The Saunterer

E. M. Forster on what makes a mystery novel

The ingredients of a mystery novel, he says, are these:    

    “The king died and then the queen died” is a story. “The king died, and then the queen died of grief” is a plot. . . . “The queen died, no one knew why, until it was discovered that it was through grief at the death of the king.” This is a plot with a mystery in it, a form capable of high development.

    (Quoted from page 4 of Talking About Detective Fiction, by P. D. James. Alfred A. Knopf, 2009.)
For a brief biography of E. M. Forster, click here. For images of or relating to E. M. Forster, click here.

 

 

Ursula K. Le Guin on the necessity to train your imagination

    Ursula K. Le Guin died last Monday at 88. Of imagination she once said:

    If you cannot or will not imagine the results of your actions, there is no way you can act morally or responsibly. Little kids can’t do it; babies are morally monsters—completely greedy. Their imagination has to be trained into foresight and empathy.

    (Quoted from page B15 of The New York Times, January 24, 2018.)

    For a brief biography of Ursula K. Le Guin, click here. For images of or relating to Ursula K. Le Guin, click here.

Leonardo da Vinci on cats and masterpieces

    Many quite agree with Leonardo da Vinci who put it:

    The smallest feline is a masterpiece.

    (Quoted from page 200 of Making Rounds with Oscar, by David Dosa. Hyperion, 2010.)
    For a brief biography of Leonardo da Vinci, click here. For images of or relating to Leonardo da Vinci, click here.

 

John Ruskin on the aim of education

    The aim of education is two-fold: (1) Be able to see the simple truth of situations and (2) state it clearly. John Ruskin:

    The greatest thing a human soul ever does in this world is to see something and tell what it saw in a plain way. Hundreds of people can talk for one who can think, but thousands can talk for one who can see. To see clearly is poetry, prophecy and religion, all in one.

    (Quoted from page 5 of the Times Literary Supplement, December 5, 2017.)

    For a brief biography of John Ruskin, click here. For images of or relating to John Ruskin, click here.

Carla Hayden on not taking reading for granted

    Carla Hayden, 14th Librarian of Congress, suggests:    

    I just want people to read, so I have never been prescriptive about it. But I do think “A History of Reading,” by Alberto Manguel, includes a specific chapter that is so important. It is about forbidden reading, and talks about what happens when reading is suppressed. Everyone should understand that reading is not something to take for granted.

    (Quoted from page 8 of the August 8, 2017, issue of The New York Times Book Review.)
    For a brief biography of Carla Hayden, click here. For images of or relating to Carla Hayden, click here.

Henry David Thoreau on the importance of seeing beyond mere looking

    Reading Henry David Thoreau’s journals this past summer, we liked the wit of his following entry of August 5, 1851, at age 34:

    One sentence of perennial poetry would make me forget, would atone for, volumes of mere science. The astronomer is as blind to the significant phenomena, or the significance of phenomena, as the wood-sawyer who wears glasses to defend his eyes from sawdust. The question is not what you look at, but what you see.

    (Quoted from page 65 of The Journal: 1837-1861, by Henry David Thoreau, Damion Searls editor, New York Review Books, 2009.)
    For a brief biography of Henry David Thoreau, click here. For images of or relating to Henry David Thoreau, click here.

Sigmund Freud on our “character”

    According to Freud, your “character” was set when you were a child:

    What we describe as our “character” is based on the memory-traces of our impressions; and, moreover, the impressions which have had the greatest effect on us—those of our earliest youth—are precisely the ones which we scarcely ever become conscious.

    (Quoted from page 79 of Kafka’s Social Discourse, by Mark E. Blum. Leigh University Press, 2011.)
    For a brief biography of Sigmund Freud, click here. For images of or relating to Sigmund Freud, click here.

 

 

President Trump’s wrongheadedness in bringing back the coal industry

    That coal is a terribly inefficient fuel, huge amounts of it needed to produce mechanical work, we were reminded in reading from the book Storm in a Teacup, pages 29-30, by Helen Czerski, the following lines about a steam locomotive:    

    On one 11-mile journey, it will burn through 1,100 pounds of coal. . . . That half-ton of coal that is shoveled into this engine on each trip is used to convert 1,200 gallons of water to gas, and the that gas pushes on a piston and is lost to the atmosphere one “chuff” at a time.

    For a brief biography of Helen Czerski, click here. For images of or relating to Helen Czerski, click here.

Tracy K. Smith on the idea that poetry is sustenance for living

    This is how she puts it:

    I had strong initial feelings of shock and disbelief, which settled into immense honor and gratitude. I thought about how much poetry’s perspective has sustained me throughout my life, particularly during moments of difficulty and uncertainty.

    (Quoted from an interview with Times Higher Education after being named the next U.S. Poet Laureate.)
    For a brief biography of Tracy K. Smith, click here. For images of or relating to Tracy K. Smith, click here.

Paul Fletcher on the changed role of sexual intercourse

    Paul Fletcher puts the obvious this way:

    Sex has been unhinged from its reproductive role and now serves a very different economy of desire. Sex has been socially appropriated for the body and its pleasures and has been removed from the public realm of marriage, state, and church. Sex is no longer about the future—children, security, continuity—but about “experience.”

    (Quoted from the front matter of Erotic Attunement, by Cristina L. H. Traina. The University of Chicago Press, 2011.)

    For Paul Fletcher’s website, click here.