Archive for the ‘simplicity’ tag
A Rage for Simplicity #
Clive James’s wide-ranging essay about “why we need dilemmas” is too wide-ranging for me to recommend it, but I did think there was something valuable at the end of this paragraph.
It’s only a few years since the British poet Philip Larkin got the Naipaul treatment. It happened after his death instead of before, but there were similar calls for his books not to be read. In his collected letters he had revealed himself to be a racist, a misogynist, and a lot of other kinds of “ist” that nobody sensible could admire. But in real life he would rather have drunk water than be discourteous to anyone of any race or gender, and he also wrote dozens of the most magnificent poems to have graced our literature in modern times. They’re magnificent not just because they are lyrical even in their despair, but because they register the real world, in all its complexity. Poetry like Larkin’s, and prose like Sir Vidia’s, is still the best safeguard we’ve got against the rage for simplicity, the total view that wants to achieve a false peace by silencing everyone who might contradict us.
I should also note that Philip Larkin wrote one of my favorite poems.
Puddleblog #
I love things like this, I hope you do too. A blog that is simply a series of pictures of puddles. Does blogging get better than that?
(via clusterflock)