B List: between books
C List: Perlstein--Invisible Bridge...………………………….530/810
For the A list I am actually trying to translate a few pages of The Republic. When I began this list 25 years ago there was a provision, the idea being that I would eventually learn all of the major European literary languages, that specially excerpted passages within the test would be subjected to a second reading in the original language of the author. As is often the case, after starting out I'll say all right, I have gotten weary and am just plowing through the phrases and tenses that are completely unrecognizable to me. In Greek my remembered vocabulary just is not big enough at this point to do a passable job on this, I have to look up almost every other word, and I never mastered all of the little enclitics and other small common words. Yet since I did once study it and still have all of the lexicons and grammars, I feel obligated whenever it comes up to go through the motions of trying to read it. I also do this for (in declining order of reading competence) French, German, Norwegian/Swedish, Italian, Latin, and Spanish books that come up. I have given up trying to read anything in Russian and Hebrew, in which tongues I have no foundation whatsoever, nor any Asian language that may chance to come up--a handful of Chinese and Arabic poems have appeared on the list. It is admittedly for the most part a pointless exercise.
I am working on my next report for the B-list.
There is still some interesting stuff in the Perlstein but I'm not sure it needs to be as long as it is. There is a real book in there, and perhaps this is a matter of where the author's true understanding or expertise lies, but a good deal of the information thrown at the reader in this book seems tangential and doesn't hit the mark. One thing I am stunned by in recent pages was how inept security was at the highest levels of government in 1975 compared to how fanatical and thorough everyone with anything to protect is about it now. While having two potential gun-toting assassins get within point blank range of Gerald Ford, who was the president at the time, within the span of a couple of weeks, is crazy enough, my favorite story is the one about how the presidential limousine crashed into a teenager driving a Buick at an intersection in Connecticut because the Secret Service people "forgot to close the road off." People's brains were evidently not focused on extreme policing, at least in everyday life, in that era. It doesn't seem now like such a terribly hard thing to get a grasp on.
I am a little distracted right now because I have two old cars, both of which should be replaced but I am going to try to get away with replacing just one at the moment. As somebody on the internet might say, and in fact just said today, perhaps I should worry about doing something to stand up to the United States government in the name of all the people it is continually raining death on and keeping in disgraceful poverty around the world instead of thinking about acquiring another environment-destroying machine to transport unconscionable quantities of meat around in. Can you imagine what everyone would say if I suddenly stopped being me and became an impassioned activist?
I haven't been overseas in 18 years. I would like to go somewhere. Nice and the Riviera, I have got into my mind as being a good trip. Crowded, but I've never been there and there is plenty to do. I spent half an hour trying to find a picture but I couldn't find quite the thing I wanted so I am giving up.
No comments:
Post a Comment