Responses: from "quirk" to quirk by James Panero

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In the Aeneid, the Roman poet Virgil sang of "arms and a man" (Arma virumque cano). Month in and month out, The New Criterion expounds with great clarity and wit on the art, culture, and political controversies of our times. With postings of reviews, essays, links, recs, and news, Armavirumque seeks to continue this mission in accordance with the timetable of the digital age.

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Sep 25, 2007 11:03 AM

Responses: from "quirk" to quirk

by James Panero

Two bloggers weigh in on the quirk debate:

First, Modern Kicks:

I can’t help but cheer at any rhetorical bricks thrown at the insufferable Ira Glass, and to a certain extent agree that the author’s later backtracking to only being against "bad quirk" is something of a copout.

Then James G. Poulos:

At Arma Virumque, James Panero helps us cleanse the hip soul of its most tacky component: the desire not simply to revel in self-contradictory bouts of sincere irony and ironic sincerity, but to make a living doing it. The inevitable outcome of working, as Rieff put it, to have our past and eat it too would seem to be the application of the same principle to our present. Add the commodification of emotion and you’ve got yourself our generation’s most sigh-inducing and already trite cottage industry.

And with a "different" take on Tintoretto, here is a genuinely quirky letter:

Dear Mister Panero,
How to do away with the misconceptions, misrepresentations of historic symbols?
Your article in the Wall Street Journal of this weekend was very interesting reading. However, why have you left out a rather historically important analysis of the painting: The Winter Solstice of the Sun symbolized by the Astral Sun God Jesus anno 325CE number 17 on the list of Astral Sun Gods.
The painting is indeed a beautiful symbol of the Winter Solstice of the Sun, using the Solar Cross. The Oldest Symbol of human civilization: The Solar Cross has evolved into the Crucifixion = Crucifiction. It would be intellectually and historically interesting to see a new article on the same subject from the perspective of its original meaning.
Tintoretto’s painting is once more a great example of a natural phenomenon that follows the movements of the Sun on a yearly basis. The twisted human mind has turned a beautiful peaceful natural occurrence into a perverted symbolism of horror and dead; the glorification of the divinity of a horror story that historically cannot be sustained.

The message of the painting: Without the Sun, life on Earth cannot be sustained as we know it.
When the Sun moves under the horizon for 3 days there was anxiety and fear among the people. What would happen if the Sun did not rise again? This wisdom was part of the Ancient world. This wisdom appears to be lost in today’s world.
J.L.