Well, I’ve finally read that long New Yorker profile of novelist Dan Mallory—author of The Woman in the Window, which is the first of two books in a two-million-dollar deal with William Morrow. He is apparently a pathological liar, which makes for an interesting light read but doesn’t tell us much about the work itself (which seems to be an entertaining but not particularly profound work of fiction). Writers, like other people, sometimes act strangely or badly. So do artists, lawyers, and mailmen.

Is Stoicism possible in the twenty-first century? Probably not. You can’t have Stoicism without Zeus: “Pigliucci’s challenge, then, is not merely to explain ancient Stoicism, but to make it convincing for the modern reader who doesn’t believe in Zeus and Providence. This is where he runs into trouble. To update Stoicism, he proposes replacing Zeus with what he calls ‘Einstein’s God,’ which is simply the system of natural causes and effects, ‘understandable by reason,’ that determines all things. But while the Stoics, like Einstein, equate ‘God’ with the universe’s rational order, they mean something completely different by that: The universe is rational, they contend, because it is purposefully arranged by its maker. Einstein’s God, by contrast, isn’t a divine craftsman, but instead represents deterministic natural laws, as opposed to the randomness posited by quantum mechanics.  Einstein’s God will no doubt appeal more to Pigliucci’s readers than the divine craftsman of the Stoics. Pigliucci contends, moreover, that living well in the Stoic sense doesn’t depend ‘on whether there is a God’ or what God’s ‘specific attributes’ are. I strongly disagree. The practical part of Stoicism—the part where it teaches us how to live—doesn’t work without the outdated metaphysical underpinning.”

Leah Libresco Sargeant reviews a play about fact-checking: “The attempted strangling that takes place in the latter half of The Lifespan of a Fact is one of the most convincing violent escalations I’ve seen on stage. On paper, it might sound implausible. The two men involved are an essayist and a fact-checker, and the dispute that has sent the essayist into a semi-murderous rage is the fact-checker’s steady patter of questions: Can a moon that is only a waxing crescent (12 percent illuminated) be accurately described as half-full? How long can a woman live in Las Vegas before it’s inaccurate to describe her as being ‘from Mississippi’? Sometimes, as the strangler in this three-hander would argue, it’s hard to get a sense of the scene from a simple recitation of the facts.”

Norah Machia writes about a humanities program for veterans: “At Jefferson Community College in Watertown, veterans, active duty personnel, and their family members account for more than 40 percent of the enrollment, says Ronald Palmer, history professor and director of an NEH-supported project to help veterans gain a deeper understanding of their combat experience through the study of the humanities…Named ‘Dialogues of Honor and Sacrifice: Soldiers’ Experiences in the Civil War and the Vietnam War,’ the program was designed for 15 students, veterans only. The majority of them had been deployed in combat zones. For many of them, this program was the first time they engaged seriously with the humanities.”

Historians against Hamilton: “‘It’s a fictional rewrite of Hamilton. You can’t pick the history facts that you want,’ said Nancy Isenberg , a professor of American history at Louisiana State University who has written a biography of Aaron Burr and is the author of White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America. It’s not just the portrait of Hamilton that has drawn fire. Critics also say Miranda’s portrait of Burr is horribly distorted and argue that Hamilton’s sister-in-law, Angelica Schuyler, was in no way a feminist, as she is portrayed in the musical.”

How classical ideas were lost and found: “Adelard of Bath would be in demand in the present day. This 12th-century English scholar, arrayed in his striped hat, brilliant green or red cape and lapis lazuli shirt, ‘had a talent’, Violet Moller explains, ‘for communicating complex scientific ideas and adapting them for an amateur, but interested, audience’. Yet he also devoted a good part of his time to profound research, translating mathematical, astronomical and astrological texts from Arabic – astrology being regarded in his time, especially at the Norman court in Sicily, as a very exact science with medical as well as political uses. Adelard knew that court well, but what is particularly interesting is that when he translated Euclid’s Elements into Latin he chose to do it not from its original Greek, the language of nearly half the population of Sicily at that time, but from Arabic, the language of the other half. Nor was he alone in taking such a route: works such as Ptolemy’s Almagest, fundamental for the medieval study of the heavens, seemed to inhabitants of Christian western Europe easier to understand through translation of the Arabic version rather than of the Greek original. The Arabic translators had interspersed their texts with explanations of terms and concepts the meanings of which in the original Greek puzzled western European readers, even if (as was rarely the case) they could understand that language.”

Essay of the Day:

In a three-part essay at CNN, Thomas Lake takes a deep dive into the life and death of James Brown. Was the Godfather of Soul murdered?

“I have spent almost two years digging through James Brown’s secret history. I have interviewed nearly 140 people. I’ve gone to the mountains of Oregon to read a dead woman’s notebook, and to a church near Atlanta to hear a tale about a vial of a dead man’s blood. There are many things I still don’t know. But I am certain of this: When it comes to the Godfather of Soul, you should always question the official story.

“Officially, Brown died of a heart attack and fluid in his lungs at age 73 in a hospital in Atlanta in the early hours of Christmas Day 2006. Officially, only his personal manager, Charles Bobbit, was with him at the end. Officially, Bobbit heard Brown complain from his bed that his chest was on fire and then saw Brown lie down and die. It was that simple. An old man lived hard and died suddenly. Nothing to see here.

“But I have found reasons to question this narrative. So have others who knew Brown — at least 13 who have said they want an autopsy, a criminal investigation, or both.

Read the rest.  

Photo: Airglow

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