Montaigne

“There is no man so good that if he placed all his actions and thoughts under the scrutiny of the laws, he would not deserve hanging ten times in his life - even though it would be very harmful and unjust to punish and destroy him.”

-- Michel de Montaigne

quality time

I could have gone on my walk this morning. I woke up early enough and it is not too cold, but I just didn't feel like it. It is probably because I lost out on the big room yesterday and hunger for some quality time in here. Plus, I am not in the middle of an absorbing daytime book, whereas I am in the middle of an absorbing movie, Denzel Washington's "Safe House".

Pics

Looking for the hot parts.

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"He has a job??"

Whoa, here is news! I got the newspaper for Pop and he mentioned that he had to go and drop Jack off at work. It takes a moment for this to register on me, but then I turn back. I have to ask: "He has a job??" He does. Apparently, Jack has been working at Burger King for a few months.

Talk about the shock! I thought that Jill was making good enough money to support the family.

I guess I underestimate him too much. And he still comes to edge the lawn? Then again, it has only been a few months. If I had to bet the family farm, I would have to put my money on him quitting within a year. But maybe this is for real. Good for him and his family! I wish I were doing so well, but I guess I am a lost cause indeed.

Lindsay Lohan as Elizabeth Taylor

The critics are not giving Lindsay Lohan a break but prefer to pile on. Hollywood continues to have faith in the girl, though. They gave her a siginificant gig to play Elizabeth Taylor in a movie for the Lifetime channel. After this devastating review, if only to see if the critics are being unfair, I am interested in tuning in, if I can ever catch it on the schedule; the Lifetime channel is not one of my regualr TV haunts, though it used to be back in the days before I had access to Internet porn and I had to get my cheap thrills from their soft, therapeutic treatment of rape stories - those desperate days!

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Paul Krugman on All This Atlas Shrugging

In light of Obama's re-election, a number of corporations have enjoyed giving off an "Atlas Shrugged" vibe, laying off workers, cutting workers' hours, and in Hostess's case, going bankrupt. They blame our diluted version of universal healthcare, usually called Obamacare, as well as the promise of slightly higher taxes to come. Paul Krugman reminds us that making owners and business executives responsible is not the same thing as burning down the house.

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Lo (1,2) The Splendid Hotel Mirana

A little note on Humbert’s breezy childhood life with his papa, the owner and potentate of a luxury hotel on the Riviera.

_ _ _

I grew, a happy, healthy child in a bright world of illustrated books, clean sand, orange trees, friendly dogs, sea vistas and smiling faces. Around me the splendid Hotel Mirana revolved as a kind of private universe, a whitewashed cosmos within the blue greater one that blazed outside. From the aproned pot-scrubber to the flanneled potentate, everybody liked me, everybody petted me. Elderly American ladies leaning on their canes listed toward me like towers of Pisa. Ruined Russian princesses who could not pay my father, bought me expensive bonbons. He, mon cher petit papa, took me out boating and biking, taught me to swim and dive and water-ski, read to me Don Quixote and Les Miserables, and I adored and respected him and felt glad for him whenever I overheard the servants discuss his various lady-friends, beautiful and kind beings who made much of me and cooed and shed precious tears over my cheerful motherlessness.

-- “Lolita” by Vladimir Nabokov

_ _ _

Nabokov arguably goes overboard with this Riviera business, venturing into cliche, but one supposes that he wanted to quickly create a picture of Humbert Humbert as Mr. European Sophisticate, coming to America to despoil young American girls. Details of biography are not that important.

Maybe this is a good point to try to bring this out. “Lolita” is not a realist novel, though of all of Nabokov’s Novels “Lolita” may be the most realist. I think it is fair to say that Nabokov is a self-described postmodernist who thinks the straight novel has been played out so that the fun of the thing involves playing literary games with brain-teasers - literature as genius games with lots of irony, parody, and nods and winks. Such is usually not my style and Nabokov is generally not to my taste, I being a simple soul, more the salt of the earth. As with too many readers, I’m sure, the sensational matter of this novel is the big draw. Though, it does help that there is a stronger realist drive to this narrative, point A going to point B, with a beginning a middle and an end, like a real story.