Two R.I.P.s; October’s reading; my children
Two deaths: (1) the wonderful actor Robbie Coltrane; and, in May, (2) the legal, political, and moral philosopher Joseph Raz, whose important but tough-going oeuvre is now helpfully summarized at pp. 148–155 of this year’s Balliol College Annual Record. (Hat tip: Leiter. Included in the piece: an explanation of how the name “Raz” came to be.) I spent most of one semester of graduate school slogging through The Morality of Freedom. It would’ve been nice to have had this memorial essay to start off with.
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I’d intended, this horror season, to try out The Monk by Matthew Lewis; instead, I’m reading Dracula. I’d put it off for a long time. Now, I can report that, unlike Dorian Gray and Jekyll and Hyde, it’s pretty gripping. There’s genuine horror when Count Dracula is on the scene; there’s a lot of (vaguely troubling) hilarity when he’s absent. Karin was the impetus for this reading. She and her friend Nora have been keeping up with the Daily Dracula, a schedule based upon the dates of the letters and diary entries that make up the novel. Karin and Nora began reading in May and have been advancing at a snail’s pace; I’ll finish reading before they will. The story concludes in November.
I learned this amusing tidbit about Stoker:
I also am going to read The Island of Doctor Moreau.
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“Hi, there!” – Daniel’s first words? He seemed to repeat them to me immediately after I said them to him. (I don’t count Da, da, da, da, da – typical infantile babble.)
He crawls now, and he can pull himself up onto his feet and stand against the furniture. He also tries to steal Samuel’s food, although he has trouble eating it with his two teeth. Samuel also has trouble eating his food, due to his intense stubbornness.
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
I’d intended, this horror season, to try out The Monk by Matthew Lewis; instead, I’m reading Dracula. I’d put it off for a long time. Now, I can report that, unlike Dorian Gray and Jekyll and Hyde, it’s pretty gripping. There’s genuine horror when Count Dracula is on the scene; there’s a lot of (vaguely troubling) hilarity when he’s absent. Karin was the impetus for this reading. She and her friend Nora have been keeping up with the Daily Dracula, a schedule based upon the dates of the letters and diary entries that make up the novel. Karin and Nora began reading in May and have been advancing at a snail’s pace; I’ll finish reading before they will. The story concludes in November.
I learned this amusing tidbit about Stoker:
In August 1894, at the end of a month-long stay to research his embryonic novel, Bram Stoker wrote in the visitors’ book at the Kilmarnock Arms on the Aberdeenshire coast that he had been “delighted with everything and everybody” and hoped to return soon. …I got Karin to agree to watch Herzog’s Nosferatu when we have finished reading Dracula. I saw it many years ago. From what I can recall of it, it’s pretty faithful to the book.
The feeling was not entirely mutual. Stoker, a genial Irishman usually known for his cheeriness, was experimenting with what would become known as “method acting” to get under the skin of his new character, one Count Dracula. … The author’s links with the London theatre inspired Stoker to try inhabiting his character in a different way.
According to his wife, Florence, everyone – including the hotel staff, and the locals – was frightened of him. He “seemed to get obsessed by the spirit of the thing,” she later said. He “would sit for hours, like a great bat, perched on the rocks of the shore, or wander alone up and down the sand hills thinking it all out.”
I also am going to read The Island of Doctor Moreau.
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
“Hi, there!” – Daniel’s first words? He seemed to repeat them to me immediately after I said them to him. (I don’t count Da, da, da, da, da – typical infantile babble.)
He crawls now, and he can pull himself up onto his feet and stand against the furniture. He also tries to steal Samuel’s food, although he has trouble eating it with his two teeth. Samuel also has trouble eating his food, due to his intense stubbornness.