Notes from a small island

Notes from a small island
A weblog by Jonathan Ali

Tuesday, April 25, 2006

[T]he most powerful part of Jesus and Yahweh, the moment when the book really comes alive, is when, ironically enough, Bloom is being theological. Near the end, he gives a brief summary of his cherished Gnostic and Kabbalistic beliefs, and then launches a series of anguished laments. Generally, Bloom's Gnosticism has been inert, theologically speaking--he seems to have so little interest in its fundamental raison d'être, which is to explain the large questions of theodicy; but at the end of his book Bloom gives voice to a kind of plangent Gnostic complaint, whereby he asks Yahweh, in effect, why he has abandoned us--and more particularly, why he has abandoned the Jews. Where did God go? Bloom wonders if Yahweh is off in space, nursing his lovelessness. Or perhaps, following Jack Miles, God has deserted us because he has withdrawn into the contradictions of his own character?

-- James Wood takes on Harold Bloom in The New Republic.

posted by Jonathan | 9:51 PM 0 comments

Sunday, April 23, 2006

A lighter news item, to temper the preceding one: For the first time in his career, Bob Dylan is becoming a DJ. And one of the songs on the playlist for his first broadcast is a calypso.

The song is "Jamaica Hurricane" by the late, great Lord Beginner, and is one of a set of songs on the theme of weather, which will be on Dylan's first broadcast on XM Satellite Radio, due to be broadcast on May 3.

Of course, Dylan is known to be a massive fan of calypso. As the songs says: "Ezra Pound and T. S. Eliot/Fighting in the captain's tower/While calypso singers laugh at them/
And fishermen hold flowers".

posted by Jonathan | 10:11 AM 0 comments

The news that the Guyanese Minister of Fisheries, Crops and Livestock, Satyadeow Sawh, was brutally gunned down at his home along with his brother, sister and bodyguard early Saturday morning is sending shockwaves around the Caribbean.

Robbery appears to tbe motive in what was a well-orchestrated attack on the minister's home, after it was reported that the gunmen demnanded cash and jewellery of the family, and ransacked the house. But a statement from the Guyana Government Information Agency, reported in the Sunday Express, is calling the incident "a well-planned and executed assassination carried out by a large, heavily armed gang."

The Express article also calls Sawh's murder "unprecedented in the history of parliamentary politics in the English-speaking Caribbean-outside of the 1983 coup in Greanda". Strictly speaking this may be so, in that it is the first time a sitting minister of government has been murdered, but let's not forget the assassination of former T&T attorney general Selwyn Richardson, which still remains officially unsolved.

In any event, ths is a very worrying development. Very worrying indeed.

posted by Jonathan | 9:39 AM 0 comments