novels, comets, movies
Some thirty-three years ago, the Voyager 1 spacecraft attempted to photograph all of the known planets in our solar system in a single "family portrait." But it couldn't see all of them. Some planets were too small, or too close to the Sun. The Earth, as is now well-known, turned up as a mere smudge … Continue reading Satan’s Pale Blue Dot
These reflections of mine will not be new, but they are new for me. I recently showed my kids one my favorite movies, "Contact", based on Carl Sagan's novel of the same name, about a potential first contact on Earth with extraterrestrial life. We had a great discussion about it, and since then I've been … Continue reading Consider Again that Dot
In a previous post I shared what it was like to read David Ferry's version of the Epic of Gilgamesh twenty years ago. I've just read Stephen Mitchell's version, from 2004. Both versions render the Epic as English free verse. They're similar in that sense: they're English poems that read like complete stories, meaning they … Continue reading Gilgamesh, Smaug and Krishna
In my blog posts I've compared similar passages across different novels, and I've got several passages from "The Hunchback of Notre Dame" that I want to link to other novels: "Moby-Dick," "Huckleberry Finn," "Tom Sawyer," "The Lord of the Rings," "Matilda," and one nonfiction book, Carl Sagan's "Pale Blue Dot." Compare this declaration by King … Continue reading Esmeralda, cosmologist
I've finished Marcus Aurelius' "Meditations." Daily Stoic has a terrific review (see end of post) which is a meditation, in its own right, on what this Roman Emperor jotted down in notes that were never intended to be seen by anyone other than himself. Reading the private thoughts of an actual Emperor of Rome is … Continue reading Meditations
I posted Sancho Panza's speech about the earth in the comments section of a YouTube video featuring Carl Sagan's meditations from "Pale Blue Dot." One Youtuber replied that there were similar thoughts in Cicero’s “Scipio’s Dream” and Marcus Aurelius’ “Meditations.” Cicero’s “Scipio’s Dream”, part 3: And as I looked on every side I saw other … Continue reading Pale Blue Dots
January 14, 2021 I’ve just finished “Madame Bovary.” Some of it was slow going, specifically the passages of excessive detail about physical objects and surroundings. But after finishing the novel, I read in Soledad Fox’s “Flaubert and Don Quijote” that Flaubert used all this detail to satirize the “realist” genre: that’s why he describes the … Continue reading Madame Bovary
October 20, 2020 A few notes on cosmology in "Don Quixote", but I'll let Sancho have the last word. In Vol. I, ch. 20, Burton Raffel's translation speaks of “the fearful sound of that water we have come searching for, which seems to smash down and hurl itself from the lofty mountains of the Moon”. … Continue reading Sancho Panza, cosmologist
October 7, 2020 Don Quijote has taken up many roles now that are actually knightly in their way. During the Basilio story he becomes something of a marriage-counselor at arms. He stops an incipient brawl at the wedding, which probably counts as the single best thing he’s done. He tries to be a peacemaker in … Continue reading 82 chapters into Don Quixote