Saturday Links
William F. Buckley’s travel writing, the most charming Stoic, Langston Hughes’s children’s book, and more.
Good morning. There is a lot of interesting reading out there this weekend, so let’s get to it, starting with John J. Miller’s review of William F. Buckley Jr.’s travel writing:
William F. Buckley Jr.’s father once sent a note to his son’s future father-in-law: “You will find it very easy to entertain Bill when he visits you. You need only provide him with a horse, a yacht, or an airplane.”
Buckley never became an avid equestrian, and there’s barely a mention of horses in Getting About, a new collection of his travel writings. Yet there’s plenty on sailing and flying. The first was a great love of Buckley’s, and the second a great necessity. In boats, he raced to Bermuda, cruised the Caribbean, and crossed oceans. Below water and in a submersible, he plunged to “a part of the planet heretofore thought totally inaccessible,” where he became one of the first and only people to see the sunken Titanic. He also skied in Switzerland and Utah, rode the Orient Express and the Trans-Siberian Railway, and zipped around the world by Concorde, flying 39,000 miles in 23 days and producing ten columns from far-flung outposts such as Tahiti, Sri Lanka, and Kenya. Getting About, containing more than a hundred entries and edited by Bill Meehan, recounts a life in constant motion: “I sometimes wake up at home and find myself reaching sleepily for the flight attendant’s button,” wrote Buckley in 1994.
Victoria Smith wonders when women can let themselves go: “I was reminded of this false association between female liberation and lightness when reading about Martha Stewart, who at the age of 81 has become Sports Illustrated’s oldest ever cover star. This has, inevitably, triggered one of those ‘debates’ in which feminists consider whether sexy self-objectification is in fact empowering, providing everyone’s allowed a go. Or does it just mean that we’re never, ever off the hook? Perhaps unsurprisingly, I veer towards the latter viewpoint. If one older woman can, at a pinch, be included in a value system which is geared towards the exclusion of older women in general, it does not strike me as a win so much as a fig leaf. Youth is still being celebrated; we are invited to admire Martha Stewart because she does not look her age.”
In addition to everything else the Romans brought to Britain, it appears they also brought hair removal: “‘From painful waxes to irritating shaves, we can trace the modern obsession with hair removal back to the Romans,’ it said as it put on display objects at a revamped museum opening to the public on Thursday. More than 400 objects will be at Wroxeter Roman City in Shropshire, including items that shine light on bathing and beauty practices in Roman Britain. They include tweezers used to remove the unwanted body hair of men and women.”
Speaking of Roman Britain, Danny Bate explains what British Latin may have sounded like: “Welsh words allow us to paint a complex picture of the Latin that was once spoken in southern Britain. Through its considerable contact with that Latin, Welsh has preserved something of its shape for us today, like an echo. What we see in that shape is a variety of Late Latin in Britain that was very much integrated into the wider Roman linguistic world in its sounds, its vocabulary, even its morphology. British Latin in 450 AD would have sounded barely distinguishable from the Latin over the water. Perhaps it may have seemed somewhat phonetically old-fashioned to someone from Italy, since certain sound changes don’t appear to have reached Britain’s shores.”
The draft of Langston Hughes’s unpublished children’s book goes on display in Ohio.
Ancient books damaged in floods in Italy are frozen: “Volunteers have been transporting the books and other precious documents, which became submerged in water and mud in flooded libraries in the worst-affected areas, to Cesena, where the items will be placed on shelves in temperatures of -25C in industrial-size freezers provided by Orogel, a company that specialises in frozen food. ‘We usually use this process for ripe fruit and vegetables within three hours of harvesting, but I never expected this rapid procedure could also be useful for our literary heritage,’ the company’s president, Bruno Piraccini, told Ansa news agency. ‘I received this surprising request from the library of Forlì and we are happily reorganising space in our warehouse.’”
Poem: Robert Crawford, “Glossary”
Emily Wilson on the most charming Stoic:
Epictetus was a teacher not a writer. His life’s work was to free his students and interlocutors from false beliefs and the tyranny of passion. He had no interest in philosophical originality or in crafting elegant sentences that would preserve his name for ever, and his version of Stoicism didn’t concentrate on technical debates about logic, physics or metaphysics (core subjects for other Stoic thinkers). He spent his days talking to people. But one of his many students, Arrian (famous also for his account of the eastern campaigns of Alexander the Great), wrote what he described as a verbatim record of Epictetus’ teaching, in four books, known as the Discourses. He also wrote a separate summary of it, known as the Handbook.
A short, accessible pamphlet, the Handbook (Encheiridion in Greek) has been the more popular and widely read of the two texts and can readily serve as a very short introduction to Stoicism. But you need to read the more expansive Discourses to understand the charm of Epictetus’ version of the philosophy, which depends not on the regurgitation of Stoic doctrine but on the vigorous, humane and often funny interaction of the teacher with his students, and his insights into the concerns that impede their philosophical progress. Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations were written by a misanthropic, warmongering emperor for his own edification, but Epictetus’ kindness to his needy, self-pitying students is legible on the page. The Discourses are not easy to read straight through because there is no real structure or development, but they’re wonderful to dip into.
Adam Kirsch on Hans Pfitzner: “When Hans Pfitzner’s opera Palestrina premiered in Munich in June 1917, it found an enthusiastic admirer in Thomas Mann. ‘Quickly I made this difficult and audacious production into my own, my intimate possession,’ Mann said in Reflections of a Nonpolitical Man (1918), the nonfiction book he spent most of World War I writing. ‘Its appearance at this moment brought me the consolation and blessing of complete sympathy.’ Before the year was out, he saw the opera performed five times.”
About that mansion under the Bay Bridge: “As tens of thousands of drivers zip — or sometimes crawl — over the Bay Bridge every day, a forgotten mansion rests directly below them. The three-story white home, impossible to see from the bridge, was once the last residence of America’s greatest modern admiral.”
Low Life columnist Jeremy Clarke has died. He was 73. David Goodhart writes a touching tribute in The Spectator, which has also republished some of his best lines from his much-loved column.
Forthcoming: Robert Garnett, Taking Things Hard: The Trials of F. Scott Fitzgerald (LSU, June 14): “F. Scott Fitzgerald published America’s favorite novel, The Great Gatsby, at the young age of twenty-eight. Despite this extraordinary early achievement, Fitzgerald finished just one novel in the next (and last) fifteen years of his life, ending as a mostly unemployed Hollywood screenwriter. Taking Things Hard reveals the story behind the now-iconic Gatsby, along with Fitzgerald’s struggle to write anything that matched its brilliance.”