Ordinarily I would have found an appropriate book and be commenting on it by now, but there is a hit-and-miss aspect to finding the right book, and it can be extremely time-consuming. For example, I had no idea that I would like the biography of Carson McCullers as much as I did, and it turned out to be one of my favorites of 2024. My scientific interests are mainly focused on evolutionary biology, and new findings in that field emerge very slowly: one might die waiting for new revelations. I am currently reading a short book by Rosemary Ashton which analyses George Eliot's The Mill on the Floss. I like Ashton a lot, and she understands George Eliot very well, but I don't consider that novel to be one of Eliot's best: it seems to appeal more to women than to men, and Simone de Beauvoir loved it. I'm also starting on an old biography of Percy Bysshe Shelley, which I think has more substance, at least in terms of the number of pages. Shelley is not one of my favorite poets, though he is probably more interesting than Philip Larkin, W.H. Auden or Ted Hughes. I liked him in 1974 at the time of my wedding, and I had the best man read "Mutability." That turned out to be an appropriate poem for a marriage that lasted eleven years. As far as poets go, from a biographical standpoint, they can be more interesting than others if they write well, are hyperactive and die young. That sort of applies to Carson McCullers too. Though this is a cliché, there is a fine line between creative genius and craziness, and, for example, I don't think that Beethoven was someone whom I would want to know personally. I don't think that Shelley was crazy, and he is associated with a few others I've been reading about. His wife, Mary Shelley, wrote Frankenstein and was the daughter of Mary Wollstonecraft, whose biography I read some time ago. And the Shelleys were both influenced by Rousseau. They have many English literary connections, including Shelley's friendship with Leigh Hunt, who later became a friend of G.H. Lewes, making tenuous connections with George Eliot and Charles Darwin. These kinds of connections add an interesting density to the subject matter that rarely occurs in the U.S. There was an intense cultural density in London and Paris, and the only American city that comes close is New York.
My evening entertainment continues to be short snippets of good films. I'm currently watching "Babette's Feast," which I think is very good, though it is very slowly paced. Then I'll probably rewatch "It Happened One Night" and "Annie Hall," which I like a lot but haven't seen in years. I continue to watch the evening news, but, because of the Trump phenomenon, I frequently mute it and sometimes just turn it off. I can only take so much of Trump, who seems like a talking orangutan, especially with his friend, Elon Musk, the talking chimpanzee. I also find the interviews with Trump supporters in congress insufferable and just turn them off. I am reminded of Trump's complaint that modern toilets don't flush well, and think to myself that, with all of his Republican supporters in Washington, he must have the cleanest anus in the world and only needs a toilet for urination. Trump and Musk seem to be at the center of the largest disinformation campaign in American history, and I think that they should both be in jail now. As an investor, I find them both quite dangerous, and I'm now seriously considering investing in gold for the first time. Although I think that the political situation will eventually correct itself, this is probably the first time in American history with a simultaneously corrupt president, congress and supreme court. You have to be intellectually handicapped not to notice this – but, unfortunately, Americans have always been intellectually handicapped if you believe H.L. Mencken.
This winter is turning out to be more normal for Vermont, and there has been snow on the ground most of the time, with temperatures below zero occasionally. The bird feeder is very popular now, and I may have to buy some more sunflower kernels soon.