tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28676316.post6094345342670862764..comments2024-03-26T08:18:06.895-04:00Comments on Moristotle & Co.: Sunday Review: Harper Lee’s two novelsUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger12125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28676316.post-30331244220610100492015-09-26T09:01:58.094-04:002015-09-26T09:01:58.094-04:00[Posted on Facebook at about midnight last night:]...[<i>Posted on Facebook at about midnight last night:</i>]<br /><br />Sorry I have not responded until now. We have been very busy trying to get our house remodeled, which entails almost moving out without the advantage of having a shiny new place to move into.<br /><br />There were many ways Atticus could have responded, but I feel that he really tried to do a good job of moving people’s attitudes by how he lived. Would boycotting his town’s council have made a stronger statement to his towns folk? Perhaps, but by continuing to keep the dialogue open between both races and trying to understand how both races felt at the time he did some good in moving the townsfolk towards a better understanding of what it was to occupy one another's skin. Some people learned a lot by occupying the polar positions, and it seemed that many in <i>Watchman</i> learned a lot from positions that started much closer to either side of the center. Not so much my style but then I lack most of Atticus’s skills and I didn’t live in a small Southern town. A world apart.<br /><br />Time to sleep, I have painters coming at 8 a.m. I get to sleep late because it is Saturday. These guys need a union….but then they might disagree.Skip Saegernoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28676316.post-81317741916526155042015-09-08T13:17:50.249-04:002015-09-08T13:17:50.249-04:00Bill, I simply love the anecdote about dear Jimmy ...Bill, I simply <i>love</i> the anecdote about dear Jimmy Carter. It's a good one to tell just now, after the recent news that he has brain cancer.Moristotlehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02211602374384087074noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28676316.post-19871292968113354372015-09-08T13:16:38.809-04:002015-09-08T13:16:38.809-04:00I posted (or thought I had posted) two items under...I posted (or thought I had posted) two items under my review of Harper Lee's books. One was a commentary I read in an Op-Ed section of the <i>Los Angeles Times</i> by a writer who's written a book on voting rights as enacted into legislation in the 1960's and the various initiatives since then that have weakened what was created to correct a vast wrong. The writer, whose name I can't recall, wrote admiringly of President Carter and his efforts to utilize the tools given in the legislation to ensure the implementation of the law. He also recalled that Carter, before he held any political office (when he was a peanut farmer and warehouseman in Plains) was asked to join a local White Citizens Council. He refused, saying that he would rather flush $5.00 down the toilet than pay it in dues to join the organization. And this was in the face of a threatened boycott of his business!<br /> Reagan, who followed him, said in a political speech in Texas that he was a believer in states rights. (And we know what those code words mean!).<br /> In <i>Watchman</i>, Atticus and Scout's boyfriend did join the White Citizens Council. This was all on the heels of <i>Brown vs.Board of Education</i>.<br /><br />I also mentioned (in one of the comments that failed to get posted) that the <i>Wall Street Journal</i>'s had taken up <i>To Kill a Mockingbird</i> for its book club.<br /> I'm summarizing what I had to say.William Silveiranoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28676316.post-55205712554767347752015-09-05T16:33:43.884-04:002015-09-05T16:33:43.884-04:00Thanks, Bill. This strikes me as eminently cogent....Thanks, Bill. This strikes me as eminently cogent. And it reminds me of the highly successful corporate campaign to sell religion to American officialdom, in, for example, making "In God we trust" the national motto. I read about this somewhere recently and I think even referred to it in one of the posts. Maybe this was it: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_God_we_trust" rel="nofollow">Wikipedia's article on "In God we trust."</a>Moristotlehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02211602374384087074noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28676316.post-26763103809605774902015-09-05T16:29:02.569-04:002015-09-05T16:29:02.569-04:00Bill, thanks for the reference to 2010 article in ...Bill, thanks for the reference to 2010 article in <i>Harvard Magazine</i>. I haven't read it yet, but I hope to soon. Despite appearances at Costco and elsewhere, it is certainly evident that print publication has suffered.Moristotlehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02211602374384087074noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28676316.post-48513922272813673112015-09-01T20:20:14.195-04:002015-09-01T20:20:14.195-04:00With the political compromise of 1876 the Republic...With the political compromise of 1876 the Republican party conceded control of Southern state politics to the planter class, who maintained power through the creation of American apartheid and the concomitant racial bigotry upon which it rested. The Republican party had become the party of the new plutocrats in making and weren't interested in a continuing battle to right the wrongs of slavery. All of this was aided and abetted of an outpouring of a vast clap trap of revisionist history and fiction painting the image of a by gone Arcadia that the South still revered. The propaganda was successful. You only have to see DW Griffiths, "The Birth of A Nation" (1917) to see how Southern revisionism was still in full swing in the early 20th century. I am sure that this immensely popular film, besides all the saccharine novels of the post civil war era, helped cement the Margaret Mitchel view of history in the American imagination. Old lies die hard And, I think, the bigger they are the harder they are to kill,. Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00088399228671702066noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28676316.post-47528647115246844662015-09-01T20:01:21.130-04:002015-09-01T20:01:21.130-04:00Publishing used to be a staid, old-fashioned busin...Publishing used to be a staid, old-fashioned business. Technology, our beloved system of capitalist financial manipulation, and other factors have contributed to a decline of profitability of many publishing ventures. My thoughts are best summed up in harvardmagazine.com/2010/07/fifteen-percent-of-immortality. Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00088399228671702066noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28676316.post-46190286022579653042015-08-31T14:48:37.386-04:002015-08-31T14:48:37.386-04:00Chuck, if I don't write one first, I look forw...Chuck, if I don't write one first, I look forward to reading YOUR column!Moristotlehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02211602374384087074noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28676316.post-32454190341913773272015-08-31T08:38:28.952-04:002015-08-31T08:38:28.952-04:00Bill, Lynn Saeger comments on Facebook:
Oh dear, ...<i>Bill, Lynn Saeger comments on Facebook:</i><br /><br />Oh dear, Morris. I have not read them [Harper Lee's two novels] as yet but have heard that the recently released Watchman offers up not so much a betrayal as an enriching context. As a slow and chewy reader I am still fighting the French Revolution with Hilary Mantel, taking time off only for the fall of tsarist Russia. My waiting book pile never shrinks!Moristotlehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02211602374384087074noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28676316.post-39997175450921070152015-08-30T17:26:39.970-04:002015-08-30T17:26:39.970-04:00I read the Atlantic article. True, and bad news. ...I read the Atlantic article. True, and bad news. I've found my own book count declining in recent years. A column, someone?Chucknoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28676316.post-26974319168075283512015-08-30T11:45:53.744-04:002015-08-30T11:45:53.744-04:00Bill, another statement made almost in passing bea...Bill, another statement made almost in passing bears further consideration: "It’s ironic that this vastly popular book [Margaret Michell's <i>Gone with the Wind</i>] – and later, movie – could still resonate with the American public, although its literary genre was vastly passé."<br /> For I think it really DID resonate, which raises the question, How <b>could</b> it have resonated, without a wide blindness to reality? And who or what was responsible for that blindness?Moristotlehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02211602374384087074noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28676316.post-46033467151078718412015-08-30T11:27:11.596-04:002015-08-30T11:27:11.596-04:00Bill, your opening sentence might pass most reader...Bill, your opening sentence might pass most readers by without much notice. <b>Is</b> publishing really "suffering from lack of readers"? Whenever I go to Costco, I marvel at the huge piles of books on display, knowing that Costco isn't doing that just to make that section of the store colorful.<br /> However, I don't think you'd make the statement without some evidence (even if you withheld it), and I <b>did</b> find this January 2014 article in <i>The Atlantic</i>: "<a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/01/the-decline-of-the-american-book-lover/283222/" rel="nofollow">The Decline of the American Book Lover</a>," which states, for example: "Without question, the American bookworm is a rarer species than two or three decades ago, when we didn't enjoy today's abundance of highly distracting gadgets. In 1978, Gallup found that 42 percent of adults had read 11 books or more in the past year (13 percent said they'd read more than 50!). Today, Pew finds that just 28 percent hit the 11 mark."<br /> And, though I still read books (both fiction and non-fiction), I do think I read fewer of them, and I rarely don't spend at least one hour an evening before our TV monitor to watch a movie or an episode of a TV serial, usually down-streamed from this provider or that. So many hours to read a book, and so few to watch a movie or TV episode!Moristotlehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02211602374384087074noreply@blogger.com