tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8060605.post112898119743244065..comments2024-03-26T15:57:13.443+00:00Comments on On An Overgrown Path: Spanish RecognitionsUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8060605.post-1134418992678242632005-12-12T20:23:00.000+00:002005-12-12T20:23:00.000+00:00Thanks for this post. I am travelling to Spain in ...Thanks for this post. I am travelling to Spain in January, 2006, and while I am getting a lot out of Ms. Settle's book, I have to say that I find it to be very poorly written. The first few chapters were such a mess of competing verb tenses and bad syntax I actually looked at the Acknowledgments to see if anyone had actually edited the thing!<BR/><BR/>That said, she certainly did do her research, and the book improves several chapters in. I love her chapter on Teresa of Avila, and the one on Zamora is a honey.<BR/>May she rest in peace.PeaceBanghttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11431551457505981195noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8060605.post-1129841097836287132005-10-20T21:44:00.000+01:002005-10-20T21:44:00.000+01:00Garth, the quote comes from Nielsen's memoir My Ch...Garth, the quote comes from Nielsen's memoir <I>My Childhood</I> which I have in front of me as I write.<BR/><BR/>I cruelly abbreviated it for practical reasons, but this space gives me the luxury of quoting the whole passage.<BR/><BR/><B>The right of life is stronger than the most sublime art, and even if we reached agreement on the fact that now the best and most beautiful has been achieved, mankind thirsting more for life and adventure than perception, would rise and shout in one voice: Give us something new, indeed for Heaven’s sake give us rather the bad, and let us feel we are still alive, instead of constantly going around in deedless admiration for the conventional.</B><BR/><BR/>Amen to that.Pliablehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10616598845886342325noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8060605.post-1129834861977326642005-10-20T20:01:00.000+01:002005-10-20T20:01:00.000+01:00Ancient Egypt, Ancient Rome, Islamic Iberia, Ancie...Ancient Egypt, Ancient Rome, Islamic Iberia, Ancient America ... Jerusalem in 0 CE, Granada in 1492, Mexico City in 1521, Mohács in 1526, Waterloo in 1814 ... why is it that "popular" television and movies, and serious and semi-popular literature seem so much more educated about, and intellectually involved with, world history than today's "world of classical music" -- a world where composers and librettists once regularly addressed major topics of world history, admittedly often from a simplistic and unsatisfactory viewpoint? I also wonder how many of those in the "world of classical music" know who has won the Nobel Prize for Literature for the past two years?<BR/><BR/>*<BR/><BR/>pliable, while I had heard the quote you begin with, I never knew its author. Now I do. Nor had I ever been aware of the wider literary, historical, and travel interests of this founder of the Pen/Faulkner Award -- of which I am somewhat aware, it being administered from Washington, D.C. and whose events I have attended upon occasion.Garth Trinklhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11084463787729969177noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8060605.post-1129799093323460882005-10-20T10:04:00.000+01:002005-10-20T10:04:00.000+01:00Mary Lee Settle wa a remarkable woman, and some mo...Mary Lee Settle wa a remarkable woman, and some more biographical information may help flesh out the picture.<BR/><BR/>One of her biggest achievements was the establishment of the <A HREF="http://www.penfaulkner.org/about.htm" REL="nofollow">Pen/Faulkner Award for literary fiction</A> which is not judged by the usual panel of grandees, but rather by authors.<BR/><BR/>Mary Lee Settle was committed to encouraging other writers, and taught at Bard College in New York State (where I know there are regular readers of this blog), at the Iowa Writer's Workshop, and the University of Virginia. <BR/><BR/>Writing for <I>Esquire</I> she reported from Vietnam in the late 1960's. Her strong liberal democrat views (which drove the founding of the Pen/Faulkner Award) prompted her to leave the US in 1969 when Richard Nixon was elected president, and she subsequently lived in England and Turkey before returning to the US in 1974.<BR/><BR/>A life very well lived.Pliablehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10616598845886342325noreply@blogger.com