THOUGHTS
In this section are thoughts on whatever comes to mind, no
limit on topics, written for this web site. When I get the
impulse, I’ll write thoughts and add them to what’s already here (I
don’t plan on ever deleting any thoughts). For each thought,
there will be a title, length, the month and year I wrote it, a blurb
on what it’s about, and a PDF of the thought.
To get a sense of who I am and how I see things and what's
going on with me, you could read these thoughts in order: start with
"On Foucault." The thoughts are self-contained, however, and you
can read them in any order.
-
On Foucault. 19 pp. June, 2007.
Michel Foucault (1926-1984) was a
philosopher who taught at the College de France and other universities,
including in the United States. He authored critical studies of social
institutions, including psychiatry, medicine, and the prison
system. He also wrote about the history of sexuality and the
relationship between power, knowledge, and human discourse. I first
read a biography of Foucault by James Miller, The Passion of Michel
Foucault, in, I believe, 1995, and have revisited it regularly since,
once or twice year, reading a chapter or two or three and browsing
sections here and there before setting it back on my library
shelf. This last time I pulled the book off the shelf—in June of
2007--I noted the phrases and sentences, sometimes a paragraph, I had
underlined, I suppose, ten or twelve years ago. For this thought,
I reproduce the underlines and offer my comments. This thought
provides a sense of the impact this book has had on me, including my
writing, this past decade, and gets across something of what I am like
in 2007. Also, I hope this thought will prompt readers to reflect
on their own lives, as well as look into Foucault and the other
philosophers mentioned in these pages. Read
the full thought here.
-
On Mishima. 8 pp. July, 2007.
Yukio Mishima (1925-1970) was a
Japanese author and playwright, who gained international recognition
and acclaim, including being on a short list for the Nobel Prize in
Literature. He is most remembered, however, for his ritual
suicide at 45 by seppuku (disemboweling oneself with a knife and then
being beheaded by a colleague). I’ve read a good bit of Mishima’s
fiction, but I have been most drawn to his outlook as an artist and as
a man and to his personal story. Every couple of years for the
last fifteen, I’ve checked out from the library two biographies on him
and his philosophical essay and memoir Sun & Steel. In this
thought I comment on excerpts from Sun & Steel. I hope I
explain Mishima some here and encourage readers to look into his
writings and personal example, but most of all I use Mishima’s writings
to explain myself. Read the full thought
here.
-
On the New McCarthyism. 18 pp. July, 2007.
The topic here is the current
attacks on racially conscious and active white people by those who
would marginalize, silence, and punish them for their beliefs,
expressions, and actions. I use a memoir on the McCarthy era, as
it was called, in the 1940s and ‘50s, written by Walter Bernstein,
Inside Out: A Memoir of the Black List, and an encounter I had in late
2006 with the Southern Poverty Law Center to frame an analysis of
this phenomenon, drawing parallels between what went on in the McCarthy
years, and at other points in history, and what’s going on now. I
offer some suggestions on how racially committed white people can deal
with attacks against them. Read the
full thought here.
•
On A Very Big Regret.
22pp. July, 2007.
I’d like this thought to speak for itself. The title says as much
as you need to know about it before you read it. Read the full
thought here.
•
On Personal Health. 16
pp. August, 2007.
I’ve never gone after good health for all I was worth at any time in my
life, and that has held me back in significant ways. I’m making
that commitment in this thought, and I’ll describe how I plan to carry
out this commitment over the next few months. I hope this thought
gives guidance and inspiration both to me and to the reader of these
words. Read the full thought here.
• On Three Films That Touched Me.
3 pp. August, 2007.
This past year, I saw three old Japanese films by the same director, Yasujiro Ozu,
that touched me more than any films in my memory. All three
feature the actress Setsuko Hara.
This is my
report on those three films. Read
the full thought here.
•On
Living the Martial Way. 8 pp. August, 2007.
In the same way I did with the Foucault and Mishima thoughts, I record
underlines I made in a book years ago and comment on them, a book I
have gone back to a number of times since that first reading. The
book is Living the Martial Way by Forrest Morgan. My focus
is on the application of what Morgan calls the warrior mind-set to
daily life. Read the full thought here.
•On Big Sur. 2 pp. September, 2007.
Excerpts from
the book Big Sur by Jack Kerouac; although in some cases I may not have
copied them down
exactly as
they were in the
book. Read the full thought here.
•On Chuck Davey 7 pp. October,
2007.
Chuck Davey was a boxer prominent in the
1950s. I went back to a few pages I had written about him back in
2002
and filed
away. This thought is about what came up for me as I
revisited this writing.
Read the full
thought here.
•On Victoria’s Dogs 6pp. November,
2007
Victoria
Stilwell is an animal trainer who straightens out unruly dogs on the
Animal Planet show, "It's Me or the
Dog." I think
I'm learning something from Victoria about straightening out unruly
people. Read the full thought here.
•On John Cheever 3 pp.
November, 2007
Entries from
the journals of novelist John Cheever written in the last months of
his
life. Read the full thought here.
•On Man in the Holocene
2pp. November, 2007
Excerpts
from the novel by Max Frisch, Man in the Holocene. Read the full thought here.
•On Hemingway’s Politics 2pp.
November, 2007
Some passages
from the book By Force of Will by Scott Donaldson about the political
outlook of Ernest
Hemingway. Read the full thought here.
•On
Leonard Schiller 2pp. November, 2007
From the novel by Brian
Morton, Starting Out in the Evening. A young woman has contacted
Leonard Schiller, a
novelist in his seventies,
requesting to meet him as part of writing a masters thesis on his work.
Read the
full thought here.
• On
the Death of Faron Young 2pp. December, 2007
Faron Young was a country
music star from the late 1950s to the 1980s, a honky-tonk singer and
entertainer
in the mold of Hank
Williams. Read the full thought here.
•
On The Beans Story 2 pp. December, 2007
Beans, a Boston terrier (at least
nominally), was the beloved family dog when I was little. Beans
was “put to sleep,”
as they say, when I was about
three—I think he had just gotten old. Beans was often the subject
of discussion
when my much-older brother and
sister and their spouses came to the house for Sunday dinner.
There was one
Beans story, so to speak, that was
repeated time and again. Read the full
thought here.
• On
Falconer 2pp. January, 2008
John Cheever’s novel Falconer ends
with convict Ezekiel Farragut’s escape from prison (New York: Knopf,
1977).
Read the full
thought here.
•
On War 1p. January, 2008.
Read the full
thought here.
•
On Self-Abuse, 4pp., February, 2008.
David Crosby is a
singer/songwriter who was prominent in the 1960s and ‘70s. He
developed a very serious
drug problem in the
years of his prominence,
the subject of this thought. Included are excerpts from two
hospital
in-take reports in
late
1983.
Following the excerpts is my
commentary. Read the full thought here.
•
On Aldous Huxley, 14 pp.,
February, 2008.
Aldous Huxley (1894-1963)
was a British-born novelist and essayist who lived the latter part of
his life in the United
States. He is best
known for
his novel Brave New World, published in 1932. Brave New World is
the ironic
depiction of a “utopia” in
which people are
brainwashed into subordination, accommodation, and a mindless,
shallow, though happy, existence by
the
government
and its agents. Later in life, Huxley became associated with
spiritual and mystical
concerns and
experimentation
with drugs reputed to be mind-expanding, such as mescaline.
This thought contains my
commentaries on excerpts from a
biography of Huxley. Read the full
thought here.
• On Living the Artist’s Way, 10 pp.,
February, 2008.
Robert Henri (1865-1929)
was a
prominent American painter. Not long before his death, the Arts
Council of
New York chose him as one of the
top three living
American artists. Henri was also a popular and influential
teacher of art. Henri’s ideas on
art and life were
collected by a
former student and published as a book in 1923
entitled The Art
Spirit. This thought is made up of
excerpts from that book. Read the full
thought here.
• On Personal Health II: From
Fear to Rage, 9 pp., March, 2008
This thought is an update on “On
Personal Health,” which I wrote back in August of 2007.
Read
the full thought here.
• On
Jack Nicholson, 3 pp., March, 2008.
Things the actor Jack Nicholson
said about himself to journalists over the span of his lengthy career
in films.
In one instance it is something a
friend attributed to him. Read the full
thought here.
• On Woody
Harrelson, 5 pp., March, 2008
Actor Woody
Harrelson first came to prominence as the bartender on the hit
television series “Cheers.” He has gone
on to an active big screen career,
including starring in director Oliver Stone’s film “Natural Born
Killers.” He
continues to act in both lead and
supporting
roles in films, and has become an environmental activist. This
thought
is made up of quotes from
Harrelson. Read the full thought here.
• On
the Death of James Whale, 2 pp., March, 2008
British-born film director James
Whale is best known for directing the sophisticated and morbidly
humorous horror classics “Frankenstein” and
“Bride of Frankenstein” in the 1930s. By the 1950s he was
retired, essentially discarded by
the Hollywood movie studios. Read the full
thought here.
• On
Arthur Bremer, 3 pp., April, 2008.
On May 15, 1972,
twenty-one-old Arthur Bremer shot
presidential candidate George Wallace at a rally
in a Laurel, Maryland
shopping center, paralyzing Wallace for life. Read the full thought here.
•On The Punisher, 1 p, April, 2008.
Comic book superheroes tend to abide by the law and stay away from
killing. One of Marvel
comics' characters,
however, created in the 1970s, The Punisher,
had a very different
outlook. Read the full thought here.
• On
Monsieur Hire, 2 pp., May, 2008.
“Monsieur Hire” is a 1989 French
film directed by Patrice Leconte. This thought is dialogue from
the film:
Read the full thought here.
• On
Dashiell Hammett, 1 p., June, 2008.
Dashiell Hammett (1894-1961) was an
American author best known for his hardboiled detective fiction.
This
thought is the last words he wrote for
publication. Read the full thought here.
• On Two
Romanian Films, 3pp., June, 2008.
This past week, I saw a couple of films
I found remarkable, compelling, personally transforming.
Read the
complete thought here.
• On Samuel
Beckett, 2pp., July, 2008.
In 1982, at 76 years of age, the Irish
playwright Samuel Beckett (“Waiting for Godot,” “Endgame”) wrote
a play without spoken words for German
television entitled “Nacht und Traüme.” This thought is a
description
of the play. Read
the full thought here.
• On Arthur
Schopenhauer, 1p., August, 2008.
Arthur Schopenhauer was a German philosopher.
From the age of 45 until his death 27 years later, Schopenhauer
every day followed the same routine. Read the full thought here.
• On Steve Ditko, 4
pp., August, 2008.
The success of the recent Spider-Man movies
has brought new prominence to the artist who drew Spider-Man,
Steve Ditko. This is my explanation of
what to many is a very enigmatic man. Read
the full thought here.
•On Philippe
Petit, 3pp., August, 2008
Last night, I saw a documentary, “Man on
Wire,” which recounted the planning and execution in 1974 of a high
wire walk by Frenchman Philippe Petit across
the space between the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center
in Manhattan. This thought is my
reaction to it. Read the full thought here.
•On Gorgeous
George, 5 pp., September, 2008.
Gorgeous George was the biggest name in
professional wrestling in the 1950s. This is an account of
one of his
matches. Read
the full thought here.
• On the Death of
Eddie Waitkus. 3 pp., September 2008.
In June of 1949, Eddie Waitkus was a
29-year-old veteran of the Pacific war and an all-star caliber first
baseman for the Philadelphia Phillies major
league baseball team. Read the full
thought here.
• On John Lennon,
7 pp., October, 2008.
This thought is essentially a reflection
on the ex-Beatle John Lennon’s relationship near the end of his life
with a woman named May
Pang. Read the full thought here.
• On Hayden
Carruth, 2 pp., October, 2008.
Hayden Carruth was best
known as a major poet, but he was also a critic,
essayist,
novelist, and autobiographer.
He died at 87 on September 29th,
2008. Read the full thought here.
• On the Barber,
5pp., November, 2008.
The barber was born in rural Georgia in
1890. This is his story. Read the
full thought here.
•On Sartre, 3 pp.,
November, 2008.
Philosopher, critic, novelist, and dramatist
Jean-Paul Sartre has singular eminence in world letters. His
earliest
novel, Nausea, was published in 1938. It is
made up of the diary entries of a French writer Antoine Roquentin
(a stand-in for Sartre himself?) that depict Roquentin’s
struggle to come to grips with the meaning and direction
of his life. This thought is excerpts from this
fictional diary. Read the full thought
here.
• On Richard Yates’
Former Girlfriend, 1p., December, 2008.
Natalie Bowen had been an old girlfriend of writer
Richard Yates (1926-92). Yates is best known for his 1961
novel Revolutionary Road. In 1972,
Bowen
received a phone call from Yates. Read the
full thought here.
• On Sending A Message
With Joan Allen, 1 p., December, 2008.
Producer Jeremy Bolt says casting three-time
Academy Award nominee Joan Allen in his 2008 film “Death Race”
was to send the message that “Death Race” is
an A film and not a low-class genre movie. Read
the full thought here.
• On Don Logan’s Bad
Attitude, 2pp., January, 2009.
Don Logan is a character in the film “Sexy Beast”
(2001). Portrayed by the actor Ben Kingsley, middle-aged, working
class Brit, fierce bird-of-prey persona, small,
compact, muscular, ramrod-straight posture, shaved head, mustache
and
goatee, form-fitting short sleeve dress white
shirt, grey
dress pants, shined shoes. The scene, a commercial airliner
filled with
passengers, ready to take off. Read the full thought here.
• On Ginger’s Dress,
3pp., January, 2009.
Ginger Rogers (1911-1995) was twenty-three years old in
1934 and preparing a duet with the legendary dancer Fred
Astaire
(1899-1987) for the film “Top Hat,” their second film
together. This thought has to do with a conflict that arose over
what
dress Ginger should wear for her dance with Fred. I
think the way Ginger handled this episode illustrates exemplary care
for
one’s work, and great personal integrity and
courage. And I think it also says something about how a parent
can encourage
those qualities. Read the full
thought here.
• On John Updike, 2 pp., January, 2009.
The writer John Updike died of cancer on January 27,
2009. He was 76. The evening I learned of his death, I
retrieved my
copy of his memoirs (entitled Self-Consciousness) from the
bookshelf and paged through it, pausing to read a few pages here
and there. A couple of passages particularly caught
my eye. Read the full thought here.
• On Ted Hughes. 4pp.,
February, 2009.
English poet Ted Hughes (1930-1998) near the end of his
life was designated Poet Laureate of Great Britain. This thought
is made up of excerpts from his letters. Read the full thought here.
• On Philip Roth, 1 p.,
March, 2009.
This thought is an excerpt from Philip Roth’s novel, The
Dying Animal. “The only thing you understand about the old
when you are not old is that . . .” Read the full thought here.
• On the Death of Jean-Paul
Sartre, 5 pp., April, 2009.
Jean-Paul Sartre, 1905-1980, was a French philosopher,
novelist, playwright, and political activist. He was one of the
leading intellectuals of the twentieth century. An
earlier thought on this site deals with his novel Nausea. The
material
in this throught was taken from Adieux: A Farewell to
Sartre, written by Sartre’s lifelong companion, Simone de Beauvoir.
Read the complete thought here.
• On Personal Health
III: George Valliant and Vitamin D, 7 pp., June, 2009.
I recently read a magazine article (“What Makes Us Happy?,”
Atlantic, June 2009) about the Harvard Study of Adult
Development, the most exhaustive investigation of personal
well-being ever conducted, and the chief analyst of its
lessons, psychiatrist George Valliant. Read the full thought here.
• On Being a Modern Day
Spinoza, 7 pp., September, 2009.
Even the quickest perusal of this web site makes it
clear that my outlook doesn't play well at all in the university in
which
I am a professor. From time to time, people
ask me how my university deals with me, as well as how I manage both
personally and professionally in such a
context. This thought discusses what I make of what is going on
with me currently
in this regard. Read
the full thought here.
• On The Captive, 3 pp.,
September, 2009.
An excerpt from the film "La Captive" (2000),
written and directed by Chantal Akerman. Read
the excerpt here.
• On The Last Days of
Elvis, 2pp., October, 2009.
Elvis Presley on
stage in Los Vegas, 1974,
having just finished the song, "You Gave Me a Mountain."
Read the full thought
here.
• On Coetzee, 1 p.,
October, 2009.
A page from J.M. Coetzee's autobiographical novel,
Diary of a Bad Year. Read the page here.
• On Priorities and Next
Steps, 5pp., December, 2009.
You and I will live better to the extent
that we know what we are fundamentally about as individual, mortal
human
beings. Read
the full thought here.
• On Class Even
Without Joan Allen, 2 pp., January, 2010.
In a thought for this site back in December of 2008
entitled "On Sending a Message with Joan Allen," I reported that the
producer of the film "Death Race" had said that he cast
the prestigious actress Joan Allen in his movie in order to send
the
message that his was a high-class film. I
thought about this producer while watching the DVD of season one of
Showtime's
hit series "Dexter." Read the
full thought here.
• On Hyenas, 2 pp,
January, 2010.
In our time, anyone writing from the perspective of
respect and concern for European heritage, white gentiles, as I have,
is going
to come under fire, and I've taken some hits in the media,
on the Internet, and from organizations. Particularly
interesting to
me, much of it has come from other white
gentiles. I've come up with ways to perceive and deal with
these people.
Read the full thought here.
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