The New Humanist
>A fascinating totem of an engorged culture
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Fred Rowson on the wealthy condescension in “Eat, Pray, Love” @ New Humanist.
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( None so far )I have a confession to make. This review will actually address only 95 per cent of Eat Pray Love, as the first 5 per cent was spent sitting in the lobby of the Odeon in Leicester Square, waiting for my companion, who was late. I could, of course, have caught a screening by myself, which is how I usually go about this sort of thing. That way, I would have ensured that I saw the whole thing. On this occasion, however, I thought it wise to invite someone along, that someone being mid-twenties, female, and an avid Sex and the City fan (I have it on good authority that she has a cocktail glass with “Carrie” emblazoned across it). The invitation was not a cheap trick on my part – rather, I wanted to sit next to someone who was actually expecting to enjoy Eat Pray Love. As it happens, she didn’t. She did, however, make the wait worthwhile. For, near the start of the movie, as Liz (Julia Roberts) gets into a car and drives away from her Upper West Side Brownstone town house, my companion whispered “that’s just like Carrie’s house!” (no, not the white picket fence and the hand through the garden lawn, the other Carrie). And that’s what it comes down to. That comparison is the key to understanding the wider significance of Eat Pray Love.
>A concealed but determined unbeliever
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David Wootten on the heresy of Galileo @ The New Humanist.
In 1750 a Florentine man of letters, Giovanni Battista Nelli, took some mortadella as his contribution to a picnic with friends. Opening the packet, he discovered it had been wrapped in a document written by Galileo. Nelli traced the wrapping paper back until he found a grain-bin full of Galileo documents which were being sold off as waste paper by the heirs of Galileo’s last pupil, Vincenzo Viviani. Almost everything we know about Galileo derives from that bin, and we have no way of knowing how many key documents went to wrap steaks, kidneys and salami. But that is not the only or indeed the greatest obstacle to understanding Galileo.
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( None so far )When Galileo died in 1642 the Vatican decreed that there could be no memorial to him in any church – no plaque, no tombstone, no statue. But his student Viviani turned the front of his own house into an elaborate memorial to his former master, recording his discoveries, but carefully making no mention of his support for Copernicanism or his condemnation by the Inquisition. Viviani also wanted to publish, in Italy and under ecclesiastical censorship, an edition of Galileo’s works. But in many cases he destroyed the originals of Galileo’s letters and kept only copies, and there is no doubt that the copies were carefully edited; in one case we know he falsified a text. Viviani’s purpose, it seems, was to prove that Galileo had never defended Copernicanism after his condemnation in 1633 and had always been a faithful Catholic (a view consistently maintained by the Church. In 1992, Pope John Paul II, for example, described Galileo as “a sincere believer”).
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