The Power of J.F. Powers
There is a common quality in all art; in a sense that really good paintings, sculpture, music, writing have. I can’t name it. It has something to do with God-given spirit, going beyond oneself. I think it’s possible to write something, for me to write something, that even God might like. It’s possible for me to hit a note, to get in a mood, to write something that is worthy even of God’s attention. Not as a soul seeking salvation, but just as entertainment for God.
– J.F. Powers
The Psycho House by Edward Hopper
House by the Railroad, 1925
(Hat tip: David Thompson)
Hey, Drama Critics
Go ahead and rave an ambitious play like August: Osage County, if you must. But at least warn us if it contains the following line, which some discerning customers might consider a dead giveaway of its actual quality:
I’m white and over 30 — I don’t get in trouble!
“This is absolutely a political parable,” says August’s playwright Tracy Letts, in the program notes to the Los Angeles production of his big hit. Well, political parables are known to corrupt art, and absolute political parables…corrupt even more than non-absolute ones.
In the beginning was yadda yadda
What is set down in orderly and seemly sentences, even today, always has some flavor in it of the stilted rubbish that the Sumerian kings used to engrave upon their tombs. The current cliches get into it inevitably; it is never quite honest. Complete honesty, intellectually, seldom expresses itself in formal words: its agents of notification are rather winks and sniggers, hip flasks and dead cats.
– H.L. Mencken, against blogging
From Philip Larkin’s review of a Mahalia Jackson biography
After a specially successful performance, with everyone crying, an admirer asked “How do you do it?” Mahalia fixed the full force of her being on him.
“Don’t you KNOW,” she said in disgust.
Message in a Bottle
In an essay on the various qualities of wetting the whistle, philosopher Roger Scruton delineates the Puritan roots of binge-drinking. I made the same point (in my own stilted and clumsy way) three years ago in the Daily Bruin.
This gives me all the confidence I need to continue my campaigns against traveling, dessert, and waking up.
