) Tim Hayward quotes Jim Harrison’s book The Raw and the Cooked:
“Distance from food preparation poisons the soul with cold abstractions.”
That seems true of other fields too. If I’d come across it sooner I might have added it to this collection of quotes about actually doing stuff.
Speaking of which, I think I might be a one of the little sardine men mentioned here by Louis MacNeice
Turf Stacks
Among these turf-stacks graze no iron horses
Such as stalk such as champ in towns and the soul of crowds,
Here is no mass-production of neat thoughts
No canvas shrouds for the mind nor any black hearses:
The pleasant shambles on his boots like hooves
Without thinking at all or wanting to run in groves.But those who lack the peasant's conspirators
The tawny mountain, the unregarded buttress,
Will feel the need of a fortress against ideas and against the
Shuddering insidious shock of the theory-vendors
The little sardine men crammed in a monster toy
Who tilt their aggregate beast against our crumbling Troy.For we are obsolete who like the lesser things,
Who play in corners with looking-glasses and beads;
It is better we should go quickly, go into Asia
Or any other tunnel where the world recedes,
Or turn blind wantons like the gulls who scream
And rip the edge off any ideal or dream.How do you like your eggs?
I’ll give you back your day.
russell
(There are 1016 of you - Bolesław the Forgotten of Poland was born in 1016. His wikipedia entry suggests he wasn’t so much forgotten as swept under the carpet.)