1PatrickMurtha
New here. Pocket bio: Retired humanities teacher, residing in Tlaxcala, Mexico, with two dogs and six indoor cats. Passionate about literature, history, philosophy, classical music and opera, jazz, cinema, and similar subjects. Nostalgic guy. Politically centrist. BA in American Studies from Yale; MAs in English and Education from Boston University. Born in northern New Jersey. Have lived and worked in San Francisco, Chicago, northern Nevada, northeast Wisconsin, South Korea.
I suppose this counts as a group revival, since the official listing here is “Dormant”. In any case, as I’m getting involved in LT Groups again, if the group I want exists and doesn’t seem beyond resuscitation, I’m going to go ahead and post in it. I’d rather do that, using an existing shell and membership, than start a new group. And this is a great topic!
Recently read and enjoyed Justin Wolff’s excellent biography of Thomas Hart Benton, and what strikes me are the same things I noticed while reading Herbert R. Lottman’s biography of Camus: An awful lot of writing about “culture” is really just writing about politics, and the insistence that everything is in some sense political (hard to argue with) rapidly becomes an insistence that everything is ONLY political. Those who occupy positions somewhere in the center will be pummeled quite nastily by the hard Right and Left. Critics tried to both enlist Benton and repudiate him, on the basis of interpretations that he himself gave no support to (and which seem flimsy and non-insightful in retrospect). And so it goes.
I suppose this counts as a group revival, since the official listing here is “Dormant”. In any case, as I’m getting involved in LT Groups again, if the group I want exists and doesn’t seem beyond resuscitation, I’m going to go ahead and post in it. I’d rather do that, using an existing shell and membership, than start a new group. And this is a great topic!
Recently read and enjoyed Justin Wolff’s excellent biography of Thomas Hart Benton, and what strikes me are the same things I noticed while reading Herbert R. Lottman’s biography of Camus: An awful lot of writing about “culture” is really just writing about politics, and the insistence that everything is in some sense political (hard to argue with) rapidly becomes an insistence that everything is ONLY political. Those who occupy positions somewhere in the center will be pummeled quite nastily by the hard Right and Left. Critics tried to both enlist Benton and repudiate him, on the basis of interpretations that he himself gave no support to (and which seem flimsy and non-insightful in retrospect). And so it goes.
