The Morning News - Digest

"2 May 2006" by Robert Birnbaum

2006-05-03T10:08:03+00:00

"Jesus 'El Matador' Chavez grew up on the mean streets of Chicago's barrio, did very hard time at Statesville prison, and went on the win the lightweight championship and no doubt tougher bouts, including deportation proceedings with the INS."

As someone who reads a fair amount and is surrounded by books and never travels without a few books, and whose inner monologue is frequently preoccupied with things literary, I must confess to a certain amount of navel-gazing about this activity that has become the engine of my life. Thus, I am frequently purposefully stumbling over the observations of others about books and reading and stories—such as this keen remark by Walt Whitman: Books are to be called for and supplied on the assumption that the process of reading is not a half sleep; but in the highest sense an exercise, a gymnastic struggle, that the reader is to do something for himself.I am also bemused by the frequent claim by untold numbers of my friends and acquaintances that “I just don’t have the time to read.” It’s a claim that I view with wonder if not outright astonishment now... Click here to continue reading this article.

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"20 April 2006" by Robert Birnbaum

2006-05-01T10:08:03+00:00

"I hope my son doesn't read this, as I have been purloining his SpongeBob, Buzz Lightyear, and Shrek figurines for years."

It doesn’t take omniscience or prescience to know that as you read, this editors at relevant media (a category opening room for much debate) around the nation are preparing their list for the dubious seasonal thing known as Summer or Beach Reading. I know this because I have (for obvious reasons) engaged in this literary skullduggery. Personally, I am with Norman Mailer, who reportedly demurred when asked to provide his choices for so-called summer reading saying that, “he read all year ‘round.” Considering the oft-repeated bemoaning (the fact of) the dwindling population of readers, one might view this seasonality as an innocent and perhaps graceful response to the relentless demands of a world lacking in time outs. (Will “24/7” make it into the forthcoming Fourth Edition of the American Heritage Dictionary? Stay tuned.) I think not. What’s next? Books appropriate for impressing fellow riders on public transportation? Titles that fit... Click here to continue reading this article.

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"11 April 2006" by Robert Birnbaum

2006-04-28T13:06:52+00:00

"A great deal of Western moral superiority is based on a presumed concern about human rights, even in the face of the barbarism of war."

I don’t get out much but I make occasional forays to events that include rooms full of strangers, and so I recently attended the latest version of the yearly PEN Hemingway awards at the JFK Library at which Joyce Carol Oates was the keynote speaker. Her talk, a loose summary of a paper she had written about the travails of the writing life, served to remind me to refresh myself on the prolific Ms. Oates. I came across this tidbit: RB: By concerning yourself with ethical matters issues or at least including them in your thoughts about writing, does that suggest that this is one of the functions of literature? And it in fact may be the last refuge of ethical dialogue? Is there much concern with ethical issues in the public conversation? JCO: Well, that’s a difficult question to answer because the terms moral value and ethical values are... Click here to continue reading this article.

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"30 March 2006" by Robert Birnbaum

2006-03-30T15:23:39+00:00

Robert Birnbaum combats wartime with verse.

My editors here regularly hector to me about my inclination for citation—as opposed to the expression of my own thoughts. Now I must say, I love my editors. [Hey, thanks. —eds] And no doubt my humility (I often feel what I have cited is far better than anything that I could say) goes hand in hand with a certain level of sloth, but actually I think that in my recent chat with Alberto Manguel he articulates a fundamental point—essentially, he says he came to writing as a reader—it’s reading that is the regnant activity in his life. It is for me, too. Recently I received some bad news about a close friend and that—on top of my dismay about being governed by as, Kurt Vonnegut observes, George W. Bush’s “upper-crust C students, who know no history or geography, plus not-so-closeted white supremacists, aka Christians, and plus, most frighteningly, psychopathic personalities”—darkened... Click here to continue reading this article.

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"20 March 2006" by Robert Birnbaum

2006-03-21T02:56:03+00:00

Everything you need to avoid a New Yorker subscription, from Robert Birnbaum.

Elsewhere on this site you will soon find a recently rediscovered, never before published conversation with Alberto Manguel, author of The History of Reading, and more recently A Reading Diary. Growing up in Buenos Aires, he came to know one of modern history’s most renowned librarians, Jorge Luis Borges. Much of Manguel’s work and thinking exhibit that great man’s influence. I came across something Manguel published in the Spectator in 2001: Long ago in a faraway desert, a man of whom we know nothing decided that the words he had scratched onto clay were not conventional accounting signs numbering legal decrees or heads of cattle, but the terrible manifestations of a willful god. He concluded that therefore the very order of these words, the number of letters they contained, and even their physical appearance must have a sense and meaning, since the utterance of a god cannot hold anything superfluous... Click here to continue reading this article.

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"9 March 2006" by Robert Birnbaum

2006-03-09T19:45:42+00:00

Robert Birnbaum on Plath and Gauloises, slaughter, and all kinds of mayhem.

Perhaps you are thinking, Who is this guy and why should I listen to him about books? (That is, for those who are not thinking, Who cares? or He’s cool; he went to high school with my second cousin.) A perfectly legitimate question, which if we are going to become fast (literary) friends, I am obliged to answer. (Of course, it behooves you to tell me about yourself.) If you rely on the various biographical droppings that, in the Great Age of Google, are easily accessed (some such being available at this very site), you will learn a thing or two including some of my enthusiasms, if not my obsessions. Let me share some more intimate details. Browsing my bookshelves ala Montesquieu (or was it Montaigne?) I notice with chest swelling pride I have nearly the complete Gretel Erlich oeuvre. And awaiting me when there is a break in the... Click here to continue reading this article.

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"28 February 2006" by Robert Birnbaum

2006-02-28T10:50:50+00:00

Robert Birnbaum on missing detectives, brides and sinners, and writings from the Big Easy.

Here are some things axiomatic for me in my take on talking about books: 1) There are far too many books and writers deserving of the meager attention doled our by America’s mainstream literary press; 2) I am not at all constrained by whatever Byzantine code or principles book editors use in their choices for review coverage; 3) So-called “book notices” are preferable to an excess of mucked-up verbiage and veiled tendentious agendas (either the reviewer’s or the editor’s); and finally, 4) The ever-growing population of readers and book lovers who deserve a wide snapshot of what’s available in print without having to resort to the expensive and sometimes stultifying study of book-industry trade magazines. OK, then, to the job at hand… Ralph Eugene Meatyard, a collection of photographs introduced by Guy Davenport (Steidl, 299 pages) This well-designed book on photographer Ralph Eugene Meatyard (1925-1972) includes about 200 photographs and... Click here to continue reading this article.

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