Hello, another very unprecedented week of chaotic events. I’ve actually been at the beach all week, so a little off the grid in terms of the links.
Above here, this is the moon and the star-like situation is Venus; off-camera, you could see Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn in a general straight line (Saturn was sort of off to the side). We think we were up a little too late to see Mercury, which was supposed to be in the horizon area, but this alignment of the planets comes around only every 40 years, apparently. It was very clear and sharp.
Links
A little light, though I did read Rebecca Traister’s profile of Dianne Feinstein, which, as it turns out, I knew very little about Dianne Feinstein.
Light book commentary
On the beach, I ended up reading The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas, another classic by Machado de Assis, the Brazilian author, which concerns an idle aristocrat who, essentially, frittered his life away, except for one great affair with a married woman. In addition to the crispness and almost eerie freshness of the prose, the book has an interesting structure, where the natural end comes at the beginning in a warm fashion, and builds instead to just after that, in sort of an abrupt, striking way that hits hard. A classic for a reason.
In terms of it all feeling very fresh and contemporary, here’s an actual selection from this book, written in 1881!
Also caught the other Mabel Seeley mystery recommended by Molly Young — The Listening House — which was another banger, though not quite as good as The Chuckling Fingers. These two books are so good that even though Molly Young reports the other Seeley mysteries don’t hold up, I’m still considering hunting down a used copy or two. Because it was written in 1938, Listening House also offers an interesting distinction of involving plots where Prohibition, the Bonus Army, and the switch from the gold standard were events in living, casual memory, and play minor roles in the plot.
Lastly, I’ve been reading The Masters of Atlantis by Charles Portis, which is the story of a cut-rate blend of secret societies and conspiracy theories, and the innocents and con artists who get involved in such things; the tone is of a gentle humor. Anyway, this little bit might appeal:
Through a friend at the big Chicago marketing firm of Targeted Sales, Inc., he got his hands on a mailing list titled ‘Odd Birds of Illinois and Indiana,’ which, by no means exhaustive, contained the names of some seven hundred men who ordered strange merchandise through the mail, went to court often, wrote letters to the editor, wore unusual headgear, kept rooms that were filled with rocks or old newspapers. In short, independent thinkers, who might be more receptive to the Atlantean lore than the general run of men. Lamar was a little surprised to find his own name on the list.
A note on all this
Thanks for subscribing. Hope you enjoy. The goal here is just to offer up some links you may have missed, and maybe the occasional commentary on something in politics or a book I may have read that you, the reader, might enjoy. If you have thoughts on any of this, hit me up at katherinemillernyc@gmail.com or just tweet at me.