Susan Sontag on Censorship & the 3 Steps to Refuting Any Argument

“A just/ discriminating censorship is impossible.”

As a hopeless worshiper of Susan Sontag, I’ve been ravenously devouring the newly released As Consciousness Is Harnessed to Flesh: Journals and Notebooks, 1964-1980 (public library) — an extraordinary look at the inner world of a genius, oscillating between conviction and insecurity in the most beautifully imperfect and human way possible. From detailed notes on her formidable media diet of literature and film to her intense love affairs and infatuations to her meditations on society’s values and vices, the hefty volume is a true cultural treasure.

Among its many highlights is an entry from September 16, 1965, written during a trip to Paris:

The main techniques for refuting an argument:

Find the inconsistency
Find the counter-example
Find a wider context

Instance of (3):  

I am against censorship. In all forms. Not just for the right of masterpieces— high art— to be scandalous.  

But what about pornography (commercial)?
Find the wider context:
notion of voluptuousness à la Bataille?
But what about children? Not even for them? Horror comics, etc.
Why forbid them comics when they can read worse things in the newspapers any day. Napalm bombing in Vietnam, etc.  

A just/ discriminating censorship is impossible.

As Consciousness Is Harnessed to Flesh is a follow-up to the 2008 tome Reborn: Journals and Notebooks, 1947-1963, also a pricelessly intimate lens on one of modern history’s greatest minds.

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Henri Matisse’s Rare 1935 Etchings for James Joyce’s Ulysses

A 22-karat creative cross-pollination.

Bloomsday may have come and gone — the world’s foremost holiday of talking about books you haven’t read — but a rare gem calls for extending the Joyce-related celebrations a little while longer. In 1935, American publisher George Macey offered the great Henri Matisse $5,000 to create as many etchings as this budget would afford for a special illustrated edition of Ulysses. After Open Culture flagged the book last week, I gathered up my year’s worth of lunch money and was able to grab one of the last copies available online — a glorious leather-bound tome with 22-karat gold accents, gilt edges, moire fabric endsheets, and a satin page marker. The Matisse drawings inside it, of course, are the most priceless of its offerings — the best thing since Salvador Dalí’s little-known Alice in Wonderland illustrations. Enjoy.

A few more copies still remain on Amazon, or if you’re so endowed, you could snag a copy signed by both Joyce and Matisse for $30,000.

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Shakespeare and the Number 14, or Why Poetry and Mathematics Belong Together

A short lesson in cultural cross-pollination.

We’ve already seen how Shakespeare changed everything and how Fibonacci, “the man of numbers,” changed the world. But in this short video, Professor Roger Bowley uses Shakespeare’s iambic pentameter and penchant for the number 14 to show that the bard was quite the man of numbers himself, revealing a relationship between poetry and mathematics much more tightly knit than the standard cultural compartmentalization would have you believe.

Poetry is an extreme form of wordplay, in which numbers dictate form and structure to give more beauty to it.

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