David Lynch and Isabella Rossellini

David Lynch & Isabella Rossellini photographed by Helmut Newton in 1988. After filming Blue Velvet, the two would be a couple until 1991.

-- Tumblr

David Lynch and Isabella Rossellini

David Lynch & Isabella Rossellini photographed by Helmut Newton in 1988. After filming Blue Velvet, the two would be a couple until 1991.

-- Tumblr

Lolita

I have read “Lolita” eight or nine times, and not always in the same edition: but the margins of my staple hardback bear a Pompeiian litter of ticks, queries, exclamation marks, and lines straight and squiggly and doubled and tripled. My penciled comments, I realize, form a kind of surrealistic summary of the whole.... Clearly, these are not a scholar’s notes, and they move toward no edifice of understanding or completion. They are gasps of continually renewed surprise. I expect to read the novel many more times. And I am running out of white space.

-- Martin Amis

I am itching to start book-blogging Nabokov’s pedophiliac nightmare, that surreal and mesmerizing admixture of high literary form and low, base, criminal sexuality - that poetry and porn of girlish innocence and male lust. I am thinking that it may replace “1984” in my reading and blogging life when I finish with it, but will I live so long?

Lolita

I have read “Lolita” eight or nine times, and not always in the same edition: but the margins of my staple hardback bear a Pompeiian litter of ticks, queries, exclamation marks, and lines straight and squiggly and doubled and tripled. My penciled comments, I realize, form a kind of surrealistic summary of the whole.... Clearly, these are not a scholar’s notes, and they move toward no edifice of understanding or completion. They are gasps of continually renewed surprise. I expect to read the novel many more times. And I am running out of white space.

-- Martin Amis

I am itching to start book-blogging Nabokov’s pedophiliac nightmare, that surreal and mesmerizing admixture of high literary form and low, base, criminal sexuality - that poetry and porn of girlish innocence and male lust. I am thinking that it may replace “1984” in my reading and blogging life when I finish with it, but will I live so long?

Karl Marx

"You are horrified at our intending to do away with private property. But in your existing society, private property is already done away with for nine-tenths of the population; its existence for the few is solely due to its non-existence in the hands of those nine-tenths."

-- Karl Marx

Marx's birthday was on Saturday, May 5th. I did not have it marked on my calender and somehow overlooked it. He really shouldn't be forgotten, as his thoroughgoing critique of capitalism certainly helped to shape our liberal democracies, making them more responsive to the needs and aspirations of the common people. As for his unwittingly providing some of the intellectual groundwork for the worst totalitarianisms that we have known, well, we cannot be entirely responsible for what our children do when they grow up.

Karl Marx

"You are horrified at our intending to do away with private property. But in your existing society, private property is already done away with for nine-tenths of the population; its existence for the few is solely due to its non-existence in the hands of those nine-tenths."

-- Karl Marx

Marx's birthday was on Saturday, May 5th. I did not have it marked on my calender and somehow overlooked it. He really shouldn't be forgotten, as his thoroughgoing critique of capitalism certainly helped to shape our liberal democracies, making them more responsive to the needs and aspirations of the common people. As for his unwittingly providing some of the intellectual groundwork for the worst totalitarianisms that we have known, well, we cannot be entirely responsible for what our children do when they grow up.

Mangabey Monkey

Loango, a crown male Mangabey monkey is cared for by his keeper on April 18, 2012, at the Jardin des Plantes's zoo in Paris. The baby was born in the zoo in March 5, 2012, and then rejected by his mother. This birth was part of the European breeding of Endangered species Program (EEP). By Kenzo Tribouillard/AFP/Getty.

-- Andrew Sullivan's Dish

I kind of know the feeling.

Mangabey Monkey

Loango, a crown male Mangabey monkey is cared for by his keeper on April 18, 2012, at the Jardin des Plantes's zoo in Paris. The baby was born in the zoo in March 5, 2012, and then rejected by his mother. This birth was part of the European breeding of Endangered species Program (EEP). By Kenzo Tribouillard/AFP/Getty.

-- Andrew Sullivan's Dish

I kind of know the feeling.

Sylvia

We are still with Sylvia, lonely in her dorm room, upon returning from her Thanksgiving weekend.

_ _ _

What avail are good looks? To grab temporary security? What avail are brains? Merely to say, “I have seen; I have comprehended”? Ah yes, I hate myself for not being able to go downstairs naturally and seek comfort in numbers. I hate myself for having to sit here and be torn between I know not what within me. Here I am, a bundle of past recollections and future dreams, knotted up in a reasonably attractive bundle of flesh. I remember what this flesh has gone through; I dream of what it may go through. I record here the actions of optical nerves, of taste buds, of sensory perception. And, I think: I am but one more drop in the great sea of matter, defined, with the ability to realize my existence.

-- Sylvia Plath, The Journals 1950

Sylvia

We are still with Sylvia, lonely in her dorm room, upon returning from her Thanksgiving weekend.

_ _ _

What avail are good looks? To grab temporary security? What avail are brains? Merely to say, “I have seen; I have comprehended”? Ah yes, I hate myself for not being able to go downstairs naturally and seek comfort in numbers. I hate myself for having to sit here and be torn between I know not what within me. Here I am, a bundle of past recollections and future dreams, knotted up in a reasonably attractive bundle of flesh. I remember what this flesh has gone through; I dream of what it may go through. I record here the actions of optical nerves, of taste buds, of sensory perception. And, I think: I am but one more drop in the great sea of matter, defined, with the ability to realize my existence.

-- Sylvia Plath, The Journals 1950

John Rawls

“liability is the price of love and trust, of friendship and affection, and of devotion to institutions and traditions from which we have benefited and which serve the general interests of mankind…by understanding what it would be like not to have a sense of justice—that it would be to lack part of our humanity too—we are led to accept our having this sense.”

-- John Rawls, "A Theory of Justice"

Unless, of course, you are an Ayn Rand devotee or a Republican.

John Rawls

“liability is the price of love and trust, of friendship and affection, and of devotion to institutions and traditions from which we have benefited and which serve the general interests of mankind…by understanding what it would be like not to have a sense of justice—that it would be to lack part of our humanity too—we are led to accept our having this sense.”

-- John Rawls, "A Theory of Justice"

Unless, of course, you are an Ayn Rand devotee or a Republican.