Peter Talbot > Recent Status Updates

The Rights of Man is named poorly: it might be better titled: why Edmund Burke is wrong to be a toady for hereditary monarchy.

Finished . Bizarre heavy pop psychology mishmash, all the more cray cray for its earnest touting of middle-brow psychological justifications for violent serial murder promoting sympathy for the killer in a California where the victims are unfeeling selfish manipulators. Denounces the categories of "good" and "bad" ethics among other trends. Every plot point involves automobile operation and worship.

The Barbarous Coast: well plotted and more mature work: highly interesting patter that more expressively reveals the commitment and ethics of Detective Lew Archer (1956). Ross Macdonald is well worth reading extensively, despite a tendency toward middle-brow Freudian mythos and method that has not aged as well as the plot devices and character dialogue.

Just finished: "The Way Some People Die": female serial killer and ambivalent Lew Archer making his debut in 1949. Very interesting: not least for its wise portrayal of California of that age. Worthy of Hammett (if not Chandler).

Finished "Common Sense": in many ways the first great example of American polemical writing. Note: Paine does not admit of the viability of citizenship for slaves, indigenous Americans nor any other than the Christian religion (as sects).
Begun: "The Rights of Man"

This ultra-famous 1962 hymn to unfettered private laissez faire economics was the "ur-text" of the Supply Siders and the Reagan "revolution". More than any other pop economist, Friedman was devoted to arguing against the inherent bureaucratic waste involved in soviet-style socialist dependence on centralized government planning but ignored the contribution to quality of life that regulation often obtains.

OMG. I am halfway through the Introduction and already regretting picking up this door-stopper book. The author is effusive, fond of comma splices, terrifically knowledgeable, and I know he will teach me more than most on this subject. But the book needs an editor with a razor. Mr. Israel is trying so hard to be inclusive of the literature that the book is turgid to the max. Almost unreadable.

OMG. I am halfway through the Introduction and already regretting picking up this door-stopper book. The author is effusive, fond of comma splices, terrifically knowledgeable, and I know he will teach me more than most on this subject. But the book needs an editor with a razor. Mr. Israel is trying to hard to be inclusive of the literature that the book is turgid to the max. Almost unreadable.

Delicious, informative, extensive compendium of snippets related to "Enlightenment" thinking in philosophy, politics, history, science, art and culture. A must-have reference for any student of the period. Good translations from French (Diderot, Voltaire, Rousseau, Condorcet, Helvetius, etc.) and German (Kant, Leibnitz) with a heavy representation of Locke, Hume, Burke, Priestley and Scottish Common Sense writers.

A slow slog. Conrad's tricky narrative deliberately does not endear his characters to the reader. Resembles Melville's Confidence Man in its challenges.

Very difficult to work at understanding the motives, language and positions of the characters without researching the third Carlist war in 1th 1870's. And frankly, that research was more informative and interesting than the jejeune characters in the novel.