April '25 Reading

 Starting out with Catullus for National Poetry Month, then on to Ovid. 

1. The Nation of April 2025. Elie Mystal on airline regulation--fixing prices on flights is like stamps. "The CAB [Civil Aeronautics Board] would give popular, well-travelled routes to airlines if the airlines agreed to serve less popular routes as well, for a fixed fee. It was a way to make air travel from NY to Akron affordable, because that route was subsidized by the fares for NY to Chicago."
2. Poems of Catullus translated by Peter Whigham. Catullus is a rapper with erudite vocab, an arsenal of different flows, private references, and nasty sex rhymes. 
3. The NYer of 4/7/25. Daniel Mendelsohn on Catullus: " Much of the poem [Attis] takes the form of an anguished monologue the young man delivers after he wakes up the next day, short on body parts and long on regrets."
4. Dylan Goes Electric by Elijah Wald. Out-of-context on a live mic ("Leave it alone Pete" and "He's going to get an ax," which is a guitar) created an urban myth. OR DID IT!?!
5. NYer of 4/14/25. Another reason for de-extincting dire wolves (sort of) and "this is really important" says the startup CEO, is their prominence in recent pop culture. Huh?
6. NYer of 3/31/25. Crazy investigation by Ronan Farrow of corrupt Johnson City, TN police who were paid off by serial rapist for years.
7. The Art of Love by Ovid. How to find 'em, woo 'em, and keep 'em. 
8. The Last Unicorn by Peter S. Beagle. The unicorn described as Venus emerging from sea-foam at beginning. 
9. The NYer of 1/24/22(!). Reread a lovely lyrical story-essay, "What's the Deal, Hummingbird?" by Arthur Krystal. "Why isn't that enough for a whole lifetime?" vs. "Why, isn't that enough for a whole lifetime?"
10. The Nation of May 2025. "In the dialogues, philosophical conversation involves a sort of role-play, with one person acting as the 'theory builder,' who tries to establish the truth of some idea, and the other acting as the 'refuter,' who tries to tear the idea down. This resolves an apparent paradox between the dueling commitments of good inquiry: seeking out truth (and thus being somewhat confident that you’ve found it) and avoiding falsehood (and thus being skeptical that you’re in possession of the truth after all)." Olufemi O. Taiwo reviewing Agnes Callard.
11. If On a Winter's Night a Traveller by Italo Calvino. Created with Gremais squares: Reader--Book/Not-Reader--Not-Book. 

May '25 Reading

 Maybe get some serious reading done between classes ending and starting?

1. The New Yorker 100th Anniversary Issue. Seth's tribute to first NYer art editor, Rhea Irvin. 
2. NYer of 4/28/25. Gopnik:"Slavery had a cursed past, and a present to be tolerated, but no future."
3. The Confessions of St. Augustine. 
4. NYer of 4/21/25. Phish played 13 donut themed shows in a row. One was "Boston Cream," featuring medleys of songs by Boston and by Cream. 
5. NYer of 5/5/25. Mark Twain proposed a return of Tom and Huck when they were both 60, failures, miserable. They die.
6. Ubik by PKD. I didn't get the end, where the other guy is on the coin. Was Dick just ready to move on? 
7. Small Town Talk by Barney Hoskins. Woodstock was an artists' colony taken up by hippies. One night, Santana (the only touring act), Jimi Hendrix, and a jam session with some of the Band was all going on the same night. 
8. NYer of 6/5/23. Burkhard Bilger article on old Stax songwriters reunited to listen to lost demos and identify the performers. 
9. NYER OF 5/16/22. Profile of Matthew Wong, deceased Canadian artist. Sort of an outsider, an outsider who learned and lived online. 
10. NYer of 4/11/22. Lauren Collins profile of Stephane Bourgoin, French expert on serial killers whose lies and exaggerations were exposed online. 
11. NYer of 5/29/23. James Wood on Mozart: "Don Giovanni closes with the seducer's six survivors--the castoffs, the cuckolded, the bereaved--sweetly singing their way back to normality, as they rejoice that the wicked always get their deserts, while 'we, good people, will now gaily sing to you the old, old refrain.'"
12. NYer of 5/12&19/25. A. Lane on NYer memoirs and histories: "Every night and every morning, [William] Shawn and [Lillian] Ross spoke on the phone, and only once did Cecile [Shawn] answer when Ross called. Shawn had just died. 'He's gone,' Cecile said."
13. NYer of 2/6/23. "Public opinion" and the idea of objective journalism invented by Walter Lippman in the 1920s. 
14. The Neverending Story by Michael Ende. In the "ende" it wasn't as good as The Princess Bride because the lesson was too serious and on the nose.