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Title : "[I want] to treat this life, this massive datum which happens to be mine, as a specimen life, representative in its odd uniqueness of all the oddly unique lives in this world."
link : "[I want] to treat this life, this massive datum which happens to be mine, as a specimen life, representative in its odd uniqueness of all the oddly unique lives in this world."
"[I want] to treat this life, this massive datum which happens to be mine, as a specimen life, representative in its odd uniqueness of all the oddly unique lives in this world."
"A mode of impersonal egoism was my aim: an attempt to touch honestly upon the central veins, with a scientific dispassion and curiosity," wrote John Updike in "Self-Consciousness: Memoirs," which I put in my Kindle in December (for reasons described in this post).The quote in the post title came up in an interview with Terry Gross that I was just reading:
The behaviors you have to be comfortable with as the host of Fresh Air are behaviors that would be considered antisocial in almost every other context. Do you have to be weird to be the kind of interviewer you are?I wonder, is this the same usage of "specimen" as in Walt Whitman's "Specimen Days." I've to admit that I'd always compartmentalized that title with the knowledge that Whitman served as a nurse in the Civil War and therefore thought of "specimen" as a urine sample! But that can't be right!
You don’t have to be weird. I think what you have to do is really believe, as I do, that the interview serves a function.
What’s the function?
I like to quote John Updike on this. In his memoir, Self-Consciousness, which I really love, he said he wanted to use his life as “a specimen life, representative in its odd uniqueness of all the oddly unique lives in this world.” That’s kind of how I see interviews. When you’re talking to an artist, you can get insight into the sensibility that created his or her art and into the life that shaped that sensibility. I love making those connections. I think we all feel very alone. I don’t mean that we don’t have friends or lovers but that deep at our core we all have loneliness.
From "Specimen Days":
I suppose I publish... from that eternal tendency to perpetuate and preserve which is behind all Nature, authors included; second, to symbolize two or three specimen interiors, personal and other, out of the myriads of my time, the middle range of the Nineteenth century in the New World; a strange, unloosen'd, wondrous time....Though not about urine samples, this is not the same usage of "specimen" as Updike's. Whitman was saying this book has some samples of what has been in his life, but Updike was saying I am writing based on the idea that my life is an example of all lives.
You ask for items, details of my early life—of genealogy and parentage, particularly of the women of my ancestry, and of its far-back Netherlands stock on the maternal side—of the region where I was born and raised, and my mother and father before me, and theirs before them—with a word about Brooklyn and New York cities, the times I lived there as lad and young man. You say you want to get at these details mainly as the go-befores and embryons of "Leaves of Grass." Very good; you shall have at least some specimens of them all.....
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"A mode of impersonal egoism was my aim: an attempt to touch honestly upon the central veins, with a scientific dispassion and curiosity," wrote John Updike in "Self-Consciousness: Memoirs," which I put in my Kindle in December (for reasons described in this post).
The quote in the post title came up in an interview with Terry Gross that I was just reading:
From "Specimen Days":
The quote in the post title came up in an interview with Terry Gross that I was just reading:
The behaviors you have to be comfortable with as the host of Fresh Air are behaviors that would be considered antisocial in almost every other context. Do you have to be weird to be the kind of interviewer you are?I wonder, is this the same usage of "specimen" as in Walt Whitman's "Specimen Days." I've to admit that I'd always compartmentalized that title with the knowledge that Whitman served as a nurse in the Civil War and therefore thought of "specimen" as a urine sample! But that can't be right!
You don’t have to be weird. I think what you have to do is really believe, as I do, that the interview serves a function.
What’s the function?
I like to quote John Updike on this. In his memoir, Self-Consciousness, which I really love, he said he wanted to use his life as “a specimen life, representative in its odd uniqueness of all the oddly unique lives in this world.” That’s kind of how I see interviews. When you’re talking to an artist, you can get insight into the sensibility that created his or her art and into the life that shaped that sensibility. I love making those connections. I think we all feel very alone. I don’t mean that we don’t have friends or lovers but that deep at our core we all have loneliness.
From "Specimen Days":
I suppose I publish... from that eternal tendency to perpetuate and preserve which is behind all Nature, authors included; second, to symbolize two or three specimen interiors, personal and other, out of the myriads of my time, the middle range of the Nineteenth century in the New World; a strange, unloosen'd, wondrous time....Though not about urine samples, this is not the same usage of "specimen" as Updike's. Whitman was saying this book has some samples of what has been in his life, but Updike was saying I am writing based on the idea that my life is an example of all lives.
You ask for items, details of my early life—of genealogy and parentage, particularly of the women of my ancestry, and of its far-back Netherlands stock on the maternal side—of the region where I was born and raised, and my mother and father before me, and theirs before them—with a word about Brooklyn and New York cities, the times I lived there as lad and young man. You say you want to get at these details mainly as the go-befores and embryons of "Leaves of Grass." Very good; you shall have at least some specimens of them all.....
Thus articles "[I want] to treat this life, this massive datum which happens to be mine, as a specimen life, representative in its odd uniqueness of all the oddly unique lives in this world."
that is all articles "[I want] to treat this life, this massive datum which happens to be mine, as a specimen life, representative in its odd uniqueness of all the oddly unique lives in this world." This time, hopefully can provide benefits to all of you. Okay, see you in another article posting.
You now read the article "[I want] to treat this life, this massive datum which happens to be mine, as a specimen life, representative in its odd uniqueness of all the oddly unique lives in this world." with the link address https://welcometoamerican.blogspot.com/2018/01/i-want-to-treat-this-life-this-massive.html
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