A Morbid Thaw
Have been able to read much here at work this a.m. A late start to programming. This afternoon I was reading a piece by Tony Horwitz and discovered a quote from Dr. Johnson:
A Man is to guard himself against taking a thing in general.
Hardly profound, it did linger and as Sam Johnson, lexiconographer understood, when one is constantly awash in data and etymology, one is forced into generality as a means of perspective. Such is also the means of absorbing the complexity ad horror of the American Civil War. This brief post will be crowned with the final stanza of a poem by Updike that i found in the same issue of the New Yorker.
Nature is never bored,and we whose lives are linearly pinned to theseself-fascinated cycles can't complain.
A Man is to guard himself against taking a thing in general.
Hardly profound, it did linger and as Sam Johnson, lexiconographer understood, when one is constantly awash in data and etymology, one is forced into generality as a means of perspective. Such is also the means of absorbing the complexity ad horror of the American Civil War. This brief post will be crowned with the final stanza of a poem by Updike that i found in the same issue of the New Yorker.
Nature is never bored,and we whose lives are linearly pinned to theseself-fascinated cycles can't complain.
posted by jon faith at
1:17 PM
3 Comments:
Do you think our group would like to read this collectively-
With Malice Toward None : Life of Abraham Lincoln, The
by Stephen B. Oates
I would agree to such, Ed. I am not familiar with the text as I am not familiar with either most civil war books or presidential bios.
With Malice Toward None is no longer available in the cheap mass market edition, unless you want to go on the used market. However, I would think you guys actually hold on to the books you read in Samizdat RG. The book lists for $17 in quality trade paperback, FYI.
Ed asked if the book group gets a discount. With this particular group (and such a small one, now, too), we'd much rather reward you on individual cumulative purchases, but we can talk about alternatives. We do want to be your bookseller.
With apologies for this intrusive commercial interruption.
Was the Horwitz from the book or from The New Yorker?
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