Scripturient: Thoughts on reading Ulysses
Onomatopoeia. Odd, sometimes, entertaining too. Like speed bumps that make you slow down and silently mouth the letters. A slow smile at the sound it makes in your head. Alliteration. Anastrophe....
View ArticleScripturient: Reading as a forgotten art
Earlier this month (February, 2018), the Globe & Mail published an essay by author Michael Harris titled, “I have forgotten how to read.” In it, he recounted how he recently tried to read a single...
View ArticleScripturient: Malory then and now
I recently started reading Malory in the original – that is, the language that Caxton printed in. Not the typeface Caxton used, since that would be harder to read, but rendered in a modern serif face....
View ArticleScripturient: Found in translation
Language translation fascinates me. It’s a mix of language skill, art, interpretation, science and, apparently, divination. Maybe even magic. Going from one language into another is far from a simple...
View ArticleScripturient: Dictionary vs Dictionary.com
Did you know that doxastic is a philosophical adjective relating to an individual’s beliefs? Or that doxorubicin was an antibiotic used in treating leukemia? Or that doxy is a 16th century word for...
View ArticleScripturient: Gilgamesh four thousand years later
Gilgamesh continues to enthrall us, even after more than 100 years of translations and interpretations. The story continues to be told and retold and even re-imagined. There’s even a children’s version...
View ArticleScripturient: Goodbye, Information Age
“Say goodbye to the information age: it’s all about reputation now,” is the headline of an article by Italian philosopher and professor Gloria Origgi, published recently on Aeon Magazine’s website. She...
View ArticleScripturient: Thoreau and Buddhism
In his introduction to Thoreau: Walden and Other Writings (Bantam Books, 1962-1981), Joseph Wood Krutch described Henry David Thoreau’s writings as having four “distinct subjects”, which I paraphrase...
View ArticleScripturient: The Long Read part 2
In my previous post I wrote about reading during the lockdown, particularly delving into some longer reads like War and Peace. This time gives us ample opportunity to tackle books that may have daunted...
View ArticleSong of the Watermelon: Globe and Mail Letter
Today’s Globe and Mail contains a letter to the editor from yours truly (second from the bottom) in response to an op-ed criticizing those who take offence at J.K. Rowling’s misguided views on trans...
View ArticleWritings of J. Todd Ring: Books To Read, or Re-Read
(Notes to myself, and anyone else who may be interested) Desert Solitaire The Monkey Wrench Gang Hayduke Lives! A Wizard Of Earthsea The Essential John Muir Essays – Thoreau Walden The Cancer Stage...
View ArticlePostArctica: Street Writing …or?
Street Writing – that’s the term I have been applying to what I have been doing since mid May. The activity has evolved from simply me sitting on some infrastructure provided seating along the Verdun...
View ArticleScripturient: The Penguin Classics Book
Did you know there is a card game played in Japan at the New Year, called uta-garuta, where 100 cards have a full poem on each — traditionally taken from their classical poets — and another 100 have...
View ArticleWritings of J. Todd Ring: Robertson Davies and Alice Walker: A Review By...
Such a delightfully warm and witty man, Robertson Davies seems most definitely to be. He looks so severe, when you first look at his face, but then he speaks, and there is such an effusive warmth,...
View ArticleScripturient: Killing Commendatore
I’ve been a fan of Haruki Murakami’s novels for several, recent years, and have read nine or ten of them already. Those I’ve read have all fit into the category of “magical realism”; a style of fiction...
View ArticleScripturient: More Musings on Shakespeare
The Complete Pelican Shakespeare (edited by Stephen Orgel and A. R. Braunmuller, Penguin Books, 2002) has a short but insightful essay on the texts of Shakespeare that illustrates the choices editors...
View ArticleScripturient: Musings on Reading Literature
There’s a passage from the novel The Elegance of the Hedgehog (by Muriel Barbery, Europa Editions, 2008, p. 116-117) that so delighted me when I came across it that I read it aloud to Susan: “Mildly...
View ArticleSong of the Watermelon: Globe and Mail Letter
Today’s Globe and Mail contains a letter to the editor from yours truly (second from the bottom) in response to an op-ed criticizing those who take offence at J.K. Rowling’s misguided views on trans...
View ArticleScripturient: Kerouac’s Haikus
Haiku is like a razor blade: small, light, but yet strong and incredibly sharp. Haiku says “Look over there!” and then smacks you from the other side. Haiku is the neutron star of poetry: stunning...
View ArticleScripturient: Ars Poetica
Horace’s Ars Poetica, or the Art of Poetry, was written as a 476-line poem in a letter to his friend, the Roman senator Lucius Calpurnius Piso (Lucius) and his two sons, around 19 BCE. It was known...
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