Good morning. In the Times Literary Supplement, N. S. Thompson writes about Eliot’s love of music. While writing what would become The Waste Land, he would take breaks to “practise scales on the mandoline”: “It is both baffling and regrettable that there is so little information about this side of Eliot, especially considering the musical references in The Waste Land. But what about those scales he practised in Margate? Playing scales is suggestive of a beginner, but plenty of proficient players play scales to warm up, and a distracted poet could be expected to play scales faute de mieux while “Musing upon the king my brother’s wreck” and more.”

In other news: A theme parked inspired by the work of Alexander Pushkin to open in St. Petersburg in 2023: “Jora Vision said its plans contain an indoor area of around 55,800 sq ft that consists of three main zones, each offering experiences and attractions based on fantasy places described in Pushkin’s stories. These themed settings will be a city, a harbour and a palace. In addition, a 5 ac outdoor area will feature another three zones: the Jarmarka (Russian funfair market), the swan lake, and the magical fairy tale forest. Among the experiences planned are an immersive walkthrough experience based on Pushkin’s life, and two dark rides, which Jora Vision says is one of its specialities . . . The park will be called Lukomorye.”

In Spectator, I review a bio of Jordan Peterson: “If Jim Proser’s goal in writing Savage Messiah was to convince people to take Jordan Peterson seriously, I am afraid he has failed miserably.”

Leyland Cecco writes about the effort to save Canada’s “prairie castles”: “Grain elevators were once an icon of Canada’s west: often painted a bright boxcar red, they stood in towns across Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba. As the tallest structures in the vast landscapes, they were visible from kilometers away and were known as ‘prairie castles’ or ‘prairie cathedrals’. Behind their simple wood facades was a complex series of ropes, chutes and pulleys to transport and store grain. During harvest season, trains chugged up to the elevators in town and received a shower of grain. In the 1930s there were nearly 6,000 towers; now fewer than a thousand remain.”

Brian Allen takes stock of Duane Michals’s photography: “Michals is now in his seventh decade of active work. His subjects—time, God, age, love, and paradise, among them—are big and universal. He delivers them mostly in small, enigmatic, and often spooky black-and-white photographs, augmented by his handwritten comments.”

Joseph Horowitz reconsiders Allan Bloom’s The Closing of the American Mind: “My copy of The Closing of the American Mind is a paperback with scant evidence of close scrutiny. Some three dozen pages are heavily marked with dismissive marginalia. Bloom took aim at my own generation (I was born in 1948), and its political complexion was anathema. But times have changed and so have I. Re-opening The Closing of the American Mind, I discovered that Allan Bloom was prophetic.”

Singer-songwriter David Olney dies onstage in Florida: “David was playing a song when he paused, said ‘I’m sorry’ and put his chin to his chest . . . He never dropped his guitar or fell [off] his stool. It was as easy and gentle as he was.”

Hallstatt tourism board says too many people are visiting the Austrian village just to take pictures: “In May, Hallstatt is embarking on a campaign to focus on quality — not quantity — tourism, according to local officials. Tour buses, which tally as many as 90 on the busiest days, will be capped at 50 and must register with the tourism office. Groups that arrange lunches at local restaurants, sign up for boat cruises or visit Hallstatt’s famous salt mines will be given preference. Visitors, too, will be asked to stay more than two hours, said Michelle Knoll, office manager for Hallstatt’s tourism board. The goal is to get people to spend time and money in Hallstatt’s restaurants and shops.”

Essay of the Day:

In Harper’s, Thomas Chatterton Williams writes in defense of ambiguity:

“One of the outgrowths of the frenzied, justifiably Trump-panicked moment in which we find ourselves is a profound unease with ambiguity or multidimensionality of any sort—moral, intellectual, ideological, political, artistic. Clarity is what’s most yearned for in times of emergency. Late in his essay, Haslett objects to the practice of drawing on a range of thinkers for reference—what he dismisses as ‘a kind of ideological dim sum’—when bolstering a given point. That there is weakness instead of strength in viewpoint diversity is presented matter-of-factly, as self-evident truth. Under these terms, it becomes impossible to express a coherent argument—about race, in this instance—‘from the sundry platters of politics Left and Right,’ since ‘these positions are profoundly incompatible, largely due to their clashing views of the distribution of wealth.’

“Without ever explaining why, Haslett offers unanimity of opinion on one subject—wealth distribution—as a prerequisite for mining wisdom or insight about something else entirely. Here Haslett has stated outright what many others have been implying for some time: in a Manichaean world such as ours, the degree to which one refuses to become not just a partisan but an ideologue—or, just as likely, a recycler of ideological talking points—is the extent to which one descends into ‘incoherence.’”

Read the rest.

Photo: Iridescent Clouds over Sweden

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