Friedrich --

* Henry Farrell at Crooked Timber takes a break from politics and philosophy to post about some of the fiction he enjoys: crime fiction (here), and what he calls "philosophical romances" (here). Good observations from Henry, followed by many fun musings from commenters. I couldn't resist taking part in the crime fiction thread myself.

* Aaron Haspel looks over a lovely Thomas Nashe poem with an appreciative, knowledgeable and beady eye, here.

* John Derbyshire writes in NRO about the dangers of overanalysis and the bliss of not having to give something too much focused thought, here. His lucid piece reminded me of this long interview with Roger Scruton, here.

* I own and and love a book of pre-WWII surfing photos by the dentist-surfer Don James called Surfing San Onofre to Point Dune (buyable here), and have leafed through a number of other such collections. But I've known sadly little about surfing photography more generally. Now, thanks to Sebastian Smee writing for the Telegraph here, I know a bit more. His subject is LeRoy Grannis, who's now in his mid-80s and is best-known for the photos he took in the 1960s, when he helped find and set the style for some of the original surf magazines. Here's Grannis' own site. Grannis, by the way, worked for Pacific Bell for 40 years. I wonder if he ever got an NEA grant.

Heather MacDonald

* Luke Ford interviews the City Journal reporter/writer Heather MacDonald here. She's impressive (in a pleasingly modest way), and thoughtful on some surprising topics -- eloquent about what it's like to come from L.A., and smart about what the decon-and-politics profs did to literature. As well as being straight-shootin' about how she stopped being an Ivy liberal and became a conservative instead, of course.

Best,

Michael

Michael,

Have you ever had two cultural or artistic individuals you respect from different fields refer to each other incidentally? The kind of happenstance that makes you feel that your interests really do form some amazingly long circle that connects back together in some amazingly profound and coherent way the true nature of which you have yet to grasp?

Well, your posting just gave me that feeling. I've been a fan of 2blowhards for a couple of months now, (and a fan of the Teaching Company for years), and was particularly pleased to see some attention paid to the art of conversation in the next post. What you to guys do here *is* unique in American culture and the blogosphere and you deserve to be complimented.

But, I was also intrigued by the comment made on Henry Farrell and his "Philosophical Romances". I clicked on that to see what he meant by the term and lo and behold I find "Ted Chiang’s Stories of Your Life and Others" on the list.

I *just* got an e-mail from a used book dealer telling me that my copy of that book is on its way to me. I found it through some contacts I have in the science fiction community. So, I guess the circle here would be Boston Science Fiction Fans-- Ted Chiang Book -- Farrell -- 2Blowhards, with me being an active participant in the first and last group. Weird huh?

Robert

Posted by: Robert Holzbach on August 3, 2003 12:16 AM

I was rather sad to see that Ms. MacDonald had taken extensive notes for a book intended to expose all the foibles of deconstructionism, but never wrote the book and even lost her notes. While an understandable human reaction, surely she knows that she's just dooming some other poor public minded person to writing the same book.

Posted by: Friedrich von Blowhard on August 3, 2003 12:58 AM






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