This was originally a reflection on fiction writing but is equally applicable to academic writing (which in many cases is, again, fiction, but I digress…):
I think revision is hugely underrated. It is very seldom recognized as a place where the higher creativity can live, or where it can manifest. I think it was Yeats who said that literary revision was the only place in life where a man could truly improve himself.
I have personally benefited greatly from his excellent scholarship. Here are links to his bio and a list of publications.
Bio and list of publications on the Hebrew University site.
z”l
The seminar is in full swing and had a great day talking about The Aeneid as well as functional divine kingship in the third millennium. But, of course, the day wouldn’t be complete without a gondola sighting.
I’ve had a few days to tour around Italy before the work starts up on Monday. Today I went by Dante’s tomb. Pretty cool.
Tomorrow I’m heading out to Italy to participate in the Advanced Seminar in the Humanities 2011-2012 sponsored by Università Ca’ Foscari Venezia taking place at Venice International University. I’m bummed that this means that I will have to miss SBL this year but I’m excited about spending a couple weeks in Venice. Oh, and I’m also excited about researching the ancient Mediterranean. Yes, that too.
Here is the latest batch of RBL reviews:
Joseph Blenkinsopp
Creation, Un-creation, Re-creation: A Discursive Commentary on Genesis 1-11
http://www.bookreviews.org/bookdetail.asp?TitleId=8153
Reviewed by John E. Anderson
Yoram Cohen, Amir Gilan, and Jared L. Miller, eds.
Pax Hethitica: Studies on the Hittites and Their Neighbours in Honour
of Itamar Singer
http://www.bookreviews.org/bookdetail.asp?TitleId=8022
Reviewed by Paul Sanders
Ronald Hendel, ed.
Reading Genesis: Ten Methods
http://www.bookreviews.org/bookdetail.asp?TitleId=7821
Reviewed by Frank H. Polak
Amanda H. Podany
Brotherhood of Kings: How International Relations Shaped the Ancient Near East
http://www.bookreviews.org/bookdetail.asp?TitleId=7943
Reviewed by Bertrand Lafont
Hayim Tawil
An Akkadian Lexical Companion for Biblical Hebrew:
Etymological-Semantic and Idiomatic Equivalents with Supplement on
Biblical Aramaic
http://www.bookreviews.org/bookdetail.asp?TitleId=7603
Reviewed by Aaron D. Rubin
Seth Sanders said it well:
Wilfred Lambert, the greatest Assyriologist of the late 20th century, has died. Unfailingly charming and lively, he combined intimate knowledge of a huge spectrum of texts with an abiding care for how they would have come together in real life.
Even though he has left us his work will continue to inform and inspire for generations to come.
Here is his Wikipedia page which lists a few details and accomplishments.
The research has confirmed the view of Herodotus –not always the most reliable of chroniclers of his world, often supplying a good yarn when hard facts were hard to come by – that the Garmantes were a “very great nation”.
via Fall of Gaddafi opens a new era for the Sahara’s lost civilisation | World news | The Observer.
No one really understands precisely where book publishing is headed. The traditional role of publishers–editing, production, marketing, distribution–is certainly up for grabs. What don’t appear to be up for grabs are the old-fashioned virtues of craft and quality. They still count for something. Actually, they count for everything.
–Graydon Carter in the forward to Vanity Fair’s How a Book is Born
Daniel Mendelsohn reviews a new, slimmer version of Homer’s Iliad, translated by Stephen Mitchell. Here Mendelsohn talks with Blake Eskin about where this new translation fits into the age-old argument over the authorship of the Iliad, and what’s at stake.
via The Homeric Wars: A Podcast with Daniel Mendelsohn : The New Yorker.
