A 60-page essay/biography of Virginia Woolf by Camille-Yvette Welsh, "A Biography of Virginia Woolf" in Bloom's BioCritiques: Virginia Woolf, c. 2005, DDS: 823VIR.
Thursday, March 15, 2018
Thursday, March 8, 2018
William Faulkner: The Yoknapatawpha Country, Cleanth Brooks, c. 1963
I don't recall having ever read anything by William Faulkner and that's
saying a lot. Starting back in 2000, I voraciously started reading,
ultimately putting together a reading program of which I am quite proud.
Going through my journals (literally scores of journals devoted to
literature) I have nothing on Faulkner except a listing of the top 100
best English novels as compiled by Time Magazine critics Lev Grossman and Richard Lacayo back in 2009, from a list of novels dating back to 1923.
The list is alphabetical, not ranked in any order. Faulkner is on the list with Light in August and The Sound and the Fury.
It's time, I guess, for me to read a bit about, and perhaps read a bit of, William Faulkner.
I will start with William Faulkner: The Yoknapatawpha Country, Cleanth Brooks, c. 1963. The first thing I noted: what little I have read reminds me a lot of Rob Roy and Sir Walter Scott. Wow.
Nothing new under the sun.
I can't wait to really get into this book.
***********************
Chapter 1: Faulkner the Provincial
William Faulkner: the South; with the past and the rural;
Thomas Hardy: Wessex
Robert Frost: northern New England
Dylan Thomas: Wales
Did Faulkner get his facts right?
**********************
Chapter 2: The Plain People
Though the planter families of the Old South and the Negroes play a very important part in Faulkner's novels, the folk who dominate much of his fiction are descendants neither of the old ruling class nor of the slaves. They are white people, many of them poor, and most of them living on farms; but they are not to be put down necessarily as "poor whites" and certainly not necessarily as "white trash." It is with characters such as these that the non-Southern reader of Faulkner is likely to have most trouble. he may too easily conclude that the McCallums and the Tulls are simply poor white trash. Hasty or unobservant readers may even see them all as allied to the infamous Snopes clan.
That was the opening paragraph and immediately reminded me of Sir Walter Scott and Rob Roy.
***********************
Chapter 3: Faulkner as Nature Poet
********************
Chapter 4: The Community and the Pariah (Light in August)
From notes, p. 375.
A folk idiom: a cow that is expected to calve in August will be "light in August." The rather boving Lena who, at the beginning of the novel, is heavily pregnant, is to become "light" in August.
But Faulkner, when asked, said this:
In August in Mississippi there's a few days somewhere about the middle of the month when suddenly there's a foretaste of fall, it's cook, there's a lambence, a luminous quality to the light, as though it came not from just today but from back in the old classic times ... from Greece, from Olympus ... It lasts just for a day or two, then it's gone, but every year in August that occurs in my country, and that's all that title meant, it was just to me a pleasant evocative title because it reminded me of that time, of a luminosity older than our Christian civilization. Maybe the connection was with Lena Grove, who had something of that pagan quality.
*********************
Chapter 5: The Old Order (The Unvanquished)
The Unvanquished has suffered more than any other Faulkner's novels through having been dismissed as a sheaf of conventional Southern Civil War stories.
*********************
Chapter 6: The Waste Land: Southern Exposure (Sartoris)
*********************
Chapter 7: Discovery of Evil (Sanctuary and Requiem for a Nun)
*********************
Chapter 8: Odyssey of teh Bundresn (As I Lay Dying)
The author's fondness for As I Lay Dying is easily understood. The writing in this novel is as good as Faulkner has ever done, and the book constitutes a triumph in the management of tone. Faulkner has daringly mingled the grotesque and the heroic, the comic and the pathetic, pity and terror, creating a complexity of toe that has proved difficult for some readers to cop with.
*********************
Chapter 9: Faulkner's Savage Arcadia: Frenchman's Bend (The Hamlet)
More than any other novel of Faulkner's, The Hamlet introduces us to a strange and special world.
The hamlet is a very small town, not the Shakesperian play.
*********************
Chapter 10: Passion, Marriage, and Bourgeois Respectability (The Town)
The second part of the trilogy; the first was The Hamlet.
*********************
Chapter 11: Faulkner's Revenger's Tragedy (The Mansion)
The third novel in Faulkner's trilogy.
*********************
Chapter 12: The Story of the McCaslins (Go Down, Moses)
Could have been titled The McCaslins for that is all the book is about.
*********************
Chapter 13: The Community In Action (Intruder in the Dust)
Intruder in the Dust represents a very curious mixture of literary excellence and faults.
*********************
Chapter 14: History and the Sense of the Tragic (Absolom, Absolom!)
Absolom, Absolom!, in my opinion the greatest of Faulkner's novels, is probably the least well understood of all his books. The property of a great work, as T. S. Eliot remarked long ago, is to communicate before it is understood; and Absolom, Absolom! passes this test triumphantly. It has meant something very powerful and important to all sorts of people, and who is to say that, under the circumstances, this something was not the thing to be said to that particular reader?
*********************
Chapter 15: Man, Time, and Eternity (The Sound and Fury)
The Sound and Fury proved to be Faulkner's first great novel, and in the opinion of many qualified judges it remains his best. It has attracted, more than any other of his books, a mass of detailed exegesis and commentary, some of it beside the point, some of it illuminating as well.
The salient technical feature of The Sound and Fury is the use of four different points of view in the presentation of the breakup of the Compson family. This special technique was obviously of great personal consequence to Faulkner, as evidenced by his several references to it in the last few years.
*********************
Chapter 16: The World of William Faulkner (The Reivers)
The events that make up the story told in The Reivers take place in 1905. The world of mechnization comes into the dozing little county seat of Jefferson in its most romantic form -- as the improbable and exciting early automobile.
And then 76 pages of notes.
Compson genealogy.
McCaslin genealogy.
Stevens genealogy.
Sartoris genealogy.
Sutpen genealogy.
Snopes genealogy.
Character index.
General index.
The list is alphabetical, not ranked in any order. Faulkner is on the list with Light in August and The Sound and the Fury.
It's time, I guess, for me to read a bit about, and perhaps read a bit of, William Faulkner.
I will start with William Faulkner: The Yoknapatawpha Country, Cleanth Brooks, c. 1963. The first thing I noted: what little I have read reminds me a lot of Rob Roy and Sir Walter Scott. Wow.
Nothing new under the sun.
I can't wait to really get into this book.
***********************
Chapter 1: Faulkner the Provincial
William Faulkner: the South; with the past and the rural;
Thomas Hardy: Wessex
Robert Frost: northern New England
Dylan Thomas: Wales
Did Faulkner get his facts right?
**********************
Chapter 2: The Plain People
Though the planter families of the Old South and the Negroes play a very important part in Faulkner's novels, the folk who dominate much of his fiction are descendants neither of the old ruling class nor of the slaves. They are white people, many of them poor, and most of them living on farms; but they are not to be put down necessarily as "poor whites" and certainly not necessarily as "white trash." It is with characters such as these that the non-Southern reader of Faulkner is likely to have most trouble. he may too easily conclude that the McCallums and the Tulls are simply poor white trash. Hasty or unobservant readers may even see them all as allied to the infamous Snopes clan.
That was the opening paragraph and immediately reminded me of Sir Walter Scott and Rob Roy.
***********************
Chapter 3: Faulkner as Nature Poet
********************
Chapter 4: The Community and the Pariah (Light in August)
From notes, p. 375.
A folk idiom: a cow that is expected to calve in August will be "light in August." The rather boving Lena who, at the beginning of the novel, is heavily pregnant, is to become "light" in August.
But Faulkner, when asked, said this:
In August in Mississippi there's a few days somewhere about the middle of the month when suddenly there's a foretaste of fall, it's cook, there's a lambence, a luminous quality to the light, as though it came not from just today but from back in the old classic times ... from Greece, from Olympus ... It lasts just for a day or two, then it's gone, but every year in August that occurs in my country, and that's all that title meant, it was just to me a pleasant evocative title because it reminded me of that time, of a luminosity older than our Christian civilization. Maybe the connection was with Lena Grove, who had something of that pagan quality.
*********************
Chapter 5: The Old Order (The Unvanquished)
The Unvanquished has suffered more than any other Faulkner's novels through having been dismissed as a sheaf of conventional Southern Civil War stories.
*********************
Chapter 6: The Waste Land: Southern Exposure (Sartoris)
*********************
Chapter 7: Discovery of Evil (Sanctuary and Requiem for a Nun)
*********************
Chapter 8: Odyssey of teh Bundresn (As I Lay Dying)
The author's fondness for As I Lay Dying is easily understood. The writing in this novel is as good as Faulkner has ever done, and the book constitutes a triumph in the management of tone. Faulkner has daringly mingled the grotesque and the heroic, the comic and the pathetic, pity and terror, creating a complexity of toe that has proved difficult for some readers to cop with.
*********************
Chapter 9: Faulkner's Savage Arcadia: Frenchman's Bend (The Hamlet)
More than any other novel of Faulkner's, The Hamlet introduces us to a strange and special world.
The hamlet is a very small town, not the Shakesperian play.
*********************
Chapter 10: Passion, Marriage, and Bourgeois Respectability (The Town)
The second part of the trilogy; the first was The Hamlet.
*********************
Chapter 11: Faulkner's Revenger's Tragedy (The Mansion)
The third novel in Faulkner's trilogy.
*********************
Chapter 12: The Story of the McCaslins (Go Down, Moses)
Could have been titled The McCaslins for that is all the book is about.
*********************
Chapter 13: The Community In Action (Intruder in the Dust)
Intruder in the Dust represents a very curious mixture of literary excellence and faults.
*********************
Chapter 14: History and the Sense of the Tragic (Absolom, Absolom!)
Absolom, Absolom!, in my opinion the greatest of Faulkner's novels, is probably the least well understood of all his books. The property of a great work, as T. S. Eliot remarked long ago, is to communicate before it is understood; and Absolom, Absolom! passes this test triumphantly. It has meant something very powerful and important to all sorts of people, and who is to say that, under the circumstances, this something was not the thing to be said to that particular reader?
*********************
Chapter 15: Man, Time, and Eternity (The Sound and Fury)
The Sound and Fury proved to be Faulkner's first great novel, and in the opinion of many qualified judges it remains his best. It has attracted, more than any other of his books, a mass of detailed exegesis and commentary, some of it beside the point, some of it illuminating as well.
The salient technical feature of The Sound and Fury is the use of four different points of view in the presentation of the breakup of the Compson family. This special technique was obviously of great personal consequence to Faulkner, as evidenced by his several references to it in the last few years.
*********************
Chapter 16: The World of William Faulkner (The Reivers)
The events that make up the story told in The Reivers take place in 1905. The world of mechnization comes into the dozing little county seat of Jefferson in its most romantic form -- as the improbable and exciting early automobile.
And then 76 pages of notes.
Compson genealogy.
McCaslin genealogy.
Stevens genealogy.
Sartoris genealogy.
Sutpen genealogy.
Snopes genealogy.
Character index.
General index.
Mary Shelley, Emily W. Sunstein, c. 1989
Much more complete notes at this post.
Mary Shelley: Romance and Reality, Emily W. Sunstein, c. 1989.
Author says this if the first complete or definitive biography of Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin Shelley -- the only stellar English Romantic author for whom there is no complete or definitive biography.
1780 - 1830: the age of Romanticism.
Namesake daughter of the pioneer feminist Mary Wollstonecraft, died giving her birth in 1797; father was philosopher and novelist William Godwin; she was the lover and wife of Percy Bysshe Shelley; she literally embodies the English Romantic movement.
Romanticism: among its many definitions or qualities, this one -- an intensity not merely in love and sex but in all the passions; expressiveness, imagination, innovation, risk, exploration, exoticism, glory; ordeal and woe.
What distinguishes Mary Shelley is her love of justice, learning, wisdom, and freedom.
Wrote Frankenstein at the age of 19.
Born during the 8th year of the French Revolution.
"At 16 she ran away to live with 21-y/o Shelley, the unhappily married radical heir to a wealthy baronetcy, who personified the genius and dedication to human betterment she passionately admired all her life. Although she was cast out even by her father, the dynamism of this liaison produced her masterpiece, Frankenstein, which she conceived during one of the most famous house parties in literary history with Shelley and [Lord] Byron on Lake Geneva, and wrote while being battered by a series of calamities. The worse of these was the suicide of Shelley's wife. Albeit reluctantly, the lovers married, but fierce public hostility drove them to Italy. Here their two children died, a trauma from which Mary Shelley never entirely recovered. Nevertheless, Shelley empowered her to live as she wished: to enjoy intellectual and artistic growth, love, freedom, and a 'wild, picturesque mode of living ... ' When she was 24, he drowned, leaving her pnniless with with a 2-y/o son.
She lived for another 29 years.
Invalided at the age of 48; died of a brain tumor in 1851; poetic timing, just as Prince Albert opened the Great Exhibition, a showcase of technological progress against which she had warned in her most famous book.
Chapter 3 and 4:
Mary Shelley: Romance and Reality, Emily W. Sunstein, c. 1989.
Author says this if the first complete or definitive biography of Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin Shelley -- the only stellar English Romantic author for whom there is no complete or definitive biography.
1780 - 1830: the age of Romanticism.
Namesake daughter of the pioneer feminist Mary Wollstonecraft, died giving her birth in 1797; father was philosopher and novelist William Godwin; she was the lover and wife of Percy Bysshe Shelley; she literally embodies the English Romantic movement.
Romanticism: among its many definitions or qualities, this one -- an intensity not merely in love and sex but in all the passions; expressiveness, imagination, innovation, risk, exploration, exoticism, glory; ordeal and woe.
What distinguishes Mary Shelley is her love of justice, learning, wisdom, and freedom.
Wrote Frankenstein at the age of 19.
Born during the 8th year of the French Revolution.
"At 16 she ran away to live with 21-y/o Shelley, the unhappily married radical heir to a wealthy baronetcy, who personified the genius and dedication to human betterment she passionately admired all her life. Although she was cast out even by her father, the dynamism of this liaison produced her masterpiece, Frankenstein, which she conceived during one of the most famous house parties in literary history with Shelley and [Lord] Byron on Lake Geneva, and wrote while being battered by a series of calamities. The worse of these was the suicide of Shelley's wife. Albeit reluctantly, the lovers married, but fierce public hostility drove them to Italy. Here their two children died, a trauma from which Mary Shelley never entirely recovered. Nevertheless, Shelley empowered her to live as she wished: to enjoy intellectual and artistic growth, love, freedom, and a 'wild, picturesque mode of living ... ' When she was 24, he drowned, leaving her pnniless with with a 2-y/o son.
She lived for another 29 years.
Invalided at the age of 48; died of a brain tumor in 1851; poetic timing, just as Prince Albert opened the Great Exhibition, a showcase of technological progress against which she had warned in her most famous book.
Chapter 3 and 4:
- background of the main characters
- ends with Mary eloping with Shelley (married), and Shelley's stepsister, Jane
From the internet: By July, when Shelley and Mary eloped, Harriet's unhappy, though not impossible, situation seemed clear. With her marriage her father had settled £200 a year on her; Shelley gave her a further £100, which was doubled the next January, after the death of his grandfather. So she was comfortably situated as far as her financial situation was concerned. Yet she was clearly unhappy. For a time she returned to her father's house, but found it overly constraining. At some point she took a lover: anecdote has it that he was an office connected with the military establishment in Chelsea. Sometime in the late summer of 1816 Harriet took lodgings nearby, in Hans Place, Knightsbridge, clearly to shield her family from a pregnancy out of wedlock. In late November or early December, having written a despondent farewell addressed to her father, her sister, and her husband, she walked the short distance from her lodgings to Hyde Park and drowned herself in the Serpentine River. At the time of her death she was just twenty-one years old.Chapter 7: the house party in Lake Geneva
- the birth of Frankenstein
- June 22, 1816: Byron and Shelley to go sailing
- June 22, 1816: after a nightmare the night before, sits down to write the opening line of Frankenstein, "It was on a dreary night of November..." a beginning, only.
- When Shelley returned on June 30, he was impressed and urged her to go on.
- falling out of those at Lake Geneva
- officially published, March 11, 1818
Wednesday, February 28, 2018
The Bourgeois: Between History And Literature, Franco Moretti
The Bourgeois: Between History and Literature
Franco Moretti
c. 2013
Franco Moretti: teaches Literature at Stanford; at Stanford, he is the Director of the Literary Lab. Several books, and chief editor of The Novel.
Chapter 1: much of the chapter is devoted to Robinson Crusoe (1719) and Daniel Defoe.
The concept of aventiure trade and adventure.
The Protestant Ethic.
Rousseau and Goethe, the latter, Wanderjahre.
Heart of Darkness.
Chapter 2
Johannes Vermeer; paintings, letters
Pride and Prejudice
The painter Caillebotte and his Place de l'Europe
Goethe, again, this time, Wilhelm Meister's Years of Apprenticeship (1796).
Waverly (1814), Scott.
Middlemarch.
Fillers: the only narrative invention of the entire 18th century. Huge transition. Before 1800, few fillers. A hundred years later they are everywhere (the Goncourts, Zola, Fontane, Maupassant, Gissing, James, Proust ...)
Chapter 3
Communist Manifesto
Paintings, again:
Manet's Olympia: the masterpiece of the bourgeois century
By contrast, Ingres' Venus Anadyomene.
Millais' The Knight Errant.
Charlotte Brontë.
Back to Robinson Crusoe.
Chapter 4
Chapter 5: Ibsen
Tuesday, February 27, 2018
Crusoe: Daniel Defoe -- Katherine Frank -- c. 2004
Crusoe: Daniel Defoe, Robert Knox, and the Creation of a Myth
Katherine Frank
c. 2004
DDS: 823FRA
Chapter One: Two Writing Men, London, 1719
Defoe: poor; in debt; surrounded by women (wives, sisters) in his rented home north of London; 60 years old; stole the name Robinson Crusoe from childhood friend, Timothy Cruso (without the "e")
Robert Knox: well-off; retired sea captain; nearly 80, writing letters to his cousin, Reverend John Strype, also about 80 years old; Knox has no wife or children; in home north of London, but a bit south of Defoe
1660: Robert Knox, age 19, and his father, taken captive on Ceylon; would not see England again for 20 years
Robert Knox escaped in 1680, or thereabouts, and published a bestseller in 1861
Among its many early buyers and readers was a young London wholesaler of hosiery and cloth in Freeman's Yard named Daniel Foe.
In 1719, by then, had reinvented himself as Daniel DeFoe.
Robinson Crusoe written in four months.
Chapter Two: Crusoe's Secret, London, 1719 - 20
The Life and Strange Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe -- published April, 1719
Becomes an overnight sensation. DeFoe sold the book and the rights to a printer for 50 English pounds.
Illicitly ran as 78 serial installments in a newspaper called The Original London Post. Continued to run until late March, 1720 (the installments began October 7, 1719).
Defoe is the father of the English novel.
Friday, February 2, 2018
The New Oxford Annotate Bible, New Revised Standard Version With The Apocrypha -- Fourth Edition -- c. 2010
Pentateuch
Pentateuch -- Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy
Hexateuch (six books: the Pentateuch with Joshua -- the latter book is the first book to record that the promise of the land was only fulfilled with the conquest of the land)
Torat moshe: "the instruction of Moses" -- law plus instruction
Torat moshe: found in later biblical books but the term is not actually found in the Pentateuch
The "belief" that the Pentateuch was written by one author started to lose credibility in the 17th century: Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) and Benedict (Baruch) Spinoze (1632-1677). This culminated in the development of the Documentary Hypothesis in the nineteenth century: authors of the Pentateuch identified as J, E, P, and D.
J: Yahweh
E: Elohim ("God")
P: which also uses Elohim, is an abbreviation for the Priestly material
D: Deuteronomy
It is unclear how these various sources and legal collections, which now comprise the Torah, came together to form a single book.
R: the redactor(s) -- may have compiled the four sources. If so, most likely took place during the Babylonia exile (586 - 538 BCE) or soon thereafter in the early Persian period.
Genesis
Jewish tradition calls the first book, Bereshit, after the first word in the book, which means, "in the beginning."
Septuagint: old Greek translation of the Torah, the Septuagint, from wiki:
The Greek title Ἡ μετάφρασις τῶν Ἑβδομήκοντα, lit. "The Translation of the Seventy", and its abbreviation "LXX", derive from the legend of seventy Jewish scholars who translated the Five Books of Moses into Koine Greek as early as the 3rd century BCE.From wiki:
Ishmael was born to Abraham's and Sarah's handmaiden Hagar (Hājar). (Genesis 16:3). According to the Genesis account, he died at the age of 137 (Genesis 25:17). The Book of Genesis and Islamic traditions consider Ishmael to be the ancestor of the Ishmaelites and patriarch of Qaydār. According to Muslim tradition, Ishmael the Patriarch and his mother Hagar are said to be buried next to the Kaaba in Mecca.Originally believed to have been written by Moses (during the Greco-Roman period).
Genesis was written over many centuries, using oral and written traditions.
Written texts began to appear after the establishment of the monarchy in Israel in the tenth century BCE. [A tenth century source in Judah during the reign of David or Solomon, and an Elohistic source ("E") written in the Northern Kingdom of Israel sometime during the eight century BCE. This has been disputed but the earliest works now embedded in Genesis were products of scribes working in the context of the monarchies of early Judah and Israel.
Now agreed that much of Genesis written during the Babylonian exile.
More was written during the postexilic period when exiles such as Nehemiah and Ezra had returned and were rebuilding Jerusalem.
Abraham and Sarah
Jacob and Esau
Joseph and his brothers
Notably, despite the male focus of headings like this and in the book itself, it is matriarchs of ancient Israel, Sarah, Rebekah, Rachel, and Leah, who often play a determinative role in the Genesis narratives of birth and the fulfillment of God's promise.
Genesis: begins with all the peoples of the world, having descended from Adam and Noah, but quickly narrows to focus on descendants of Abraham, the first to receive God's promise, and then to the descendants of Abraham who receive the promise (Isaac and Jacob/Israel) and those who do not receive the promise (Ishmael and Esau).
Abraham is portrayed as the first monotheist, destroying his father's idols before departing for the promised land.
Within Islam, Ishamel and not Isaac is the most important of Abraham's sons.
Exodus
Leviticus
Numbers
Deuteronomy
*****************************
The Historical Books
(actually a mish-mash of books)
(actually a mish-mash of books)
Joshua
Judges
Ruth
1 Samuel
2 Samuel
1 Kings
2 Kings
1 Chronicles
2 Chronicles
Ezra
Nehemiah
Esther
*****************************
The Poetical and Wisdom Books
Job
Psalms
Proverbs
Ecclesiastes
The Song of Solomon
*****************************
The Prophetic Books
Isaiah
Jeremiah
Lamentations
Ezekiel
Daniel
Hosea
Joel
Amos
Obadiah
Jonah
Micah
Nahum
Habakkuk
Zephaniah
Zechariah
Malachi ("my messenger"
*****************************
The Apochrypha
The Apocryphal / Deuterocanonical Books of the Old Testament
New Revised Standard Version
Tobit
Judith
Esther
The Wisdom of Solomon
Ecclesiasticus, or The Wisdom of Jesus, Son of Sirach
Baruch
The Letter of Jeremiah
The Additions to Daniel
The Prayer of Azariah and the Song of the Three Jews
Susanna
Bel and the Dragon
1 Maccabees
2 Maccabees
1 Esdras
The Prayer of Manasseh
Psalm 151
3 Maccabees
2 Esdras
4 Maccabees
*************************
The New Testament
The New Covenant Commonly Called The New Testament Of Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ
New Revised Standard Version
The Gospels
Matthew
Mark
Luke
John
Acts
The Letters/Epistles in the New Testament
The Letter of Paul to the Romans
The First Letter of Paul to the Corinthians
The Second Letter of Paul to the Corinthians
The Letter of Paul to the Galatians
The Letter of Paul to the Ephesians
The Letter of Paul to the Philippians
The Letter of Paul to the Colossians
The First Letter of Paul to The Thessalonians
The Second Letter of Paul to the Thessalonians
The Pastoral Epistles
The First Letter of Paul to Timothy
The Second Letter of Paul to Timothy
The Letter of Paul to Titus
The Letter of Paul to Philemon
The Letter to the Hebrews
The Letter of James
The First Letter of Peter
The Second Letter of Peter
The First Letter of John
The Second Letter of John
The Letter of Jude
The Revelation to John
And Then There Was Life: The Plausibility Of Life: Resolving Darwin's Dilemma, Marc W. Kirschner and John C. Gerhart, c. 2005
And then there was life. I am always amazed how Neo-Darwinists focus on the small questions of life and avoid the big questions of life.
This is how Marc and John introduce us to the ancestor of all extant life.
Everything above would be part of the "big question of how life arose," but again, the authors in this book will look at the "little questions of how life evolved." After all, once you have the basic recipe and ingredients, there are a gazillion ways to modify the final product.
A critical component of Darwinism is "common descent." If Marc and John use the term, I have not yet seen it. They allude to it but they don't mention "common descent" as an important component of Darwinism. But I digress.
Having said that, they do have an excellent graphic showing the "evolution" or "progress" or "relationship" between prokaryocytes and modern eubacteria and archaea; between prokaryocytes and eukaryocytes; between eukaryocytes and protists; between eukaryocytes and multicellularity; multicellularity and plants, fung, and animals; between multicellularity and body plans; between body plans and 30 phyla of animals (p. 49).
They admit no one can explain how the last ancestor of all extant life came to be. Disappointingly, they waste space on Francis Crick's suggestion that the LAOAEL was extraterrestrial. That simply wastes time moving the issue back one (gigantic) step. It would have been just as easy to say that God created the LAOAEL. [By the way, most refer to this last common ancestor as the "last universal common ancestor" or LUCA.]
Once you have the LUCA, then there can be a gazillion explanations of how things played out, most of which are stymied when Michael Behe starts asking questions.
The writers directly address Michael Behe near the end of the book but, for me, do not make their case.
Marc and John do a great job showing how various life forms developed, but at the end of the day, they could have been describing how various computer operating systems all evolved from the Turing machine.
This is how Marc and John introduce us to the ancestor of all extant life.
We do not know whether life originated with RNA- or DNA-based heredity, or whether in fact heredity preceded or followed the evolution of proteins.
Because all recent life forms contain DNA as the stable repository of the sequence of information of proteins and use RNA as an intermediate interpreter of the DNA sequence, we can assert that around three billion years ago bacteria-like organisms were present that had DNA, RNA, a genetic code for 20 amino acids, and ribosomes as factories for making proteins under the direction of RNA.
The basic processes of DNA replication, transcription into an RNA copy, and translation into protein had been established. [Why do the authors say "basic processes"?]
The organism must also have been a self-replicating cell enclosed by an impermeable membrane of two layers (a bilayer) of lipids.
It must have contained several hundred kinds of enzymes for synthesizing the major components of the cell, including the 20 amino acids, the cell membrane lipids, and the DNA bases.
An energy metabolism based on the breakdown of sugars must have been established at that time. The synthesis of cofactors, which later became vitamins, would have been established as well. [Co-factors first, then vitamins? How would they know that?]Reminds me a of Rudyard Kipling "just-so" story.
The organism of course [of course] would have had other attributes not commonly shared by its descendants.
Everything above would be part of the "big question of how life arose," but again, the authors in this book will look at the "little questions of how life evolved." After all, once you have the basic recipe and ingredients, there are a gazillion ways to modify the final product.
A critical component of Darwinism is "common descent." If Marc and John use the term, I have not yet seen it. They allude to it but they don't mention "common descent" as an important component of Darwinism. But I digress.
Having said that, they do have an excellent graphic showing the "evolution" or "progress" or "relationship" between prokaryocytes and modern eubacteria and archaea; between prokaryocytes and eukaryocytes; between eukaryocytes and protists; between eukaryocytes and multicellularity; multicellularity and plants, fung, and animals; between multicellularity and body plans; between body plans and 30 phyla of animals (p. 49).
They admit no one can explain how the last ancestor of all extant life came to be. Disappointingly, they waste space on Francis Crick's suggestion that the LAOAEL was extraterrestrial. That simply wastes time moving the issue back one (gigantic) step. It would have been just as easy to say that God created the LAOAEL. [By the way, most refer to this last common ancestor as the "last universal common ancestor" or LUCA.]
Once you have the LUCA, then there can be a gazillion explanations of how things played out, most of which are stymied when Michael Behe starts asking questions.
The writers directly address Michael Behe near the end of the book but, for me, do not make their case.
Marc and John do a great job showing how various life forms developed, but at the end of the day, they could have been describing how various computer operating systems all evolved from the Turing machine.
Wednesday, January 31, 2018
Genealogy Of Casanova
Don Francisco
1428: his natural son Don Jacobe Casanova was born at Saragosa, the capital of Aragon
Don Jacobe Casanova abducts Donna Anna Palafox from a convent the day after she had taken her vows. Don Jacobe Casanove was secretary to King Alfonso. The two of them, Don Jacobe Casanova and Donna Anna fled to Rome; imprisoned in Rome for a year.
It turns out, at the Pope's palace there was an uncle to Jon Jacobe: the uncle was Don Juan Casanova, master of the sacred palace and uncle to Don Jacobe. Uncle Jon Jacobe insisted that his nephew be freed. Pope Martin III freed the two and let them marry.
All of Anna's and Don Jacobe's children died, except one: Don Juan (named after his great uncle).
Don Juan married Elconora Albini in 1475; they had a son named Marcantonio.
1481: Don Juan fled Rome because he had killed an officer of the King of Naples. He fled to Como with his wife and son. He died on a voyage with Christopher Columbus in 1493.
Marcantonio became a good poet; became secretary to Carinal Pompeo Colonna. He wrote a satire against Giulio de Medici; the satire forced him to flee Rome; fled to Como.
At Como, Marcantonio married Abondia Rezzonica.
Of all things, Giulio de Medici becomes pope, Pope Clement VII. The pope pardoned Marcantonio and summoned him back to Rome. Marcantonio died at the hands of the Imperial troops in 1526; he died of the plague. [Daniel Defoe's The Year of the Plague, written in 1722 of the plague in 1655.]
Three months after Marcantonio's death, his wife gives birth to Giacomo Casanova (late 1400's).
Giacomo Casanova had left a son in Parma. That son marries Teresa Conti. Teresa Conti has a son, Giacomo. Giacomo marries Anna Roli in 1680.
Giacomo and Anna had two sons: Giovanni Batista, left Parma in 1712; lost.
The other son Gaetano Guiseppe Giacomo, forsook his family in 1715, at the age of 17.
All of that is from his father's diary.
The rest of the genealogy comes from his mother.
Gaetano Guisepe Giacoma falls in love with an actress, Fragoletta. Gaetano becomes an actor. Leaves Fagoletta, and travels to Venice; falls in love with Zanetta, age 16. Zanetta's mother is Marzia.
The Casanova is born to Gaetano and Zanetta in 1725.
Zanetta becomes a widow nine years later with six children.
Casanova was one year old when his father left for London as an actor. Mother and son actually follow Gaetano to London.
Starts to tell his story of what he first remembers, at age 8, in 1733. Talks about his grandmother Marzia.
So, long, long genealogy: Parma, Rome, Venice, London, back to Venice.
1428: his natural son Don Jacobe Casanova was born at Saragosa, the capital of Aragon
Don Jacobe Casanova abducts Donna Anna Palafox from a convent the day after she had taken her vows. Don Jacobe Casanove was secretary to King Alfonso. The two of them, Don Jacobe Casanova and Donna Anna fled to Rome; imprisoned in Rome for a year.
It turns out, at the Pope's palace there was an uncle to Jon Jacobe: the uncle was Don Juan Casanova, master of the sacred palace and uncle to Don Jacobe. Uncle Jon Jacobe insisted that his nephew be freed. Pope Martin III freed the two and let them marry.
All of Anna's and Don Jacobe's children died, except one: Don Juan (named after his great uncle).
Don Juan married Elconora Albini in 1475; they had a son named Marcantonio.
1481: Don Juan fled Rome because he had killed an officer of the King of Naples. He fled to Como with his wife and son. He died on a voyage with Christopher Columbus in 1493.
Marcantonio became a good poet; became secretary to Carinal Pompeo Colonna. He wrote a satire against Giulio de Medici; the satire forced him to flee Rome; fled to Como.
At Como, Marcantonio married Abondia Rezzonica.
Of all things, Giulio de Medici becomes pope, Pope Clement VII. The pope pardoned Marcantonio and summoned him back to Rome. Marcantonio died at the hands of the Imperial troops in 1526; he died of the plague. [Daniel Defoe's The Year of the Plague, written in 1722 of the plague in 1655.]
Three months after Marcantonio's death, his wife gives birth to Giacomo Casanova (late 1400's).
Giacomo Casanova had left a son in Parma. That son marries Teresa Conti. Teresa Conti has a son, Giacomo. Giacomo marries Anna Roli in 1680.
Giacomo and Anna had two sons: Giovanni Batista, left Parma in 1712; lost.
The other son Gaetano Guiseppe Giacomo, forsook his family in 1715, at the age of 17.
All of that is from his father's diary.
The rest of the genealogy comes from his mother.
Gaetano Guisepe Giacoma falls in love with an actress, Fragoletta. Gaetano becomes an actor. Leaves Fagoletta, and travels to Venice; falls in love with Zanetta, age 16. Zanetta's mother is Marzia.
The Casanova is born to Gaetano and Zanetta in 1725.
Zanetta becomes a widow nine years later with six children.
Casanova was one year old when his father left for London as an actor. Mother and son actually follow Gaetano to London.
Starts to tell his story of what he first remembers, at age 8, in 1733. Talks about his grandmother Marzia.
So, long, long genealogy: Parma, Rome, Venice, London, back to Venice.
Tuesday, January 30, 2018
My Virginia Woolf Library Donated To Our Granddaughter's School -- January 30, 2018
Our oldest granddaughter's high school has reached out to its students to bring in books to enlarge the school's library. It's a relatively new school, and the teachers know that there are a lot of good book out there.
So, I am starting to close down my own library.
The first to go: my prize collection -- the Virginia Woolf library. I have kept a few Virginia Woolf books, but these were given to the school today:
My Virginia Woolf Library
Mrs Dalloway: Mapping Streams of Consciousness, David Dowling, c. 1991
Congenial Spirits: The Selected Ltrs of VW, edited by Joanne Trautmann Banks, c. 1989
Mrs Woolf and the Servants, Alison Light, c. 2008, Harvard Bookstore, hard cover, $7.00;
The Letters of Vita Sackville-West to VW, edited by L. DeSalvo and M. A. Leaska, c. 1985
Virginia Woolf: A Writer's Life, Lyndall Gordon, c. 1984
Virginia Woolf: Revaluation and Continuity, edited by Ralph Freedman, c. 1980
The Unknown Virginia Woolf, Roger Poole, c. 1978
Virginia Woolf, Susan Rubinow Gorsky, c. 1978
Moments of Being, Virginia Woolf, c. 1977
A Moment's Liberty: The Shorter Diary, abridged and edited by Anne Olivier Bell, c. 1977
Virginia Woolf: A Biography, Quentin Bell, c. 1972
Recollections of Virginia Woolf by Her Contemporaries, edited by Joan Russell Noble, c. 1972
Downhill All the Way, 1919 - 1939, Leonard Woolf, c. 1967
A Writer's Diary, Virginia Woolf, edited with an introduction by Leonard Woolf, c. 1953
The Common Reader, Virginia Woolf, c. 1925
The Diary of VW, Volume One, 1915 - 1919, c. 1977, hardback, The Diary of VW, Volume Two, 1920 - 1924, c. 1978, softback,
Players: The Mysterious Identity of William Shakespeare, Bertram Fields, c. 2005
So, I am starting to close down my own library.
The first to go: my prize collection -- the Virginia Woolf library. I have kept a few Virginia Woolf books, but these were given to the school today:
My Virginia Woolf Library
Mrs Dalloway: Mapping Streams of Consciousness, David Dowling, c. 1991
Congenial Spirits: The Selected Ltrs of VW, edited by Joanne Trautmann Banks, c. 1989
Mrs Woolf and the Servants, Alison Light, c. 2008, Harvard Bookstore, hard cover, $7.00;
Passionate Apprentice: Virginia Woolf, The Early Journals, 1897 - 1909, Virginia Woolf, edited by Mitchell A Leaska, c. 1990
The Bedside, Bathtub & Armchair Companion to VW and Bloomsbury, Sarah M. Hall, c. 2007
Selected Works of Virginia Woolf, Virginia Woolf, c. 2005
Virginia Woolf: An Inner Life, Julia Briggs, c. 2005
The Mrs Dalloway Reader, Virginia Woolf et al, edited by Francine Prose, 2003
Virginia Woolf, Nigel Nicolson, c. 2000
The Marriage of Heaven and Hell: Manic Depression and the Life of VW, Peter Dally, c. 1999
Who's Afraid of Leonard Woolf, Irene Coates, c. 1998
Art and Affection: A Life of Virginia Woolf, Panthea Reid, c. 1996, $7.98
Virginia Woolf: Interviews and Recollections, edited by J. H. Stape, c. 1995
Leonard and Virginia Woolf as Publishers: The Hogarth Press, 1917 - 1941, J. H. Willis, c. 1992
Virginia Woolf, Modern Fiction, Susan Dick, c. 1989
Virginia Woolf, Modern Critical Reviews, edited by Harold Bloom, c. 1986Selected Works of Virginia Woolf, Virginia Woolf, c. 2005
Virginia Woolf: An Inner Life, Julia Briggs, c. 2005
The Mrs Dalloway Reader, Virginia Woolf et al, edited by Francine Prose, 2003
Virginia Woolf, Nigel Nicolson, c. 2000
The Marriage of Heaven and Hell: Manic Depression and the Life of VW, Peter Dally, c. 1999
Who's Afraid of Leonard Woolf, Irene Coates, c. 1998
Art and Affection: A Life of Virginia Woolf, Panthea Reid, c. 1996, $7.98
Virginia Woolf: Interviews and Recollections, edited by J. H. Stape, c. 1995
Leonard and Virginia Woolf as Publishers: The Hogarth Press, 1917 - 1941, J. H. Willis, c. 1992
Virginia Woolf, Modern Fiction, Susan Dick, c. 1989
The Letters of Vita Sackville-West to VW, edited by L. DeSalvo and M. A. Leaska, c. 1985
Virginia Woolf: A Writer's Life, Lyndall Gordon, c. 1984
Virginia Woolf: Revaluation and Continuity, edited by Ralph Freedman, c. 1980
The Unknown Virginia Woolf, Roger Poole, c. 1978
Virginia Woolf, Susan Rubinow Gorsky, c. 1978
Moments of Being, Virginia Woolf, c. 1977
A Moment's Liberty: The Shorter Diary, abridged and edited by Anne Olivier Bell, c. 1977
Virginia Woolf: A Biography, Quentin Bell, c. 1972
Recollections of Virginia Woolf by Her Contemporaries, edited by Joan Russell Noble, c. 1972
Downhill All the Way, 1919 - 1939, Leonard Woolf, c. 1967
A Writer's Diary, Virginia Woolf, edited with an introduction by Leonard Woolf, c. 1953
The Common Reader, Virginia Woolf, c. 1925
The Diary of VW, Volume One, 1915 - 1919, c. 1977, hardback, The Diary of VW, Volume Two, 1920 - 1924, c. 1978, softback,
Players: The Mysterious Identity of William Shakespeare, Bertram Fields, c. 2005
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