Published August 30th, 2006
in Arts and Media.
Quoth Lord Byron in an 1814 letter to James Hogg:
Shakespeare’s name, you may depend on it, stands absurdly too high and will go down. He had no invention as to stories, none whatever. He took all his plots from old novels, and threw their stories into a dramatic shape, at as little expense of thought [...]
Published August 21st, 2006
in Snippets.
In a great interview with New Yorker editor David Remnick from 1999—wherein he says,
I don’t think it’s a diminishing number that wants something like the New Yorker. I think it’s expanding number for the same reason that audiences for the opera, jazz and books are expanding. I mean, walk into the best independent bookstore on [...]
Published August 18th, 2006
in Politics.
“Indeed, history is nothing more than a tableau of crimes and misfortunes.”
— Voltaire
Billmon:
It cost the IDF almost 30 KIA and 40-50 wounded to take those two villages, and now they’ve given them back. Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori.
Juan Cole:
It was such a stupid war. It was thick-as-two-blocks-of-wood strategy on all sides. It was [...]