Whatever slows it down

OK, if you insist that COVID-19 is just like the flu, I could agree if you dropped “just.” It’s like the flu, sort of – but much deadlier and, in all likelihood, more contagious. I’ve seen the COVID-19 mortality rate…

Althusser

Christopher Bray on Louis Althusser: …[S]ince in French “Louis” is pronounced exactly the same as the word for “he”, he had never thought of himself as an individual proper. Not exactly: the diphthongs in lui and Louis are supposed to…

Dehmel

Jonathan Gaisman writes of Verklärte Nacht, Schoenberg’s early work (1899) based on a poem by Richard Dehmel: Looking at the poem on its purely literary merits, it is indeed difficult not to wince, or, at the mention of the man…

Roland Dyens on Brazilian music

Roland Dyens (1955-2016) was a “great and incomparable French guitarist, composer, and arranger,” one of the most important guitarists around the world, due to his interpretations, his compositions, and especially his vision of the instrument and of music overall. He…

“They still sold authenticity”

Dominic Green writes in The Critic: No one seems to have noticed, but the fortieth anniversary of Rock’s death is upon us. You can pick a personal “day the music died”… Sentimentalists might pick the release of the Ramones’ collaboration…

Mangueira 2020

The Guardian reports from Rio de Janeiro and Maranhão: From raperos to roqueiros, a growing chorus of musicians are denouncing the extremist politician [Bolsonaro] and his assault on their trade. Roqueiros broadly means rock musicians. Raperos refers to rappers, obviously,…

Bitter fruit

La Fontaine’s fox, the connoisseur of grapes, was all-French, as it were – “Gascon, some say Norman” – and in keeping with his roots, he preferred wisecracking to whining, which his creator appreciated. American shale oil, sweet as a rule,…

Bad movies

Phil Christman writes in The Hedgehog Review: Some bad movies… reveal through sheer lack of self-awareness the incoherencies and solecisms of the culture that produces them. These sorts of movies fascinate me in the way a too-honest idiot does, after…

Carvalho and Dugin

There’s more in the Guardian piece on Brazilian flat earthers that I quoted in the previous post: …Olavo de Carvalho – a former astrologer who is considered the intellectual guru of Bolsonaro and his inner circle – prompted outrage and…

A complete ban on real-time facial recognition?

In the London Review of Books, John Lanchester reviews The Great Firewall of China: How to Build and Control an Alternative Version of the Internet by James Griffiths and We Have Been Harmonised: Life in China’s Surveillance State by Kai…