YOGA'S ART

Debra Diamond, ed., with contributions by David Gordon White . . .  et. al., Yoga: The Art of Transformation (Washington, D.C.: Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, 2013) (From the bookjacket: "Many of us today practice yoga for spiritual insight and better health, but few know of yoga's extraordinary visual history. Yoga: The Art of Transformation, the first publication of its kind, invites readers to explore 3,000 years of yoga's visual record, from depictions of beneficent deities and Tantric yogini goddesses to militant ascetics and romantic heroes. Beautiful works of art--including temple sculptures, masterpieces of Mughal painting, and the first illustrated asana treatise--depict the aesthetic aspects of a practice that has transformed over time and across communities. While many objects emerged out of Hindu contexts or depict Hindu practitioners, others reveal that yoga was never the domain of any single religion, and indeed yogic identity crosses 'sacred' and 'secular' boundaries. Photographs, postcards, early films, and other materials shed light on the enormous shifts in yoga's reception in the nineteenth century, as well as on the creation of modern yoga.").

THINKING LIKE A LAWYER?

Kenneth A. Manaster, The American Legal System and Civic Engagement: Why We All Should Think Like Lawyers (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013).

"Before determining whether the legal system's approach to decisions can provide guidance for the citizen, we need to identify the particular legal tools and traditions that might be helpful. Twelve such methods will be explained here. They will be roughly grouped into the following four categories, each of which declares a broad goal for how legal work should be done:

A: Focusing on the task
   1. Defining the issue
   2. Separating facts from standards and evaluations

B: Taking an organized approach
   1. Respecting procedure
   2. Taking time

C: Finding reliable information
   1. Gathering the facts
   2. Recognizing incomplete facts
   3. Dividing labor
   4. Using expertise
   5. Identifying bias

D: Keeping an open mind
   1. Arguing and persuading
   2. Listening and negotiating
   3. Making hard choices in gray areas."

Id. at 39.  In reading this text, in general, and this list of lawyerly methods, in specific, I found might thoughts drifting back to the seemingly countless law faculty meeting I have attended over nearly a quarter century. The value of utilizing these methods, the value of 'thinking like a lawyer" among law faculty members, is more evidenced by the absence of the use of these methods than by adherence to them. Academic lawyers, when engaged in faculty business, pretty much resort to power politics. I think such will be true in other areas of civic engagement. True, perhaps academic lawyers are not real lawyers but, since the stakes in legal academia are overwhelmingly trivial, you would expect those "professing" the law to have law's methods nailed down and honored. I suppose, however, there is honor in the breach.

DANTE * PARADISO * DI PAOLO

Dante Alighieri, Paradiso, translated by Henry Francis Clay, introduced by Michael Prodger, with illustrations by Giovanni di Paolo (London: The Folio Society, 2009).

DANTE * PURGATORIO * DALI

Dante Alighieri, Purgatorio, translated by Henry Francis Cary. with introductory essays by George Melly and Michael Prodger, illustrated by Salvador Dali (London: The Folio Society, 2007).

DANTE * INFERNO * BLAKE

Dante Alighieri, Inferno, translated by Henry Francis Cary, introduced by Robin Hamlyn, with illustrations by William Blake (London: The Folio Society, 1998) ("Philosophy, to the attentive ear,/ Clearly points out, not in one part zone,/ How imitative nature takes her course/ from the celestial mind, and from its art/ And where her laws the Stagyrite unfolds,/ Not many leaves scanned o'er, observing well/ Thous shalt discover, that your art on her/ Obsequious follows, as the learner trends/ In his Instructor's step; so that your art/ Deserves the name of second in descent/ From God. . . ." Id. at 43: CANTO XI: LINES 100-110.).

MICHELAGNOLO DI LODOVICO BUONARROTI SIMONI

Howard Hibbard, Michelangelo, introduced by Michael Levey (London: The Folio Society, 2007) ("To write of Michelangelo's influence on the art of later times would require a book as long as this one. Perhaps no other artist was so essential for the formation of the romantic idea of the inspired genius. On the other hand, of all important Renaissance artists, Michelangelo was one of the very few to come from a good social background. This dignity, increased by his own accomplishment and manner, helped raise the station of artists to a level they had never before enjoyed; it also helped spawn the Florentine Academy and its successors all over the world--for better or worse." Id. at 251.).

"HAMLET OF ART HISTORY"

Kenneth Clark, Leonardo da Vinci, introduced by Martin Kemp (London; The Folio Society, 2005) ("Leonardo died in the Castle of Cloux on 2 May 1519, leaving to his friend and pupil, Melzi, the great store of drawings and manuscripts through which we should be able to form a clear conception of his character. But in spite of this mass of material his image changes like a cloud. Leonardo is the Hamlet of art history whom each of us must recreate for himself. . . . " Id. at 236.).

NUDE, YET NOT NAKED

Kenneth Clark, The Nude: A Study in Ideal Form, introduction by Charles Saumarez Smith (London: The Folio Society, 2010) ("The English language, with its elaborate generosity, distinguishes between the naked and the nude. To be naked is to be deprived of our clothes, and the word implies some of the embarrassment most of us feel in that condition. The word nude, on the other hand, carries, in educated usage, no uncomfortable overtone. The vague image it projects unto the mind is not of  a huddled and defenceless body, but of a balanced, prosperous and confident body: the body re-formed. In fact, the word was forced into our vocabulary by critics of the early eighteenth century to persuade the artless islanders that, in the countries where painting and sculpture were practised and valued as they should be, the naked body was the central subject of art." Id. at 3.).

LANDSCAPE

Kenneth Clark, Landscape Into Art, introduction by Will Gompertz (London: The Folio Society, 2013) ("Before landscape painting could be made an end in itself, it had to be fitted into the ideal concept to which every artist and writer on art subscribed for three hundred years after the Renaissance. The delight in imitation . . . was not enough. . . . Both in content and design landscape must aspire to those higher kinds of painting, which illustrate a theme, religious, historical or poetic. And this cannot be done simply by introducing a small group of figures enacting the Flight into Egypt or the story of Eurydice, but by the mood character of the whole scene. The features of which it is composed must be chosen from nature, as poetic diction is chosen from ordinary speech, for their elegance, their ancient associations and their faculty of harmonious combination. Ut pictura poesis." Id. at 77. "As an old-fashioned individualist I believe that all the science and bureaucracy in the world, all the atom bombs and concentration camps, will not entirely destroy the human spirit; and the spirit will always succeed in giving itself a visible shape. But what form that will take we cannot foretell." Id. at 167.).

SUGGESTED FICTION, OR HOW I SURVIVED A CRUDDY ACADEMIC YEAR

Tahar Ben Jelloun, The Last Friend, translated from the French by Kevin Michel Cape & Hazel Rowley (New York: Penguin Books, 2007) (a lyrical meditation on friendship).

Eleanor Catton, The Luminaries; A Novel (New York: Little, Brown, 2013) ("'But the deed is binding,' Anna said again. 'It has to be.' Mr. Fellowes smiled, 'I'm afraid the law doesn't quite work that way. Think on this. I could write you a check right now for a million pounds, but that doesn't mean you're a million pounds up, does it, if I've nothing in my pocket, and nobody to act as my surety? Money always has to come out of someone's pocket, and if everyone's pockets are are empty ... well, that's that, no matter what anyone might claim'" Id. at 578.).

Teju Cole, Every Day Is For the Thief: Fiction (New York: Random House, 2014).

Teju Cole, Open City: A Novel  (New York: Random House Trade Paperbacks, 2012) ("You have to set yourself a challenge, and you must find a way to meet it exactly, whether it is a parachute, or a dive form a cliff, or sitting perfectly still for an hour, and you must accomplish it in a beautiful way, of course." Id. at 197.).

Louise Erdrich, The Round House: A Novel (New York: Harper, 2012).

Ruchama King Feuerman, In the Courtyard of the Kabbalist: A Novel (New York: New York Review Books, 2013) (see blog post of 4/18/2014).

Frederick Forsyth, The Day of the Jackal, introduced by Ken Follett, Illustrated by Tatsuro Kiuchi (London: The Folio Society, 2014).

Ford Madox Ford, Parade's End, introduction by Philip Hensher, illustrated by James Albon (London: The Folio Society, 2014) ("'But one has to keep on going. . . . Principles are like a skeleton map of a country--you know whether you're going east or north.'" Id. at 148.).

Elizabeth Gilbert, The Signature of All Things: A Novel (New York: Viking, 2013) ("'What are we to do, then, with our suffering?' Alma asked. This was not a question Alma would ever have posed to a minister, or a philosopher, or a poet, but she was curious--desperate, even--to hear an answer from Hanneke de Groot. 'Well, child, you may do whatever you like with your suffering,' Hanneke said mildly. 'It belongs to you. But I shall tell you what I do with mine. I grasp it by the small hairs, I cast it to the ground, and I grind it under the heel of my boot. I suggest you learn to do the same'." Id. at 158.).

Sue Monk Kidd, The Invention of Wings: A Novel (New York: Viking, 2014) ("I'd chosen the regret I could live with best, that's all. I'd chosen the life I belonged to." Id. at 295.).

Phil Klay, Redeployment (New York: The Penguin Press, 2014) (See Dexter Filkins, "The Long Road Home," NYT BookReview, Sunday, 3/9/2014.).

Jhumpa Lahiri, The Lowland: A Novel (New York: Knopf, 2013).

Valerie Martin, The Ghost of the Mary Celeste: A Novel (New York: Nan A. Talese/Doubleday, 2014).

Peter Matthiessen, In Paradise: A Novel (New York: Riverhead Books, 2014) (see Dona Rifkind, "Let Us Remember," NYT Book Review, Sunday, 4/27/2014.).

Nicole Mones, Night in Shanghai: A Novel (Boston & New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2014).

Lorrie Moore, Bark: Stories (New York: Knopf, 2014) (See David Gates, "Life Unleashed," NYT Book Review, Sunday, 2/23/2014.).

B. J. Novak, One More Thing: Stories and Other Stories (New York: Knopf, 2014) (See Teddy Wayne, "Out of Character," NYT Book Review, Sunday, 2/23/2014.).

Thomas Pynchon, Bleeding Edge: A Novel (New York: The Penguin Press, 2013).

Juan Rulfo, Pedro Paramo, translated from the Spanish by Margaret Sayers Peden, with a Foreword by Susan Sontag (New York: Grove Press, 1955, 1994).

Diane Setterfield, Bellman & Black: A Novel (New York: Emily Bestler Books/Atria, 2013).

UNFAIR ADVANTAGE, OR MERELY SURVIVAL OF THE (TECHNOLOGICALLY) SWIFT

Michael Lewis, Flash Boys: A Wall Street Revolt (New York: Norton, 2014) (See James B. Stewart, "Gone in 0.001 Seconds," NYT Book Review, Sunday, 4/20/2014.).

BEFORE YOGA

Gary Shteyngart, Little Failure: A Memoir (New York: Random House, 2014) ("A generation of Russians has grown up without . . . knowing that, before yoga, waiting in line for an eggplant for three hours could constitute a meditative experience." Id. at 70.).

THE SPANISH CIVIL WAR AS TRAGEDY

Hugh Thomas, The Spanish Civil War (Volume One), with a forward by Michael Albert (London: The Folio Society, 2014) ("[I]n more ways that one, the Spanish Civil War would be more even than a European civil war: it would e a world war in miniature, For the conflict had broken out at a particularly critical moment not only in diplomacy . . .  but in the development of armament. . . . Thus, in a country which until July [1036\ had been technologically backward, the most modern designs in the most important industries were employed to murderous effect. The rebellion of July 1936 thus thrust Spain into the twentieth century with, in the exact sense of the word, a vengeance." Id. at 423.).

Hugh Thomas, The Spanish Civil War (Volume Two), with a forward by Michael Albert (London: The Folio Society, 2014) ("The civil war had moments of glory. But it was essentially a tragedy and interruption in the life of a European people--the one major European people, it might be gloomily remembered, that before 1936 was too poor to have a modern armament industry." Id. at 870. "Garcia Oliver, the anarchist minister of justice , , , made, on 31 January 1937, the most remarkable speech of any law minister at any time: 'Justice [he announced] must be burning hot, justice must be alive, justice cannot be restricted within the bounds of a profession. It is not that we definitely despise books and lawyers. But the fact is that there were [sic] too many lawyers. When relations between men become what they should be, there will be no need to steal and kill. For the first time, let us admit, here in Spain, that the common criminal is not an enemy of society. He is more likely to be  a victim of society. Who is there who says he dare not go out and steal if driven to it to feed his children and himself? Do not think I am making a defence of robbery. But man, after all, does not proceed form God, but from the cave, from the beast. Justice, I firmly believe, is so subtle a thing that to interpret it, one has only need of a heart." Id. at 493, cited as being quoted in 'Berryer', Red Justice (London, 1937).).