Bulletin Board

 

 NEWS FROM INSIDE THE BELLY OF THE BEAST

 

Item:  

I thought I had lost this Blog...  It's title, Prohaska and Me, no longer comes up on my Google search.  Somehow or other, people are still accessing it, but I can't, or couldn't till I tried TonyProhaska.blogspot.com  I've been told I should change the blog's name, but then why was it accessible that way for so long?  

 

*   *

Item: 

I looked up the word Epistemology in response to reading Didier Anzieu*, and noting his usage of the word, as an academic and a clinical psychoanalyst, and his finding that both sides in the Paris 1960s revolution were flailing about in an environment that lacked  basic knowledge.

* The Skin-Ego.    

 

Episteme

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

For other uses, see Episteme ...(disambiguation).   [Ed. < 😏]

In philosophy, episteme (Ancient Greek: ἐπιστήμη, romanized: epistēmē, lit. 'science, knowledge'; French: épistémè) is knowledge or understanding. The term epistemology (the branch of philosophy concerning knowledge) is derived from episteme.

History

Personification of Episteme in Celsus Library in Ephesus, Turkey.    (.....appears not to have a head.)

Plato

See also: Platonic epistemology

Plato, following Xenophanes, contrasts episteme with doxa: common belief or opinion.^[1] The term episteme is also distinguished from techne: a craft or applied practice.^[2] In the Protagoras, Plato's Socrates notes that nous and episteme are prerequisite's requisite for prudence (phronesis).

Aristotle

Aristotle distinguished between five virtues of thought: technê, epistêmê, phronêsis, sophia, and nous, with techne translating as "craft" or "art" and episteme as "knowledge".^[3] A full account of epistêmê is given in Posterior Analytics, where Aristotle argues that knowledge of necessary, rather than contingent truths regarding causation is foundational for episteme. To emphasize the necessity, he uses geometry. Notably, Aristotle uses the notion of cause (aitia) in a broader sense than contemporary thought. For example, understanding how geometrical axioms lead to a theorem about properties of triangles counts as understanding the cause of the proven property of the right triangle. As a result, episteme is a virtue of thought that deals with what cannot be otherwise, while techne and phronesis deal with what is contingent.^[4][5]

 

Contemporary interpretations -

Michel Foucault

For Foucault, an episteme is the guiding unconsciousness of subjectivity within a given epoch – subjective parameters which form an historical a priori.^[6] He uses the term épistémè in his The Order of Things, in a specialized sense to mean the historical, non-temporal, a priori knowledge that grounds truth and discourses, thus representing the condition of their possibility within a particular epoch. In the book, Foucault describes épistémè:^[7]

In any given culture and at any given moment, there is always only one episteme that defines the conditions of possibility of all knowledge, whether expressed in a theory or silently invested in a practice.

In subsequent writings, he makes it clear that several épistémè may co-exist and interact at the same time, being parts of various power-knowledge systems.^[8] Foucault attempts to demonstrate the constitutive limits of discourse, and in particular, the rules enabling their productivity; however, Foucault maintains that, though ideology may infiltrate and form science, it need not do so: it must be demonstrated how ideology actually forms the science in question; contradictions and lack of objectivity is not an indicator of ideology.^{[9] [10][11]} Jean Piaget has compared Foucault's use of épistémè with Thomas Kuhn's notion of a paradigm.^[12]

 

 

The Latest from a Newly Hatched Octogenarian

 

I was going to call this post an Annual Report. I've done several Annual or Semi-Annual Reports in this medium and they have been very successful if I do say so myself. And I say so myself because no-one else has bothered to comment.  

Except for Judith B. - who is a good and loyal friend of the writer.  And Lucinda, also a good and loyal friend who I've mentioned before, specifically, in my article about Volcanoes and Anarchists, or whatever it was called; which seems by the way, to have laid a big egg, since only two people have bothered to look at it in the past year or however long it's been up. What is it that is not fascinating about that article? Or, why am I the only one so fascinated? Will someone please tell me? I mean, OK, it's going to hurt my feelings. BFD.   

 Anyway it looks at this point, (note the time), [Started this in mid-Jan., dropped it until now, end of Feb.] as if this is going to be more of a 'midnight ramble", not that it's now midnight, but I will probably go on rambling into the 'off' hours, as they say.  

 

Martha aka Mickey and I have been successful in avoiding Covid, so far. ...I, however, have picked up a real nasty disease. No, it's not something sexually transmitted; not transmitted by anyone, expect those people responsible for giving me my own particular crap-shoot of genetic miracle glue, which would be the race of mankind.  

It happened like this: Several years ago, as a result of some nervous tension caused by two simultaneous stressors, one being that a good friend died; which left me sad and finding that feeling difficult to process; and the other being that I had committed myself to going to a book fair, to promote my book, The White Fence.  I came down with Hives. Just on one arm, the right. Which I scratched, ...and scratched ...and next thing you know I had a staph infection, doncha know.*  So I went to the V.A. Hospital* 

That was the first time I saw snappy-dresser Dr. Last. He had with him a very attractive female resident. They both seemed nice enough. He prescribed an antibiotic, which didn't do much good. I then, several weeks later, called for another 'Derm' appointment and got a nurse who over the phone prescribed me some salve, which did nothing, and then further down the line I applied again, it was during Covid, and I had a Zoom appointment, (video over the computer), with Dr. Last, who prescribed a stronger salve, and over the next year he prescribed a growing number of ointments, creams and emollients, which I never used with the religiosity necessary for the effect, which was supposed to be to ease the itch until the disease went away of its own accord.  At one point, I saw another Derm Dr., a woman, a Trinidadian, who biopsied me and got a report that I had something called "Grover's" disease.  She gave me a new ointment, salve, or cream, call it what you will. ....Again, I didn't use it as suggested, instead went days not putting it on; all of it is greasy; all of it dries and then just adds to the itch. Finally, now we're in year four, back with Dr. Last, and he says I have Arthritic Psoriasis. There is no cure; we can only hope that it goes away of it's own accord, which it should do in no more than a year. ...The year went by.

  It was getting worse.  I Googled the hell out of it; and decided, to me it was obvious, that I had Generalized Pustular Psoriasis. My back had a big patch of Erythema, and my entire body was covered with pustules; something between a pimple and a boil. I was feverish and was having chills. I called Last and told him I was desperate; and he gave me an appointment the next day.  

TO HERE!                (To here signifies a pause of days, weeks, months, etc.)

 

Emailed Dr. Last with photos of my body. ...[Cute👨....]  ...I was told to stop the Otezla, [We are fast-forwarding past where the good Dr. decided I was ready for the expensive stuff and first put me on Humira, which seemed like it wasn't working after a couple of months, and then Otezla, which is where we are as I speak, here..]  and to come in that day.  I was seen by Resident Henehan and Dr. Last.  Last still insisted it was Arthritic Psoriasis. ...at his office I had no temperature and the chills had gone away..., but in my desperation I was snarky, and began to be argumentative with the good doctor and his intern, (young Dr. Kildare). They could see that I had been "picking" at the pustules, and both agreed that that was why I wasn't getting better. 

I decided they were frauds. I fantasized that they had met in a penitentiary and cooked up the idea of pretending to be doctors. (I was getting a little nutsy). When I told Dr. Last that  "if I have to live with this for the forseeable future, I might just take “the pill.” he considered that sufficient for a diagnosis of "Suicidal Ideation", and he called for the VA Police. In no time at all, (their office is just downstairs), two fully armed policemen were there. I was informed I was being "Baker Acted". Baker Acting is a Florida thing, where anyone can have anyone committed for a variety of reasons, ...in this case it meant I would spend the night in the psych ward. But first, they took me to the ER for blood tests to make sure I wasn’t "on something.”

 I was fortunate to meet Dr Nisenbaum who was very sympathetic to my condition. He gave me a shot of steroid and sent me home with a prescription for 7 days of Cortisone, 20mg 3 times a day.  The steroids eased the itch and for the first time in a long time I was able to sleep through the night; except that, after a few nights I began to have insomnia, every other night.  Weird.  .  And, after I ran out of the Cortisone, the itch resumed its unbearable level of intensity. 

 

Another day:

It's now February 26, 2023, and I've been eighty years old for two months. (Emotionally 17yr. and six months.) I'm seeing a VA psychiatrist. A nice old guy from NYC. He says my skin-picking disorder is the most serious thing I have, that it'll kill me; some psoriasis gunk will get into my gall bladder and I'll get sepsis. He seems serious; is treating me for the disorder, all of which is too upsetting; I can't go on telling you about this.  

 

.....My sister is coming next week to observe my misery, and take us out for some 'Foody' food, which will cure our Socio-Economic short-comings.  

....I've talked to God; He says I must "Be Strong!"  Easy for him to say! (OK, I suppose I'm off with the pronouns....  ...I'm eighty. What do you expect!)   

______________________

*Doncha know is a 'Millerism", as in Henry Miller. I love that guy.   

* My health plan of choice; details on request.  

 

 

 

Flotsam and Jetsam Covid and Post-Covid

                                            Fair Emelye gathering flowers. Stephen Haweis*
 

This post should probably still be in Drafts, (very short,) but I haven't published anything in a long time so please think of it as an Update in Progress....

                         * *

Still in isolation. I suppose you could call it Covid-related but it's more than that. Much more. I have withdrawn from life. It has always been a natural tendency but now it is a fully realized thing. A reality. From virtual to real. (That's Bergson influenced.) 

                                                    *

Isolationist perusing: Elizabeth Kaye in Tibet; and etc. (see Goodreads); then back to perusing; Bergson....length and tedium of....there is the tedium of chapter lengths but that's really not tedium but an annoyance with my attention span limitations due in fact to lazyness, escapism, etc;  then, the continual perusal of Sharon Olds, the Diamond Sutra, and a textual reading of Barthelme's Snow White; is it homeopathic? (as opposed to homophobic..) etc.   

........at least, I keep everydayness at bay.   

                                                  *

 Dot..., Dot..., Dot...,   (As Sylvester always said, for those of you who aren't familiar with my oeurve.) 

As the Covid International Emergency was developing, so was a nervous disorder which I attributed, probably rightly, to stress, [starts out with a Hives breakout] but which it turns out is also genetic, ...[developing]. And boy, how it has developed. The story is long and not attractive and the condition is also quite uncomfortable. I refer to my presently still galloping case of Psoriasis. Just in case you were thinking of coming to Florida to gaze fondly at my skin.   

                                                

 *

 

 Mercury in Retrograde

On second thought, Mercury seems to be in retrograde all the fucking time, so let's just scratch that. (...but not my skin!) Earlier today, (9/17/22), I saw somewhere on a news crawl that it and three planets are in retrograde all at the same time. What kind of Universe is that?  Infinite, I guess. (My Capricorn sun sign has three planets in Capricorn.)  Not that I believe any of that...oh well, you know.  

 

...imagined titles for someone's future fiction or non-fiction; (so far, just non-fiction, but you can change that), an open list: 

Where the Poo Comes Out

Otto Gross, 'The Prince of Bohemia'  

Lenin's Love of the Middle Classes  

A Brass Ring to Privilege, the Fictive Hamptons 

Cancel Culture as Performance Art 

More Cancel Culture as Performance Art

How to Cancel your Mother  

Psychical Corporiality, Susan Sontag, and your Mother

Etc.  .....(All above, below, and everywhere, copyrighted by me, natch.)  

                                              *

Pre-Columbian Flat Affect  Notes for a future post...

I'll be using Charles C. Mann's book, titled 1491, as metaphor, in a way, I guess; trying to draw some sort of parallel to his retelling of the European settlement of the Western Hemisphere, sometimes referred to Western Civilization's genocide of those Mongols who were the pedestrians who walked across the Bering Land Bridge before global warming turned it into the Bering Strait. 

"The Russians are coming," sort of thing, Only, with Columbus it was "The Spanish; ...and the Italians, ...are coming".  ...It kept happening, Scots-Irish mixing with Cherokee in Appalachia, German-Jewish cattlemen mixing with Vaqueroes in Mexican Texas........[Should I go on?]      

                                             * 

A Trip up Creeley's Creek

Here is where I remind myself that I once helped out at a Robert Creeley reading at The Guild Hall of East Hampton, (N.Y.) ...by putting up the folding chairs. The Director of the event was my friend, poet and editor Hope Harris. I got to witness the excitement had by the mostly female audience of poets and readers. Then, at some forgotten time in what was then the future I noticed that he had been involved with a poetry and pictures book, pictures by one of my favorite artists of a certain late twentieth century period, Susan Rothenberg. So I suppose let us have this section [assuming it will be fleshed out] be a list of resentments, thoughts, and cracks that further expose my already bared soul.  

Creeley had real matinee idol cachet in that rarefied world of poetry. Here's a few of possible books about him. 

Throwing things that stick. 

Creeley's Remuda 

Creeley's Hill to Die On.

                                                       *

  

Don't have Google Panic, Just Do it!  

[So I googled...] Intertextuality is the shaping of a text's meaning by another text, either through deliberate compositional strategies such as quotation, allusion, calque, plagiarism, translation, pastiche or parody,^{[1][2][3][4][5]} or by interconnections between similar or related works perceived by an audience or reader of the text.^[6] These references are sometimes made deliberately and depend on a reader's prior knowledge and understanding of the referent, but the effect of intertextuality is not always intentional and is sometimes inadvertent. Often associated with strategies employed by writers working in imaginative registers (fiction, poetry, and drama and even non-written texts like performance art and digital media),^[7][8] intertextuality is now understood to be intrinsic to any text.^[9]

Intertextuality has been differentiated into referential and typological categories. Referential intertextuality refers to the use of fragments in texts and the typological intertextuality refers to the use of pattern and structure in typical texts.^[10] A distinction can also be made between iterability and presupposition. Iterability makes reference to the "repeatability" of certain text that is composed of "traces", pieces of other texts that help constitute its meaning. Presupposition makes a reference to assumptions a text makes about its readers and its context.^[11] As philosopher William Irwin wrote, the term "has come to have almost as many meanings as users, from those faithful to Julia Kristeva's original vision to those who simply use it as a stylish way of talking about allusion and influence".^[12]

                                                         ^*

 ^{Yet more future possible projects;}   

1. A book or booklet, (bookette?)  entitled  How to Draw a Kreplach.  By me.  

(I'll explain the above at the appropriate time.)  

2. Article; (Paris Review?)  (The Nation?)  'How the word 'surreal' conquered the vernacular.'

   

*Stephen Haweis was the first husband of Mina Loy; more to come, eventually. (Severe work slowdown.) 

 

 

 

 

Reading Bergson, Part l

              AN ON-GOING REPORT 

 [Subject to change: ie; work in progress]  

 

Reading Bergson-

1. The plan: It being a difficult project, I won't force myself to completely wrap my mind around it, [the project], in one try.  If I feel like I "get it", even just a little bit, I'll go on. I'm assuming, in terms of my attention to Bergson, that everything he wrote requires more than one or two reads. I will hope that my brain can build on its understanding. How many readings is up to my brain and its future, and is not knowable at this time. (Will I be Straussian; or Bloomian?) 

2. Chapters and paragraphs are long. very long; need to resist the impulse to flip pages forward to see; "How long does this go on?"  

 

Process philosophy- 

From Wikipedia;  Process philosophy, also ontology of becoming, or processism,[1] is an approach to philosophy that identifies processes, changes, or shifting relationships as the only true elements of the ordinary, everyday real world. It treats other real elements (examples: enduring physical objects, thoughts) as abstractions from, or ontological dependents on, processes. In opposition to the classical view of change as illusory (as argued by Parmenides) or accidental (as argued by Aristotle), process philosophy posits transient occasions of change or becoming as the only fundamental things of the ordinary everyday real world.

Since the time of Plato and Aristotle, classical ontology has posited ordinary world reality as constituted of enduring substances, to which transient processes are ontologically subordinate, if they are not denied. If Socrates changes, becoming sick, Socrates is still the same (the substance of Socrates being the same), and change (his sickness) only glides over his substance: change is accidental, and devoid of primary reality, whereas the substance is essential.

Philosophers who appeal to process rather than substance include Heraclitus, Friedrich Nietzsche, Henri Bergson, Martin Heidegger, Charles Sanders Peirce, William James, Alfred North Whitehead, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Thomas Nail, Alfred Korzybski, R. G. Collingwood, Alan Watts, Robert M. Pirsig, Roberto Mangabeira Unger, Charles Hartshorne, Arran Gare, Nicholas Rescher, Colin Wilson, Tim Ingold, Bruno Latour, William E. Connolly, and Gilles Deleuze. In physics, Ilya Prigogine[2] distinguishes between the "physics of being" and the "physics of becoming". Process philosophy covers not just scientific intuitions and experiences, but can be used as a conceptual bridge to facilitate discussions among religion, philosophy, and science.[3][4][original research?]

Process philosophy is sometimes classified as closer to Continental philosophy than analytic philosophy, because it is usually only taught in Continental departments.[5] However, other sources state that process philosophy should be placed somewhere in the middle between the poles of analytic versus Continental methods in contemporary philosophy.[6][7]
 

Notes:  P. 219 - ......Consciousness Beyond the Body, 2016 Melbourne Centre for Exceptional Human Potential, Aus; edited by Alexander De Foe; coincides with p. 162, Bergson, Time and Free Will. 

 

Matter and Memory

Feel like I grasped the essentials to some extent; is that kind of vague?  Yep...  Next, I went to Wikipedia and here I'll print the first part of what they say: 

(French: Matière et mémoire, 1896) is a book by the French philosopher Henri Bergson. Its subtitle is Essay on the relation of body and spirit (Essai sur la relation du corps à l’esprit), and the work presents an analysis of the classical philosophical problems concerning this relation. Within that frame, the analysis of memory serves the purpose of clarifying the problem.

Matter and Memory was written in reaction to the book The Maladies of Memory by Théodule Ribot, which appeared in 1881. Ribot claimed that the findings of brain science proved that memory is lodged within a particular part of the nervous system; localized within the brain and thus being of a material nature. Bergson was opposed to this reduction of spirit to matter. Defending a clear anti-reductionist position, he considered memory to be of a deeply spiritual nature, the brain serving the need of orienting present action by inserting relevant memories. The brain thus being of a practical nature, certain lesions tend to perturb this practical function, but without erasing memory as such. The memories are, instead, simply not 'incarnated,' and cannot serve their purpose.

(I wonder if that means alcoholic blackouts might be accessible in the spirit world? Bergson manages to keep such questions behind a door kept only slightly ajar. Awfully well done, Henri.)  


Time and Free Will      

Sensations as magnitudes- 

Location 8568 Kindle:  "Psychophysics merely pushes to its extreme consequences the fundamental but natural mistake of regarding sensations as magnitudes. In truth, psychophysics merely formulates with precision and pushes to its extreme consequences a conception familiar to common sense. As speech dominates over thought, as external objects, which are common to us all, are more important to us than the subjective states through which each of us passes, we have everything to gain by objectifying these states, by introducing into them, to the largest possible extent, the representation of their external cause. And the more our knowledge increases, the more we perceive the extensive behind the intensive, quantity behind quality, the more also we tend to thrust the former into the latter, and to treat our sensations as magnitudes. ..."

 
Subjective and Objective numbers- 

Location 8739: "The unit is irreducible while we are thinking it and number is discontinuous while we are building it up: but, as soon as we consider number in its finished state, we objectify it, and it then appears to be divisible to an unlimited extent.  In fact, we apply the term subjective  to what seems to be completely and adequately known, and the term objective  to what is known in such a way that a constantly increasing number of new impressions could be substituted for the idea which we actually have of it." .....


Qualitative and Quantitative-

Location 8955:  "Pure duration is wholly qualitative.  It cannot be measured unless symbolically represented in space."  

 

Laughter; an essay on the meaning of comic

Chapter l.  Page 446 of 747 . 59%

Location  "To sum up, whatever be the doctrine to which our reason assents, our imagination has a very clear-cut philosophy of its own: in every human form it sees the effort of a soul which is shaping matter, a soul which is infinitely supple and perpetually in motion, subject to no law of gravitation, for it is not the earth that attracts it.  this soul imparts a portion of its winged lightness to the body it animates: the immateriality which thus passes into matter is what is called gracefulness. Matter, however, is obstinate and resists. It draws to itself the ever-alert activity of this higher principle, would fain convert it to its own inertia and cause it to revert to mere automatism. It would fain immobilise the intelligently varied movements of the body in stupidly contracted grooves, stereotype in permanent grimaces the fleeting expressions of the face, in short imprint on the whole person such an attitude as to make it appear immersed and absorbed in the materiality of some mechanical occupation instead of ceaselessly renewing its vitality by keeping in touch with a living ideal.  Where matter thus succeeds in dulling the outward life of the soul, in petrifying its movements and thwarting its gracefulness, it achieves, at the expense of the body, an effect that is comic. If, then, at this point we wished to define the comic by comparing it with its contrary, we should have to contrast it with gracefulness even more than with beauty. It partakes rather of the unsprightly than of the unsightly, of RIGIDNESS rather than of UGLINESS."

 

Chapter 1.  Page 459 of 747 . 61%   ...on Kindle.  

......"Where did the comic come from in this case? It came from the fact that the living body became rigid, like a machine.  Accordingly, it seemed to us that the living body ought to be the perfection of suppleness, the ever-alert activity of a principle always at work. but this activity would really belong to the soul rather than to the body.  It would be the very flame of life, kindled within us by a high principle and perceived through the body, as if through a glass. When we see only gracefulness and suppleness in the living body, it is because we disregard in it the elements of weight, of resistance, and, in a word, of matter; we forget its materiality and think only of its vitality, a vitality which we regard as derived from the very principle of intellectual and moral life.  Let us suppose, however, that our attention is drawn to this material side of the body; that, so far from sharing in the lightness and sublety of the principle with which it is animated, the body is no more in our eyes than a heavy and cumbersome vesture, a kind of irksome ballast which golds down to earth a soul eager to rise aloft.  Then the body will become to the soul what, as we have seen, the garment was to the body itself- inert matter dumped down upon living energy." ......

 

Chapter 3, (Caricatures)  p. 446 .  %59. kindle.  

  ...."To sum up, whatever be the doctrine to which our reason assents, our imagination as a very clear-cut philosophy of its own: in every human form it sees the effort of a soul which is shaping matter, a soul which is infinitely supple and perpetually in motion, subject to no law of gravitation, for it is not the earth that attracts it. This soul imparts a portion of its winged lightness to the body it animates: the immateriality which thus passes into matter is what is called gracefulness. Matter, however, is obstinate and resists.  It draws to itself the ever-alert activity of this higher principle, would fain convert it to its own inertia and cause it to revert to mere automatism. It would fain immobilise the intelligently varied movements of the body in stupidly contracted grooves, stereotype in permanent grimaces the fleeting expressions of the face, in short imprint on the whole person such an attitude as to make it appear immersed and absorbed in the materiality of some mechanical occupation instead of ceaselessly renewing its vitality by keeping in touch with a living ideal.  Where matter thus succeeds in dulling the outward life of the soul, in petrifying its movements and thwarting its gracefulness, it achieves, at the expense of the body, an effect that is comic.  If then, at this point we wished to define the comic by comparing it with its contrary, we should have to contrast it with gracefulness even more than with beauty. It partakes rather of the unsprightly than of the unsightly, of RIGIDNESS rather than of UGLINESS.   To be continued...

Peyton Place

Peyton Place

I just did something shameful. Well, at least at an earlier time in my life I would have thought it shameful. In adolescence I probably felt both fear and guilt when I read ‘the dirty parts’, but for years, even decades, after that, I would have avoided the book because I would have considered it, being a slave to the conventional wisdom, too lowbrow for my high-toned taste. But now, one month before my 79^th birthday, in the age of Biden, when nothing matters any more, I’ve done it. I just read Peyton Place.  

But why Peyton Place?  Why Grace Metalious?  I suppose I could say that it has to do with my autodidact program. That is after all part of the reason for this blog; it fits the kind of autodidactism I’m into. There’s the thing about high-brow versus lowbrow. I’ve been discussing that, and do find it interesting, for many reasons not just the one about illustration vs. fine art, which, if I haven’t already, I intend to milk to death. 

And, along with that comes ‘the novel’. The novel, as far back as I can go, has always been art. That, I’m sure it goes without saying, implies certain parameters as in middlebrow, highbrow. Lowbrow literature being something else; most likely shelved somewhere along with porn and gothic romance. 

So I’m already comfortable with the idea of the novel being art, and I’ve done my share of art appreciation in that vein, as well as consumed my share of literary criticism. At the moment that would be Lachman on Colin Wilson; Connolly on Ian Fleming.    

 Before I met my wife and settled down I had more than a few girlfriends. I loved them all. There were no exceptions. Or, there were different reasons for loving. Each one was the best of all possible worlds in her way. Stop me if you've heard this one. Oh, you have? Well then. One more thing and then I'll drop it: They all thought that they had good taste.  

I don't think I ever said once, to any of them, or to any human being, period; that if they had good taste I would know it because mine is better. But, I'm sure I thought it; every time. I was born a critic. I honed my skills before I could walk. (I talked before I walked).

Leaving aside whether I'd ever read Peyton Place before; I think I looked for the dirty parts, sixty some-odd years ago, but I just finished giving it a good solid read yesterday and I found it quite enjoyable. Oh, and it does seem to me that the original publication did plant a seed in my young mind about lifting the roof off a small town like Amagansett, NY circa 1955. I already knew enough about the hidden life of its inhabitants, from rumors and gossip and the occasional slip of the tongue; it was Peyton Place all over again. And through my young years as I leafed through the Saturday Evening Post and The New Yorker and read Cheever and John O'Hara and Styron and J.D. Salinger, expecting tons of supposed "real life", I remember on many occasions thinking I'd caught wind of the faint whiff of Spic n' Span.

I have to say, especially as I'm in the middle of reading Gary Lachman deconstruct my old favorite Henry Miller,* that there are usually good reasons for leaving out the more prurient items; number one probably being that it can throw off the sensibility of the reader, he/her thinking that the whole book was about the one blow job. [Exc. Fr.]

But I'll say it again. I thought it was a pretty damn good book! Middlebrow? O.K. sure why not. I'm not a fanatic anyway, for Christs-sake. (Merry Christmas.)  

I don't remember the movie, so just to make it easy for us, let's go to the Show Biz Newspaper:     

Variety   Dec. 31, 1956  

In leaning backwards not to offend, producer and writer have gone acrobatic.

On the screen is not the unpleasant sex-secret little town against which Grace Metalious set her story. These aren’t the gossiping, spiteful, immoral people she portrayed. There are hints of this in the film, but only hints.

Under Mark Robson’s direction, every one of the performers delivers a topnotch portrayal. Performance of Diane Varsi particularly is standout as the rebellious teenager Allison, eager to learn about life and numbed by the discovery that she is an illegitimate child. Also in top form in a difficult role is Hope Lange, stepdaughter of the school’s drunken caretaker. As Varsi’s mother, Lana Turner looks elegant and registers strongly.

Lee Philips is another new face as Michael Rossi, the school principal who courts the reluctant Turner. Pleasant looking, Philips has a voice that is at times high and nasal. Opposite Varsi, Russ Tamblyn plays Norman Page, the mama’s boy, with much intelligence and appealing simplicity.

 Robson’s direction is unhurried, taking best advantage of the little town of Camden, Me, where most of the film was shot.

1957: Nominations: Best Picture, Director, Actress (Lana Turner), Supp. Actor (Arthur Kennedy, Russ Tamblyn), Supp. Actress (Hope Lange, Diana Varsi). 

Production: 20th Century-Fox. Director Mark Robson; Producer Jerry Wald; Screenplay John Michael Hayes; Camera William Mellor; Editor David Bretherton; Music Franz Waxman.

Crew: (Color) Widescreen. Available on VHS. Running time: 166 MIN.

With: Lana Turner, Hope Lange, Lee Philips, Lloyd Nolan, Arthur Kennedy, Russ Tamblyn.

 Camden Maine! Wow, maybe I will see it, just to see Camden in 1956. Camden was where the Saturday Evening Post brass and owner-family summered. (Great tennis sweaters!)  

 

*Lachman > Miller;  Gary Lachman; Two Essays on Colin Wilson: World Rejection and Criminal Romantics and From Outsider to Post-Tragic Man.  [Colin Wilson Studies #6]