[lit-ideas] Re: Sunday Twofer
- From: John McCreery <john.mccreery@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 27 Aug 2012 08:25:55 +0900
David,
Your description of the whiskey "those fine old socks" reminded me of our
one and so far only trip to Scotland. We were in Edinburgh and the events
included a whiskey dinner, with a different single malt for each course. A
large, comic fellow in a kilt introduced the whiskeys. "The fine bouquet of
old gym socks" stuck in my braing.
P.S. It's where I acquired a liking for Talisker.
John
On Mon, Aug 27, 2012 at 2:23 AM, David Ritchie <profdritchie@xxxxxxxxx>wrote:
> Sometimes you come up against a proposition that just stops you. In
> Julian Barnes' latest there's this moment when a character asserts you can
> infer reasoning from behavior. Which is to say that because this person
> behaved in a certain way, you can figure out what was going on inside his
> head. One bit I thought impressive in law school was that in order to be
> convicted of most kinds of crime, you must not only have done the thing--
> "actus reus"-- you must also have intended to do the thing-- "mens rea."
> But Julian Barnes' character is more in tune with normal primate behavior;
> we infer thought from action.
> I do this, I know I do: that fool who ran a red light can have no brain
> cells left in his head, that student who failed to turn in the work must
> be... Inference is dangerous. You often discover there's a perfectly good
> reason..., something that explains... What a thing inference is.
>
>
> I used to caricature the smell and taste of Islay whiskies. "Give me a
> swig of those fine old socks." And when I'd read of peat and seaweed I'd
> pooh pooh, dismiss... like the Leith police. Similarly I swore when I read
> "Clarissa," Dante also, that having got through that lot I was just plain
> done with them. Never again. Ha! First job in graduate school, "Go teach
> the Divine Comedy." (No one has ever asked me to teach "Clarissa." Who
> else on earth has read that?) This evening I thought, "I'd really quite
> like a whisky...," not a thought I'd have in the days of teaching Dante. I
> developed a taste for what it amuses me to call as "ardent spirits" long
> after I was particularly ardent about the world's rights and wrongs. But
> nowadays whisky pokes through evening thoughts now and again. "Jeeves," I
> command, "bring me a snifter." "Certainly, sir." "Pick one with a hefty
> dose of hiking socks, there's a good chap." And now here one is, to hand.
> The hour being late, I'm about to hie me to bed when I hear the garage
> door open; daughters returning from Pok Pok dining. They take one whiff of
> what's in the glass. "Urghh," they agree. That once was me. But now here
> I am, over here.
>
> David Ritchie,
> Portland, Oregon
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------
> To change your Lit-Ideas settings (subscribe/unsub, vacation on/off,
> digest on/off), visit www.andreas.com/faq-lit-ideas.html
>
--
John McCreery
The Word Works, Ltd., Yokohama, JAPAN
Tel. +81-45-314-9324
jlm@xxxxxxxxxxxx
http://www.wordworks.jp/
Other related posts:
