From An Epistle to Arbuthnot

Peace to all such! but were there one whose fires
True Genius kindles, and fair fame inspires,
Blest with each talent and each art to please,
And born to write, converse, and live with ease:
Should such a man, too fond to rule alone,
Bear, like the Turk, no brother near the throne,
View him with scornful, yet with jealous eyes,
And hate for arts that caus'd himself to rise;
Damn with faint praise, assent with civil leer,
And without sneering, teach the rest to sneer;
Willing to wound, and yet afraid to strike,
Just hint a fault, and hesitate dislike;
Alike reserv'd to blame, or to commend,
A tim'rous foe, and a suspicious friend;
Dreading ev'n fools, by flatterers besieg'd,
And so obliging, that he ne'er oblig'd;
Like Cato, give his little Senate laws,
And sit attentive to his own applause;
While Wits and Templers ev'ry sentence raise,
And wonder with a foolish face of praise.
Who but must laugh, if such a man there be?
Who would not weep, if Atticus were he?

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From the Buell Emerson biography

Emerson presupposes an initial state of timid, unhappy conformism. By adulthood, people are conditioned to look through other people's eyes. In this state, "one can scarcely experience oneself," as political theorist George Kateb puts it. So the first move is to disengage yourself from the influence of others' opinions. Kateb calls this "negative individuality." Note that Emerson is not talking just about others but also about himself. Biographer Robert Richardson, Jr., rightly diagnoses his "calls for self-reliance" as "ground won back from dependency." Emerson's indictment of the " 'foolish face of praise,' the forced smile which we put on in company where we do not fell at ease in answer to conversation which does not interest us" was a charge he had leveled against his younger self nearly two decades before on the eve of his twenty-first birthday, using the same quotation from Alexander Pope's "Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot."

[ Holy cow, must get that Pope letter. I'd wondered why the single quotation marks (the 'foolish face of praise') are in the original Emerson essay. In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts—they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty...[[ahem]] ].

Elwyn Berlekamp's Christmas card

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Lacking enough snow, this year Santa is travelling by hot air balloon. To keep the elves amused en route, Santa has been randomly distributing red and green hats. The clever elves are now using a Hamming code to win in 7/8 of the possible cases. For details, see [Emissary], Fall 01, Page 8, Problem 3C.

Stories Ending With 'Long Story Short' That Could Actually Use Some Elaboration

zhubin parang (mcsweeney's)