1/ Gus­tave Doré’s illus­tra­tion of Par­adiso XXXI*:

2/ From An Excep­tion­ally Simple Theory of Everything,” Gar­rett Lisi’s pro­posed model of the uni­verse, which is based on the E8 geom­e­try**:

Wendy Doniger, circa On the Road.

Wendy Doniger makes a cameo in a Time arti­cle about Fran­cis Ford Coppola’s new movie Youth With­out Youth:

One friend who sent Cop­pola encour­ag­ing notes on his Mega­lopo­lis script was Wendy Doniger, the first girl he had ever kissed and the one who gave him On the Road when they were stu­dents at Great Neck High School in Long Island, New York, in the ’50s. (Cop­pola has optioned the book.) He flew his pri­vate plane to Chicago to pick up Doniger, now a Uni­ver­sity of Chicago pro­fes­sor of Hin­duism and com­par­a­tive mythol­ogy, and bring her back to Napa to dis­cuss her ideas with him and his wife Eleanor. Over the house wine and Coppola’s cook­ing, they talked about his career. “He was stuck,” says Doniger. “For the first time in his life, he could finance a movie, and there­fore he didn’t have to do what any­body else said, and that par­a­lyzed him. He had no excuse this time if the film was no good. What froze him was having the power to do exactly what he wanted so that his soul was on the line.”

Hoping to help him with some of the themes he was strug­gling with on Mega­lopo­lis, Doniger gave Cop­pola some of Eliade’s works, includ­ing Youth With­out Youth.

…Read More…

1/ “Signals at Sea,” a poem by Annie Dil­lard built of pas­sages from Cugle’s Prac­ti­cal Nav­i­ga­tion and pub­lished in Morn­ings Like This:

(If the flags in A’s hoist cannot be made out,
B keeps her answer­ing pen­nant at the “Dip”
and hoists the signal “OWL” or “WCX.”)

CXL Do not aban­don me.
A I am under­go­ing a speed trial.
D Keep clear of me - I am maneu­ver­ing
with dif­fi­culty.
F I am dis­abled. Com­mu­ni­cate with me.
G I require a pilot.

P Your lights are out, or burn­ing badly.
U You are stand­ing into danger.
X Stop car­ry­ing out your inten­tions.
K You should stop your vessel instantly.
L You should stop. I have some­thing
impor­tant to communicate.

R You may feel your way past me.

2/ “ROMEO AND JULIET,” a poem by Hannah Weiner built of pas­sages from the Inter­na­tional Code of Sig­nals and pub­lished in The Code Poems (now avail­able in Hannah Weiner’s Open House, a new selec­tion of her poems edited by Patrick Durgin):

MFD Juliet: Try to enter
KZU Romeo: I am in dif­fi­cul­ties; direct me how to steer
OOX Juliet: You should swing and enter stern first
HBK Romeo: What is the nature of the bottom or what kind of bottom have you?
HAY Juliet: Double bottom
FHR Romeo: Stern way. Going astern
LK Juliet: Go astern easy. Easy astern
ODI Romeo: I am going full speed
HC Juliet: It is not safe to go so fast
KZY Romeo: It is dif­fi­cult to extri­cate
BK Juliet: Is any­thing the matter
VLA Romeo: Cock broken or dam­aged
EHR Juliet: What do the cost of repairs amount to?
DF Romeo: With some assis­tance I shall be able to set things to rights

In today’s Guardian Ronan Ben­nett goes after Martin Amis for “The Age of Horrorism,” a nasty 12,000-word essay on Islam pub­lished in The Observer (The Guardian’s sister pub) last year. My take on Amis’s essay, writ­ten last year after the orig­i­nal arti­cle came out, is here. (A shorter ver­sion, pub­lished in the U. of Chicago Sight­ings series, is here.)