Being an owner of an iPhone, I cannot imagine buying an iPad. The iPad sounds like big screen iPhone without the phone. And I’ll be damned if I’m going to get a separate ATT 3G plan just for that kind of connection to an iPad. ATT 3G on the iPhone is disappointing and frustrating enough for me.
iPad?
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State Street 
Well, apart from the AT&T issue, how do you know you don’t want the iPad? I would certainly like to put my thumbs on it, hold it, even fondle it before I buy one. Then I’ll probably wait a couple of months and read about all the possible uses people will discover. Then maybe version 2.
But what about a decent sized chess board when you’re down at the bar:)? And what about reading Maile Meloy’s next collection on iBooks (I can’t read on my iPhone, it’s too damn small). And what about watching some baseball as you enjoy?
I don’t think we have even begun to imagine all the uses it will have for people. It could easily become the “uncomputer for the masses” from grandmother to student, from doctor to teenager, from lawyer to client, and what about the 100.000+ apps we already have on the iPhone blown up to viewable size?
I’m definitely tempted, but then I’m an Apple fanboy – and stockholder:)
Oh, I forgot to add this hands-on account from people who have actually tried the iPad. They’re trying to be “objective”.
http://tinyurl.com/yj69vtz
Orla –
You are a good Apple salesman. Now, I believe I want one.
Ah, Lynn, you are old enough to make up your own mind :).
Returning to Raymond Carver: I just re-watched Altmann’s “Short Cuts” based on the stories. This is so unnerving. I get irritated at these people. Why don’t they get a grip?
But Raymond Carver never passes judgement. That’s his genius.
I can’t resist it.
Orla –
I liked “Short Cuts”. The thing I like about Carver’s poetry is he knows how to dissect life, even his own, stand back from it, and see it as an objective observer, while, as you say, never quite passing judgment. The free will/determinism question is always speculated upon, but never has a patent answer.
We are the authors of our narratives, but who knows about our fates?
We are the authors of our narratives, but who knows about our fates? Well put. In fact, the whole paradigm of life as text is in itself proof of the power of our instinct for narratology.
In Carver’s minimalism we are co-authors busily filling the empty spaces. This carries with it a certain pleasure or even passion but hardly any intellectual desire. Like you I can enjoy his clinical, naked registration of human frailty but I miss Borges’ philosophical “swung”. Don’t you sometimes?
Carver’s poetry is not very impressive, I think. I miss imagery, startling metaphors, etc, although I take your point that he can stand back and view it dispassionately.
Both you and I can do that, as well, looking at our lives, right?
I have always admired W. B Yeats’ own inscription on his gravestone,
Cast a cold eye,
Horsemen, pass by
A correction: I quoted Yeats from memory, but have just looked it up. It actually reads,
“Cast a cold Eye
On Life, on Death
Horsemen pass by!”
– that makes it even better!
Orla –
Some famous American writer who was a friend of Carver’s said he wrote poetry when he was feeling lazy. I wish something approximating Carver’s poetry would come from my laziness. He does not write about things in his poetry but about events that stand as metaphors for something about the way life is as we live it with our frailties.
I like the poem 380 BC where Xerxes orders the Hellespont be tortured for halting his march to Greece. When the Greeks hear the news, they were surprised–that Xerxes was on the march. 🙂 I like that way of putting the notion that we are all trapped in our culture and time no matter who we think are the real barbarians.
Borges was a multifaceted genius. The genius of the poet married to the genius of the mathematician. There will never be another like him, or at least, that’s what I would bet.
I love that Yeat’s epitaph, but he must have been kidding. What horseman would not halt for a little while?
Lynn,
I like that way of putting the notion that we are all trapped in our culture and time no matter who we think are the real barbarians.
That’s a great line. Who are the real barbarians? Isn’t this what contingency is all about?
Your characterization of Borges is spot on. Someone like him doesn’t come around very often.
About Yeats: There is no one as vain as him in Irish letters (apart from Oscar Wilde, of course, as Oscar would readily admit 🙂 – and what a joy he still is!) so Yeats would naturally take as a priori that OF COURSE the horsemen would stop TO READ before moving on.
Still, Yeats did compose the best sentence of all,
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold
from The Second Coming
http://www.web-books.com/Classics/Poetry/Anthology/Yeats/Second.htm
– but all of his mysticism and Christian BS we can do without.
Lynn, you are indeed a “well-rounded man” (and of course I know you wannna get laid and have a love connection) – but what are you reading now?