TNY weekend reader: per ardua ad astra*
(image: carolita johnson)
Malcom Gladwell’s “No Mercy” shows us the dangers of letting students off easy who have been caught trying to poison their tutor by spiking their apple with “noxious chemicals”: they go on to split the atom and poison the entire planet with the consequent nuclear proliferation, giving new meaning to the word “occident.” (Actually, that’s not how Gladwell put it. That’s just how I put it.)
In “Bob on Bob,” Louis Menand loosely quotes Terence (Terentius for some) with:
“Dylan nil a me alienum puto,” as Terence put it (or would have put it, if he had lived long enough): nothing having to do with Dylan can be alien to me.”
For those of us who haven’t taken Latin, here is the original quote and a translation:
Homo sum; humani nil a me alienum puto.I am a human being; I consider nothing human alien to me.
Menand gives us a great sum-up of everything we need to know about Dylan and his interviews (and interviewers) before we take the plunge ourselves, by reading “Bob Dylan: The Essential Interviews.” I watched the Dylan documentary on PBS, directed by Martin Scorsese, which I recommend. The documentary was wonderful for the musical footage, but the interview with the cadaverous Charlie Rose and the grizzled and piliferous Scorsese that came on afterwards was rather unsettling after gazing at Dylan’s fresh, idealistic face in the archival footage. I’d like to read the book just to purge my memory of that lasting image.
Michael Crawford’s cartoon this week, “World’s best…” surely rings true to many an apartment house dweller. And Koren’s “Proud parents…” cartoon is a good counterpoint to Leonard Lopate’s NPR special on “hothouse kids,” called “Preparation Anxiety.”
(Disclaimer: Crawford is my best friend this side of the Atlantic, so yes, I’m a little biased. On the other hand, I don’t know Koren at all. So, perhaps I’m not biased.)
Burkhard Bilger’s “The Lunchroom Rebellion” (not online) reminds me that I was rather thin as a child because I was a “hot lunch kid.” The food was disgusting. I ate only what I needed to eat in order to no longer be hungry. And that’s a very healthy regimen for a creature that sits on its ass in a classroom for much of the day, then goes home to watch TV for a few hours before doing homework. I guess I’m just old fashioned!
Antonya Nelson’s “Kansas” is a sort of inside-out Wizard of Oz without the Wizard, and without the shlocky ending. Don’t get me wrong, I love The Wizard of Oz. But that doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with “Kansas.”
*Per ardua ad astra.
Translation by Carolita Johnson: “Work your ass off, and you’ll be a star someday.”
