From Inside Higher Education‘s pseudonymous columnist Fleur LaDouleur, on the planet-naming process, the farewell to Pluto, a 1907 tryst between the sun and the moon, and other bridges and burned bridges between the Two Cultures:

Those of us in the humanities were reminded recently of our place in the universe. Here’s the deal: When space was handed out, we were out having coffee and lost our place in line to … wandering cognitive scientists. But the coffee was good and gave us a chance to ponder yet again what we thought were the very serious questions: Was Heidegger a Nazi? Was Manet an Impressionist or was that Monet? Is the universe — oops, the university — in ruins? We learned on August 24, however, that a decision of importance to those interested in knowledge in general was made without our input and that — on top of it all — this decision involved shrinking the available space in the university — oops, the universe — allotted to humanistic endeavors. Is this gerrymandering? You bet. And Pluto’s out. We’re down from nine to eight in our naming rights, and that’s what humanists do — we name things.
…
Other recent decisions in the scientific community have also been pushed through committees without the input of the humanities. As everyone knows, any bona fide humanist reads The New Yorker. The bona fide among you will recall a recent article in that magazine on the “Fields Medal,” the big shot medal in mathematics (we thought it was the Nobel Prize — wrong again). According to The New Yorker, this Fields Medal business could lead to increased global warming, as Russian and Chinese scholars duke it out. (By the way, the Russian guy, who lives with his mother and has no friends, sounds suspiciously like a humanist). I am not saying that if someone from, say, modern languages and literatures had been on the committee that world peace would be ensured; I am saying that that person could have communicated in the native tongues to help sort out misunderstandings — translation is, after all, just another way of naming things.

I can’t agree with LaDouleur that all physicists have a God complex, but I laughed when I got to this line: “I know many people of my generation who would much rather have seen a man walk on Pluto than on the Moon, even if it took him 2,000 light years to get there and even if he never came back.” And I’m very pleased that she mentions H.A. Rey’s Find the Constellations, I book I loved that taught me how to pronounce Betelgeuse years before the Winona Ryder movie.

Related on Emdashes:
Math Is Hard
You’re Always a Planet to Me, Pluto

From the LiveJournal group for New Yorker fans (posted June 12):

DC/VA/MD New Yorker Readers Discussion Group

Like a book club, but for the New Yorker magazine, in the Washington, DC metro area.

We have a couple of openings in our New Yorker magazine reading group. We get together at a cafe or coffee shop to talk about recent articles and cartoons in the magazine. We usually have two long and two short articles chosen to be read in advance, along with questions to stimulate discussion. That’s easier than reading The Da Vinci Code, isn’t it?

The next meeting is coming up soon, so if you live in the DC area and want to talk about the magazine in person, contact me for the details.

Want to join, if they’ve still got space? Why wouldn’t you? Email John here.

An appealing reader and writer in New Delhi, Mayank Austen Soofi, has a novel encounter with War and Peace and others (boldface mine):

I was sixteen when I was given a copy of War and Peace by a family friend as a birthday gift. This gentleman had no passion for books and had mistakenly assumed, after noticing my stacks of Enid Blytons, Nancy Drews… and let’s face it… Danielle Steels and Sidney Sheldons, that I was into serious reading. He was unaware that I was only beginning to recover from a bad decision of buying Charles Dickens’s A Tale of Two Cities. I had read an easy English version of David Copperfield in my school without realizing it was not the original edition. (Nobody told me!)

I had imagined that A Tale of Two Cities would be an equally easy, exciting, emotional, tearful roller-coaster of a novel. But I could not go beyond the first celebrated paragraph of “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…” This was an original unedited version and Charles Dickens was difficult!

Now I had this War and Peace. It was thick as an elephant and had a most appealing cover of an elegantly dressed Napoleon, in his Tricorn hat, riding atop a white horse on a grassy slope. The evocative cover picture appeared to be a still from some television series based on the novel.

The translation, of course, was by the great Constance Garnett. At that time journalist David Remnick still had to write his now-celebrated essay on different translations of Russian novels (“The Translation Wars”, 7 November, 2005, New Yorker; not available online), and so my ignorance rescued me from the torment of later years that a translation could be of great significance to the soul of a story originally written in an unfamiliar language.

Besides, it did not occur to me that Constance Garnett was a woman!
…
After a quick settlement with the sympathetic owner of a Delhi bookshop, the book soon arrived from Toronto. It was difficult to get my eyes off the cover. I turned to the first page and felt at home. They were all characters who had by now almost become a family: Anna Pavlovna, Anatole, Prince Vassily, Boris, Dolohov, Princess Bolonsky, Pierre….

But just as I begun to finally enjoy the novel, there appeared The Looming Tower – a most gripping book on 9/11. My greedy mind struggled with tormenting life-defining questions: is it advisable to stick to reading a rather-dull thousand page novel while the heart is whispering to opt for a thin one which promises to be a page turner and a quick read? If I stand by War and Peace, would my distracting mind be able to give full attention it deserves?

And more seriously, don’t I realize that life is short and books are many? If I’m not exactly enjoying War and Peace, if my heart is not in it, do I still need to read it? Won’t I be better reading books I could enjoy? What if I die tomorrow? Won’t it be tragic to have spent the last minutes of my life reading something which I was forcing myself to read and not because I really wanted to? Hello, who am I fooling?

So I dumped Tolstoy for The Looming Tower which I hungrily devoured only to start Isaac Bashevis Singer’s Collected Stories. There seems to be no immediate plans for War and Peace. I have instead decided to wait for the much-awaited and much-hyped new translation that is to be released in the fall of 2007 by Modern Library.

The classic is being translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky – a celebrated couple who are considered the best Russian language translators of our times. Their translation of Anna Karenina was famously selected by Oprah for her book club. The critics are already calling it the authoritative translation in English.

Oh yes, I promise to read the hardbound edition of that translation of the War and Peace.

Also, there’s a curious little Edward P. Jones and New Yorker anecdote here in the North Carolina newspaper the News & Observer (by William L. Hamilton, originally in the NYT). I’d like to hear more of this story.

Finally, since we should really stop separating the various branches of culture, since lord knows they sometimes struggle on their long roads alone, this Sarasota note from Southwest Florida’s Herald Tribune. Charlie Huisking writes:

Hard to replace

The thought of replacing Daniel Moe as artistic director of Key Chorale is daunting not only to the organization, but to some of the candidates.

“Several have told us they’ve replied to our ad with trepidation, because they hold Daniel in such high regard,” said Key Chorale executive director Richard Storm.

A former director of the renowned Oberlin College Choir in Ohio, the 80-year-old Moe was called the “dean” of choral conductors by New Yorker magazine. He has led the 100-member Key Chorale for 20 years.

Complicating the search is the part-time nature of the job. A successor who isn’t in semi-retirement as Moe was would need to supplement his or her income, likely as an educator or church musician.

Three finalists will come to Sarasota in January to conduct the choir. “They’ll each do one piece from the standard rep — a great warhorse — and then a new piece,” Storm said.

Moe has been “generous in his approach to this process,” Storm said. “He purposely hasn’t recommended any candidates, and he’s encouraged us to look at anyone we feel might be a good candidate.”

Was this an Alex Ross piece? My Complete New Yorker will know. Stay tuned.