It occurred to me that, rather than constantly refer to the poem that contains the line that inspired my book, I should just give it to you.
Here, then, is Rudyard Kipling’s If, in text and in video, read by Dennis Hopper. I’ve highlighted the lines that popped into my head that day when I had [...]
Posts Tagged as ‘Rudyard Kipling’
November 10, 2008
Kipling’s If
November 10, 2008
Postscript on McCain
Read David Grann in The New Yorker on what I consider an epic, a Greek, a heart-rending tragedy: the transformation, under pressure, of a great man, John McCain.
This is a man who was once “more at peace when he was losing” and who, above all, was afraid only of one thing: losing his honor.
Thinking in [...]
October 15, 2008
Uncle Lulu
That guy with the cigar on this West German stamp from 1987 is my great-uncle, Ludwig Erhard, or “Onkel Lulu” in our family.
Why is he on this blog?
Well, I’ve been posting a lot about writing and language and style recently, all of which of course has a lot to do with the writing of my [...]
September 23, 2008
Churchill on well-disguised impostors
My book is about Kipling’s notion that success and failure, or triumph and disaster, can be impostors. That does not mean, of course, that all triumphs and all disasters are always impostors. But to say that wittily, we really need ole Winston.
Churchill, as it happens, lived a life that in many ways illustrates Kipling’s impostors, [...]
September 1, 2008
The suffering of Frida Kahlo
I popped into the Frida Kahlo exhibition currently at the San Francisco MOMA. Mainly, to see her piercing paintings–and boy, do they pierce–but also, at least in part, as research for my book.
A friend of ours, Erika Lessey Chen, had suggested Kahlo to me a year ago as a possible life-story to look into. I [...]
August 27, 2008
Biden and Demosthenes: A tale of two stammerers
As I was watching Beau Biden (video below) and his father Joe at the Democratic Convention today, I was struck by a stunning parallel between Senator Biden’s remarkable life story and that of the ancient Greek orator Demosthenes.
Both were stammerers in their youth. Both were taunted for it with cutting nicknames–”dash” for Biden, since he [...]
August 22, 2008
Which Bhagavad Gita?
“With no desire for success, no anxiety about failure, indifferent to results, he burns up his actions in the fire of wisdom. Surrendering all thoughts of outcome, unperturbed, self-reliant, he does nothing at all, even when fully engaged in actions.
There is nothing that he expects, nothing that he fears. Serene, free from possessions, untainted, acting [...]
August 20, 2008
The map of Hannibal’s march and life
Join me for a moment in having fun with this map below.
It comes to us, via the Wikimedia Commons, from Frank Martini, a cartographer in the Department of History at the United States Military Academy.
There are two ways of looking at this map–one obvious and one surprising and cheeky–and I will avail myself of both. [...]
August 11, 2008
The Narcissism of John Edwards: Impostor Success or Failure?
In my first preview of one of Kipling’s two impostors, triumph, I casually nodded to hubris as the most obvious mechanism that turns success into disaster, then went on to give another example that I thought was a bit subtler.
And now John Edwards forces me to come back to hubris. In case, you’ve been behind [...]
August 10, 2008
Writer’s Koan of the day
Amy Tan, best-selling author, in today’s New York Times Magazine, when asked whether writing is a kind of performance, thus giving her anxiety:
No. It’s a meditation. It does not have to do with personal humiliation until after it gets done.
(Incidentally, she will feature in two of my chapters. I’m intrigued in the effect her [...]
July 28, 2008
Impostor Success, Part I: The Nobel Prize and pontificating windbags
After that digression (not the last, rest assured) about books in general, back to the book. I still haven’t introduced my main characters–Hannibal, Fabius and Scipio–but instead I’ve given two examples, Steve Jobs and J.K. Rowling, of failure being an impostor. Let me now give you an example of Kipling’s other impostor, triumph–because the book [...]
July 24, 2008
Impostor Failure, Part II: J.K. Rowling
In my post on Steve Jobs, I suggested that his biggest failure in life turned out–certainly in his own opinion–to be a liberating event that made possible his subsequent success. In other words, his failure was an impostor, just as Rudyard Kipling would say. In this post, I want to suggest the exact same thing, [...]
July 22, 2008
Impostor Disaster, part I: Steve Jobs
Back to the book: Remember, the whole book is a long story woven around Rudyard Kipling’s poetic insight that triumph and disaster are impostors. I want to lead up to the main character, Hannibal, with a few other examples, and today Steve Jobs comes to mind. I saw him on a stage last month, launching [...]
