Light On Dark Water

  • American Institutions

    I've been reading a collection of Nat Hentoff's music journalism, American Music Is, and came across this great anecdote: When Mr. [Robert] O'Meally was a student at Harvard, he approached [Ralph] Ellison, who was giving a talk, and asked: Don't you think the Harlem Renaissance failed because we failed to create institutions to preserve our gains?"…

    Read more →

  • 52 Authors: Week 18 – T.S. Eliot

    (T.S. Eliot's first importance is as a poet, but he is also a major figure in criticism, and a significant, possibly under-rated, one in cultural and social commentary. I'm only going to consider the poetry here, and that excluding the plays, for the simple reason that I haven't read any of them except Murder in…

    Read more →

  • Glitches, Maybe

    Tomorrow, Saturday the 2nd, I'm hoping to do something that's about five years overdue. I think it was 2010 when I moved this blog from Blogger to Typepad. I have a domain name, http://www.lightondarkwater.com, which still points to the old blog, though if you go there it redirects you here. I need to point that…

    Read more →

  • A Conversation Piece

    I've been reading Robert McCrum's biography of P.G. Wodehouse (Wodehouse, 2004). In passing, discussing Wodehouse's decision to try writing for Hollywood in the late 1920s and early '30s, the author mentions this: According to George Cukor, the premiere [of The Jazz Singer, the first talking picture], on the night of 27 December 1928, had been 'the…

    Read more →

  • 52 Authors: Week 17 – Christopher Derrick

    I was never shot down into Occupied France. But in my distant R.A.F. days, I was carefully briefed about what I was to do in that event; and it struck me at the time that my situation then would be closely analogous to what 'being a Catholic' means … But it's a bad metaphor in…

    Read more →

  • A Young Girl in Red, 1913

    There are several sets of photos similar to this one that I've seen here and there on the net, color photos taken at a time when color photography was almost unknown. I think they're fascinating, and very valuable, because early photography, in ironic contradiction of what was thought to be its startling realism, has given…

    Read more →

  • Wisteria

    When I got this off the camera I thought it was more purple than it should be. Still pretty, though. I remember as a child with a coloring book and crayons coloring something dark green and dark purple, and someone telling me those colors didn't go together. Every now and then over the years I've…

    Read more →

  • Anybody planning to have a piece for the 52 Authors series this weekend?

    I don't have anybody on the schedule but maybe I just forgot to update it. If no one else has anything, I think I'll go ahead and do Eliot. I had sort of intended to read some of his prose that I've either never read or only read once long ago, but I could do…

    Read more →

  • 52 Authors: Week 16 – Madeleine L’Engle

    [Editor's note: most people reading this blog have probably read A Wrinkle In Time, but in case you haven't, be aware that this contains spoilers.] I’m guessing Madeleine L’Engle was a loosey-goosey Episcopalian. This may be to misjudge her. It is a guess which is largely based on the way her novels border on depicting…

    Read more →

  • “Notoriously dismal”

    James Dickey (poet, 1923-1997, and author of the novel Deliverance): "The history of poets pronouncing on public issues is notoriously dismal." Dickey is quoted by Neo-neocon in a post on the topic of poets, celebrities, and politics. I agree entirely with Dickey, and it's slightly painful to say so, because I've always been inclined to…

    Read more →

Instagram / TikTok / X

Designed with WordPress