LINES OF THE DAY

". . . But the past does not exist independently from the present. Indeed, the past is only past because there is a present, just as I can point to something over there only because I am here. But nothing is inherently over there or here. In that sense, the past has no content. The past -- or more accurately, pastness -- is a position. Thus, in no way can we identify the past as past." p. 15

". . . But we may want to keep in mind that deeds and words are not as distinguishable as often we presume. History does not belong only to its narrators, professional or amateur. While some of us debate what history is or was, others take it into their own hands." p. 153

Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History (1995) by Michel-Rolph Trouillot

Sunday, December 28, 2014

Da List -- 2014 Reading Round-Up

Started work on my essay for this annual feature of Da List.

Part One is "My Year in Mississippi": William Alexander Percy, William Faulkner,




Jones County and Jefferson Davis (McPherson published a short book about him this year).

Part Two is "Women Who Starred in 2014": Louisa Catherine Adams, Katharine Graham,




and Jennifer Homans's 
Apollo's Angels: A History of Ballet.

Without illos, single-spaced, the material I've gathered out of the year's comments on these, is over 40 pages. There's a lot to work with here.

Collected all the notes into a single document this morning.  So on the memory stick it goes, to the copy shop. It is inconvenient not having a printer at home. Yet I still calculate, considering how expensive printer cartridges are, it's still less expensive by far going to the copy shop -- 3 cents per page, and less over 150 pp.  Yes, an Asian family owned and staffed . . . . How long will they survive on this strip that godzilla thug, NYU, is attempting to grab all of for its expansion?  They are so close to the supermarket -- which the Purple Gang is doing everything in its considerable power to eradicate -- that going there isn't inconvenient, really, other than they aren't open on Sundays . . . .

BTW, finally a rec for sf/f by a subscriber to the List came in -- for Gibson's Peripheral.



Marlon James's A Brief History of Seven Killings still holds without any rival as the number one fiction rec.  But by-and-large, there are few fiction recs at all.  My own reading journal has very few novels in it, and the commentary to almost all of them consists merely of  "did not finish."

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