Motley Kamuka

5/21/21.I woke up early and started reading The Sun Also Rises.  What an anti-semitic novel, I forgot that. I guess it was before WW2, so antisemitism was in the air. Hemingway doesn't transcend it, he uses it. Unfortunate. I haven't watched the PBS documentary because I'm pretty familiar with the dark side, the myth has worn off on Hemingway for me. The joys of middle age disillusionment. I'm not canceling him, I've read his books so many times. I'm just probably not going to read anything after this last reading. I've been to the Hemingway museum in Chicago, and the Hemingway house in Key West. I've been to the cafes in Paris he went to. I've read all his books, except the postumus one. Maybe I'll read that. I liked The Left Hand of Darkness , so I can handle androgyny. I could see teaching a short story or Farewell To Arms or For Whom The Bell Tolls. I tried to read a mystery set in an English department in Amherst, that was sort of about Dic...

"Righteousness porn is such a good phrase. I think there’s also an unfortunate counter-tendency any time certain subjects come up that people want to talk critically about, racism or sexuality or gender or feminism. The sirens go off and people start talking about “cancel culture,” which always seems to me a reason to tune out talking about any of those things that make us uncomfortable." A.O. Scott From " How a Review Changed Both Sarah Silverman and Our Critic " NY Times Later: "Well, adjectives are the terrible crutch of criticism. I try to teach students, don’t throw a bunch of adjectives at something and think that that’s a review."

I'm reading a novel set in the future in Nigeria, and thought I would travel to Lagos . I've been listening to some Nigerian music . I thought to travel to Africa, the birthplace of humanity. Lagos is Portuguese for Lagoon. Lagos is the second largest city in Africa. Kinshasa is the biggest, Cairo is the largest. Don't ask me the difference between biggest and largest. There is an island, and then the city has spread out as it has grown. Lagos Lagoon leads to the Atlantic Ocean. It overlooks southwards the Gulf of Guinea . Nigeria is bordered by the African countries of Benin, Niger, Chad and Cameroon. The coldest month is August, but since it is near the equator the temperature does not vary as much. June is the rainy month, with January the driest month. As a Knicks fan, I hate in a sporting way, Hakeem Olajuwon , who was born in Lagos. Writers Buchi Emecheta  (1944-2017) "In 1960, she married Sylvester Onwordi,[5][7] a schoolboy to whom she had been engaged sinc...

I've been going to places via the internet, by looking at videos  (lots of ads, hope he makes money), listening to music ( Fairuz , Spotify ), and reading Wikipedia pages ( Beirut ). When I first googled Beirut, the videos were either songs or protests, it took me a while to find a walking tour.  My idea that there has been conflict there is from the civil war that was there 1975-1990, which the Taif Agreement began to end. "...the United States, have frequently placed Lebanon, and Beirut in particular, on their travel warnings lists due to the many car bombings and orchestrated acts of political violence." Eight percent of the tourists are from the USA.  "In Travel + Leisure magazine's World Best Awards 2006, it was ranked the 9th best city in the world." Then the  2006 Lebanon War broke out, a 34 day military conflict. "Cosmetic surgery is a major component of medical tourism in Lebanon." In 2020 a ship blew up. I'm listening to Fairuz: ...

 There’s a bee In the honeysuckle  Flies off I hope I don’t  Unready myself

Tade Thompson is a person with  Yoruba heritage, living in London. I may have gotten points from my Nigerian neighbor for reading a novel set in Nigeria. I don't think my friend is Yoruba though. The novel is competent. The narrator is interesting and the others around him are interesting. The plot skips around time. Is that more interesting? Nobody writes a linear story any more.  I love learning culture, and I hope I'm getting some cultural knowledge about Nigeria and Yoruba culture. Culture is funny because a stereotype has information, it's just not that rigid, and doesn't really tell me how tightly people cling to those stereotypes. A person from that culture hopefully provides neutral information with some negatives and some positives. When I was a social worker everything was culture culture culture, and I miss that. I ask people at the park, but it turns out it's not easy to talk about for most people. Culture is something hidden in the background, like Ka...

After reading the first canto, I wasn't really grooving to the Ciardi translation I had of Purgatorio . I missed the immediacy of footnotes at the bottom of the page. I didn't like the introduction blending into the text, unlike the Nichols translation of the Inferno.  I found this introduction to the first canto of Paradiso on YouTube . Patrick Boyde (University of Cambridge) in conversation with John Bruce-Jones (StantonMarris)