After the French Revolution of 1789, the French right routinely blamed every ill of modern life on Voltaire and Rousseau.  The expressions “It’s the fault of Voltaire” and “It’s the fault of Rousseau” became so familiar that Victor Hugo could satirize them in a ditty sung by the urchin Gavroche in Les Misérables (1862):  “Joy is my character; ’tis the fault of Voltaire; Misery is my trousseau; ’tis the fault of Rousseau.”  https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2019/03/07/diderot-man-who-questioned-everything/

October 20, 2014  From 1755 to 1760, Voltaire lived at Les Délices in Geneva, where he notably wrote the Poème sur le désastre de Lisbonne, in reaction to the devastating earthquake that struck Lisbon on 1 November 1755, contributed articles to the Encyclopédie, and put the finishing touches to his most famous work, Candide, begun at his winter quarters at Montriond in Lausanne.  In the two and a half centuries since Voltaire left Les Délices, the land and views recorded by Geissler have been swallowed up by the town and the house has even been threatened with demolition to make way for high-rise buildings.  How fortunate for us that, sixty years ago, Theodore Besterman managed to persuade the local authorities to let him set up the Institut et Musée Voltaire!  The collection and the library that Besterman started and that his successors have actively developed make this a wholly fascinating place in which to immerse oneself in Voltaire’s world.  In recent years, Les Délices has welcomed another inhabitant:  Rousseau.  A portrait by Robert Gardelle that had been lost for so long that some even doubted it had ever existed was rediscovered in the bequest mentioned earlier and now hangs in the small room to the left of the entrance.  The library of the Société Jean-Jacques Rousseau is housed upstairs, while Houdon’s monumental terracotta statue of a seated Voltaire smiles on with surprising benevolence.  Once you have visited the Institut et Musée Voltaire, the logical next step is to follow Voltaire to the Château de Ferney, just over the border in France (but do check that it is not closed for restoration first).  The museum of the Institut et Musée Voltaire is open Monday to Saturday, 2–5pm, or for group visits by appointment in the morning.  Entry is free.  If you can’t get there in person, we recommend this video and the more up-to-date A short history of Les Délices: from the property of Saint-Jean to the Institut et Musée Voltaire.  https://voltairefoundation.wordpress.com/tag/rousseau/

When Italo Calvino was offered the 1985–1986 term of the prestigious Charles Eliot Norton Professorship of Poetry—Harvard’s annual lectureship held by such luminaries as T.S. Eliot, Robert Frost, Aaron Copland, E.E. Cummings, Jorge Luis Borges, Leonard Bernstein, and John Cage—he hurried to commit to paper the six lectures he would deliver over the course of the term, exploring “the millennium of the book” that was about to end and peering forward into what the future might hold for “the expressive, cognitive, and imaginative possibilities” of writing.  But as he contemplated this grand cultural precipice, he himself ran out of time.  Calvino—a sage of writing and a man of enduring insight into such subtleties of existence as distraction and procrastination, the art of asserting oneself with grace, and the meaning of life—died shortly before he was scheduled to depart for Harvard to deliver the lectures.  He had spent his final months laboring over them but had completed only five of the six, eventually published as Six Memos for the Next Millennium (public library | IndieBound).  Perhaps the most poignant of his lectures, both in the context of Calvino’s own fate in the hands of time’s merciless gallop and in his prescience about today’s age of compulsive speediness that he never lived to see, is the second one, titled “Quickness.”  Calvino points to folktales and fairy tales as an especially enduring example of masterful quickness, for “the economy, rhythm, and hard logic with which they are told.”  Six Memos for the Next Millennium is a revelatory read in its entirety, a worthy last legacy of one of modern history’s most magnificent minds.  Sample it further with the first lecture, exploring the unbearable lightness of language, literature, and life, then complement it with Calvino on how to lower your “worryability”, the two psychological types of writers, and the paradox of America.  Maria Popova   See illustrations inspired by Calvino’s stories and read his thoughts on the “magic of quickness” at https://www.brainpickings.org/2014/12/04/italo-calvino-six-memos-for-the-next-millennium-quickness/

Cremini Mushrooms aren’t Italian mushrooms.  “Cremini” is just a marketing name that was picked.  Witness the confusion between whether the name is actually spelt Cremini or Crimini.  Cremini Mushrooms are actually the same species of mushroom as White Button Mushrooms (Agaricus bisporus.)  They are just a slightly different strain of that species, which develops a thin layer of tan or coffee-coloured cells on its cap.  The mushrooms will have a bit more flavour than White Button Mushrooms.  When the mushrooms are picked while the cap is still closed, they are called Cremini, Baby Bella, Mini Bella, Portobellini, Baby Portobella, etc.  When the mushrooms are allowed to grow further in size, developing a darker skin and an opened-cap exposing the gills on the underside, they, like Chestnut Mushrooms, are called Portobello Mushrooms.  Known as “Swiss Browns” in Australia.  https://www.cooksinfo.com/cremini-mushrooms  Copyright © 2020

At Rice & Miso in Boerum Hill, Brooklyn, the most distinctive Japanese rice ball filling is a savory paste made from miso, garlic and onion that tastes electric, like a current rippling across your tongue.  Owner Mika Hatsushima is sensitive to her customers’ dietary needs, and committed to using organic ingredients.  Her soups, miso and a root-vegetable soup called kenchin, are made with vegan kelp broth and loaded with locally grown vegetables.  The petite counter-service restaurant is near several schools, and many of Ms. Hatsushima’s customers arrive with young children in tow.  As the children perched on backless stools, they slurped miso soup and their little fingers plucked at pods of edamame.  Ms. Hatsushima loves to see it, too.  It’s better for the kids to eat here after school, she said.  “Don’t eat ice cream.  Eat rice balls.”   The New York Times  March 5, 2020

“When a true genius appears, you can know him by this sign:  that all the dunces are in a confederacy against him.” – Jonathan Swift  A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole  Meet Ignatius J. Reilly, a 30-year-old, aspiring writer who lives in his mother’s basement in 1960s New Orleans.  Ignatius is over-educated, over-weight and over wrought.  After years of living off his doting, alcoholic mother Irene’s welfare checks, Ignatius reluctantly determines that success in life means striving to do better rather than resting on ones laurels; he decides he must leave the basement and become an actual member of society if he is ever to be somebody and impress his old girlfriend, Myrna Minkoff, who is living her own life in New York City.  While the novel is hilarious, thought provoking and hopeful, the story of the author is a sad one.  After years of trying to publish A Confederacy of Dunces, John Kennedy Toole fell into a depression; he took his own life in 1969 at age 31.  After his death, his mother, Thelma, continued to submit the manuscript to publishers; eleven years later, in 1980, the book was picked up.  The following year, John Kennedy Toole won a Pulitzer Prize.  http://www.highpoint.edu/library/2018/03/26/books-we-love-a-confederacy-of-dunces/  To read more about John Kennedy Toole, we recommend Butterfly in the Typewriter by Corey MacLauchlin.  Blog post by Alex Frey 

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2251  April 6, 2020