Latmag
September 2011
Frank Lloyd Wright, The Natural House
New Sense of Repose in Quiet Streamline Effects
“ Vistas of inevitable simplicity and ineffable harmonies would open, so beautiful to me that I was not only delighted, but often startled. ”
April 2010
Evelyn Waugh, Black Mischief, Chapter 5
Azanian Propaganda
“ It was from the least expected quarter, the tribesmen and villagers, that the real support for Seth’s Birth Control policy suddenly appeared. ”
January 2010
Leon R. Kass, The Beginning of Wisdom, Pp. 406-7.
Jacob’s Summary
“ The biblical counterpart of Odysseus, Jacob must solve the fundamental human difficulties illustrated in the pre-Abrahamic chapters of Genesis. ”
September 2009
Daniel Patrick Moynihan, A Dangerous Place, Chapter 1: A Half-Life, p8-9
An Act of Courage and of Daring
“ In that I was a member of the Cabinet, protocol provided that I step out of Air Force One behind the President and ahead of Kissinger, who was also on the journey. Somehow Kissinger invariably reached the ground ahead of me. ”
Philip Roth, The Plot Against America (paperback edition), p210-1
A Well-Scrubbed, Cute Little Boy
“ I couldn’t manage to be anywhere near a nun, let alone a pair of them, without a mind awash in my none-too-pure Jewish thoughts. ”
Ian Fleming, Diamonds are Forever
Rue de la Pay
“ It was natural to bring out the small change and jerk the handles and watch the lemons and the oranges and the cherries and the bell fruits whirl round to their final click-pause-ting, followed by a soft mechanical sigh. Five cents, ten cents, a quarter. Bond gave them all a try… ”
September 2003
Charles Darwin, The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals, Chapter 1, General Principles of Expression
Purposeless Remnants of Habitual Movements
“ It is well known that cats dislike wetting their feet, owing, it is probable, to their having aboriginally inhabited the dry country of Egypt; and when they wet their feet they shake them violently. My daughter poured some water into a glass close to the head of a kitten; and it immediately shook its feet in the usual manner; so that here we have an habitual movement falsely excited by an associated sound instead of by the sense of touch. ”
Edward Lear, Journals of a Landscape Painter in the Balkans
Were it Not for this Protector
“ Not the least annoyance was that given me by the persevering attentions of a mad or fanatic dervish, of most singular appearance as well as conduct. His note of ‘Shaitán‘ was frequently sounded; and as he twirled about, and performed many curious antics, he frequently advanced to me, shaking a long hooked stick, covered with jingling ornaments, in my very face, pointing to the Kawas with menacing looks, as though he would say, “Were it not for this protector you should he annihilated, you infidel!” ”
August 2003
Robert Graves, I, Claudius
Ask Me Anything
“ The drink was as remarkable as the food, and Caligula became so lively as the meal went on that, deprecating his own generosity to Herod in the past as something hardly worth mentioning, he now promised to give him whatever it lay in his power to grant. “Ask me anything, my dearest Herod,” he said, “And it shall be yours.” He repeated: “Absolutely anything. I swear by my own Divinity that I will grant it.” ”
T hat November, Arthur Balfour, the British foreign secretary, issued the declaration bearing his name. It was far more supportive of Zionism than Cambon’s letter. The British government, Balfour wrote, was in favor of “a national home for the Jewish people” in Palestine. With 150,000 soldiers fighting the Turks to France’s 800, the British were able to propose and dispose. On Christmas day 1917, Field Marshal Edmund Allenby entered Jerusalem with Georges-Picot in his entourage. At a picnic, the latter suggested setting up the civil administration he thought he had negotiated with Sykes. Also present was Lawrence of Arabia, and his description of Allenby’s scornful response is one of the more famous passages in Seven Pillars of Wisdom.
In December, a French diplomat in the embassy in London reported that, although wealthy English Jews were hostile to the Balfour Declaration, the enthusiastic view of poor and immigrant Jews was that “the Israelite race was superior to all others; it possessed colonies in all the countries and one day it shall dominate the world.” An unsigned position paper from around the same time suggested that Zionists, who drew their strength from the mysticism of Russian-Polish Jewry, were trying to spread their nefarious ideas to Jews in Algeria and Morocco, thereby seeking “to exploit great-power rivalry.” The author had some classic advice: “Our Jewish policy in North Africa is necessarily linked to our Muslim policy. We have to avoid Jewish nationalism, as also pan-Islamism or pan-Arabism, by favoring a slow and careful evolution in the direction of our civilisation.”
On January 15, 1919, Foreign Minister Stephen Pichon instructed Paul Cambon to alert the British government to the Zionist danger, lest it become a cause for international trouble in the Middle East. “The Zionists must understand once and for all that there can be no question of constituting an independent Jewish state in Palestine, or even forming some sovereign Jewish body.” Three days later Cambon reported back. He could hardly believe the conversation he had just had with Balfour. In his usual dilettantish manner (Cambon wrote), Balfour had said that “it would be interesting to be present at the reconstitution of the [ancient] Kingdom of Jerusalem.” When Cambon protested that, according to the New Testament book of Revelation, such an event would signal the end of the world, Balfour rejoined: “It would be still more interesting to be present at the end of the world.”
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Purposeless Remnants of Habitual Movements
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Rue de la Pay
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