Paul Attinello

Category: Books

  • Riches

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    paulattinello
    in

     The nameless woman, sometimes called Lady Sarashina, who wrote the eleventh-century Heian memoir As I Crossed a Bridge of Dreams, remembers what happened soon after she arrived as a young girl in the capitol Heian-kyo: "As I was leaving she asked, 'What would you like as a present? I am sure you don't want anything too…

  • Time/lines

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    paulattinello
    in , ,

    The snow muffles everything, but reflects some light, so that though it is long after midnight I keep moving restlessly around the apartment in a sort of glowing silence, without lights. My sister bought me some Heian literature for Christmas, among other books; it is giving everything a strange resonance – there are three time frames:…

  • Short List

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    paulattinello
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    So: exactly one long month after my last substantive (from my point of view) post, interrupted by only one jeu d'esprit about coffee… I keep thinking of the blog, of all the many large and subtle shifts that have taken place in that month, and keep feeling rather guilty for not writing about them… but…

  • Madness

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    paulattinello
    in ,

    A day of catching up, cleaning up, getting things done… toward evening, rather than getting back to my research or writing (sorry about that), I read the beginning of Lydia Salvyre's The Lecture, and then saw – unexpectedly – the last episode of season one of the television show Dollhouse. The Lecture is funny, bizarre, ridiculous;…

  • All summer in a day

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    paulattinello
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    The symptoms remain a bit strange, and it's strange how they come and go: why would I be so tired after a stroke? It's not as though it involved any work. Just shaved and showered; it was almost all I could manage, and I'm shaking from the effort of standing, of focusing on using my…

  • Adorno’s Dreams

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    paulattinello
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    After last night's brave and admittedly somewhat demented post – not that I discount its ideas and feelings: I think I really could crack my behavior, my limitations, open, if I had the energy and courage, which I may yet be able to find – I put myself together today to go to the pharmacy…

  • Hot / James & time / Dollhouse / Göteborg

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    paulattinello
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    It is actually almost hot out: in the low seventies (Fahrenheit – even after living in Centigrade countries for more than twelve years now, I just cannot think in Centigrade, in spite of its logic). In California, of course, it would be merely a normal day out of, say, eight months of the year in…

  • Limitations; and, The Great German Novel

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    paulattinello
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    Even among these pleasant spring days, various small pleasant encounters, and the sense of positive direction I've developed in the past six months (related to Jung and analysis), I keep being made uneasily aware of limits, barriers, walls. A sense of shortened time, news of health concerns: will I really have to inject myself with…

  • The Joy of Malevolence

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    by

    paulattinello
    in

    After being split between days of work – teaching, students, paperwork – and nights of reading and thinking about my glorious future as a Jungian analyst, I grabbed a book off the shelf to read in between things: Thomas Disch's story collection Getting Into Death. This is of course the same brilliant Tom Disch who…

  • The Greek Poet

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    paulattinello
    in

    Now here is a fine webpage: http://www.cavafy.com/index.asp The Cavafy archive, with most of his work neatly and openly available… plus some obscure things that were generally unknown. That is how the web should work, I think. At least in regards to literature….