Hal Johnson's Blog, page 34

Impossible Histories annotations on Freud

These are annotations for the sixth chapter of the book Impossible Histories. I’m not saying you need to keep a copy of IH open next to you as you read, but it might make some things clearer?

p. 90
•epigraph: The original epigraph was to be:

He looked on naked nature unashamed,
And saw the Sphinx, now bestial, now divine.
§James Russel Lowell, inscription for a memorial bust of Fielding.

•Martin Amis once remarked: This chapter originally had a long, discursive opening, which I was persuaded to cut. P...

Are we getting stupider?

There are two ways, as everyone knows, of running an authoritative study comparing apples, say, and oranges. One is to survey a large number of apples and oranges and run a chi-squared test and get a p value and do a bunch of other things I knew how to do in college but have since forgotten. The other is to find the Platonic ideal of an orange and the Platonic ideal of an apple and compare them. This latter method is quicker.

On pp. 104–5 of Impossible Histories, I mention, in passing, that over ...

A garland of quotations VII

Nay, but, for terror of his wrathful Face,I swear I will not call Injustice Grace; Not one Good Fellow of the Tavern butWould kick so poor a Coward from the place.•Edward FitzGerald, Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám 2nd ed. (1868).

Ha, ha, ha! Love, and Scandal, are the best Sweeteners of Tea.
•Henry Fielding, Love in Several Masques (1728).

his flesh ceases to be the flesh of love
his flesh is a small plastic bag, filled with painful urine.
•Eddy van Vliet, “Grootvader” (1971).

‘O father, do not turn...

Impossible Histories annotations on Freemasons

These are annotations for the fifth chapter of the book Impossible Histories. I’m not saying you need to keep a copy of IH open next to you as you read, but it might make some things clearer?

p. 77
•t t ot @ br i: Many years ago I acquired a couple of Masonic handbooks in “code,” and due more to the fact that the code is not very robust than to my own acumen, I was able to read one of the books. As you can see from the excerpt, the code consists of replacing some common words with symbols (@ is an...

My “honorable mention” review for the Astral Codex Ten book review contest

(Big thanks to Astral Codex Ten!)

The early nineteenth century was a real bonanza time for English poetry, but by 1822, things were beginning to wind down. Keats was dead, and Shelley would die midway through the year. Blake had finished his last and most ambitious book. Coleridge had long stopped producing verse and Wordsworth was past his prime, if not yet in his dotage. Byron still had some fire in him, but when he completed Vision of Judgment in late 1821, his best work was behind him. Englis...

A garland of quotations VI

Sometimes I despair. Sometimes think old Doc Savage had the right idea.
•Truman Capote, In Cold Blood (1965)

And away she turns Dancing, and Sings as she goes the following Piece of Newgate Wit, If I swing by the String, I shall hear the Bell ring. And then there’s an end of poor Jenny.•Daniel Defoe, Moll Flanders (1722).’Twas Brillo, and the G.E. Stoves, Did Procter-Gamble in the Glade;All Pillsbury were the Taystee loaves, And in a Minute Maid.•Isabe...

Impossible Histories annotations on the Incas

These are annotations for the fourth chapter of the book Impossible Histories. I’m not saying you need to keep a copy of IH open next to you as you read, but it might make some things clearer?

p. 59
•epigraph: The epigraph here was to be:

Conquerors are a class of men with whom, for most part, the world could well dispense.
§Carlyle, Essay on Burns (1828).

•No one has ever rooted for Pizarro: E. Clerihew Bentley, with his studied understatement, sums Pizarro up in a quatrain (from a 1905 collection o...

What if Henry Stanley had been proud of his heritage?

One Stanley is worth a hundred good books.
•Anton Chekov, obituary for Nikolai Przhevalsky (1888).

“Dr. Livingston, I presume,” Henry Morton Stanley said when, deep in the uncharted wilds of Africa, he finally found the celebrity missionary he was looking for. David Livingston had been missing for years, his once-frequent updates on his African adventures having trickled to nothing. People were worried. Stanley, a no-name reporter for the New York Herald, somehow managed the apparently impossible ...

A garland of quotations V

This Torah is like two paths, one of sunlight, and one of snow.
Take the one and die of sun, take the other and die in the snow.
What to do? Walk between the two.
•Yerushalmi, Hagigah, 77a.

By God! What is this world compared with the Hereafter! It is like dipping your finger in the sea; look how little remains on it when you withdraw it!
•Tabrizi, Mishkat al-Masâbih (C14).

God does not do the same thing twice.
•Richard Adams, Shardik (1974).

…for than the he deth swa swa hine sylfe gewyrth, and he nænn...

Impossible Histories annotations on Alexander the Great

These are annotations for the third chapter of the book Impossible Histories. I’m not saying you need to keep a copy of IH open next to you as you read, but it might make some things clearer?

p. 43
•Alexander the Great: This chapter had, and perhaps still has, more errors than any other, in part because of the unusual way it was written. Fifteen or twenty years ago I prepared a lengthy manuscript for a D&D game (the game took place in the “real” world in AD 989) about the wars of Alexander’s succe...