Horizon

Almost 2005: Do You Know Where Your Morality Is?

Say I'm on a Didion kick; say I never rise above the junior college mindset. I fell in love with her twenty-five years ago, and I love her still. From the 1965 essay, On Morality:

That the ethic of conscience is intrinsically insidious seems scarcely a revelatory point, but it is one raised with increasing infrequency; even those who do raise it tend to segue with troubling readiness into the quite contradictory position that the ethic of conscience is dangerous when it is “wrong” and admirable when it is “right.”

You see I want to be quite obstinate about insisting that we have no way of knowing – beyond that fundamental loyalty to the social code – what is “right” and what is “wrong,” what is “good” and what “evil.” I dwell so upon this because the most disturbing aspect of “morality” seems to me to be the frequency with which the word now appears; in the press, on television, in the most perfunctory kinds of conversation. Questions of straightforward power (or survival) politics, questions of quite indifferent public policy, questions of almost anything: they are all assigned these factitious moral burdens. There is something facile going on, some self-indulgence at work. Of course we would all like to “believe” in something, like to assuage our private guilts in public causes, like to lose our tiresome selves; like, perhaps, to transform the white flag of defeat at home into the brave white banner of battle away from home. And of course it is all right to do that; that is how, immemorially, things have gotten done. But I think it is all right only so long as we do not delude ourselves about what we are doing and why. It is all right only so long as we remember that all the ad hoc committees, all the picket lines, all the brave signatures in The New York Times, all the tools of agitprop straight across the spectrum, do not confer upon anyone any ipso facto virtue. It is all right only so long as we recognize that the end may or may not be expedient, may or may not be a good idea, but in any case has nothing to do with “morality.” Because when we start deceiving ourselves into thinking not that we want something or need something, not that it is a pragmatic necessity for us to have it, but that it is a moral imperative that we have it, then is when we join the fashionable madmen, and then is when the thin whine of hysteria is heard in the land, and then is when we are in bad trouble. And I suspect we are already there.

Happy New Year.

First Things on Orwell

On my plane ride to Virginia this Christmas, I read a decent Orwell article in the latest issue of the mostly-Catholic magazine First Things. They've put it online now, so have a read.

The first half of the article holds nothing new, but the second does a fair job of highlighting Orwell's anti-doctrinal approach, summarized in this paragraph:

First, there is the conviction that there is a natural moral order whose fundamental contours are evident to those whose perceptions and consciences have not been malformed—or, as Orwell would prefer to say, to those whose ordinary decency is still in place. Second, there is the conviction that tyrannical oppression, whether of one by many, many by one, or many by many, is a paradigmatic offense against the natural moral order. Third, there is the conviction that a principal cause of the dissolution of ordinary decency is the deformation of language and thought to accord with the demands of a doctrinal system—with, that is, the attempt to ascend further up the ladder of theory than is appropriate to the case.

R.I.P.

Well, R.I.P. Susan Sontag for one.

The tsunami -- well, it's all over the news. Am parochially worried about a neighbor who was probably in South India this past week, tho don't even know if she planned to be near the coast. Hard to wrap the brain around a hundred thousand dead.

Werner and Klaus

Overcooked but still interesting article on Klaus Kinsky in Salon. The author is a bit too thrilled with that romantic vulgarity that Kinsky embodied, but the descriptions of Woyzeck and Cobra Verde in particular are perfectly accurate.

For those not familiar with Herzog, with whom Kinsky made all of his important films, he's the fellow who made that documentary about Gesualdo which I reviewed a while ago.

It's That Constitutional Thang

This day in 1864, an Indiana civilian, Lambdin P. Milligan, wrote his friend Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, requesting a reconsideration of his conviction for conspiracy and consequent death sentence by a military court. This led to the Supreme Court decision, Ex parte Milligan (1866), maintaining that military courts have no jurisdiction in states where regular government and courts are functioning.

Justice David Davis wrote:

“Martial law cannot arise from a threatened invasion.”

Death: The Movie

Perhaps it's not the week for thinking about the final exit, but the Grim Reaper doesn't take holidays, as evidenced by Christmas being peak heart attack season and the fact that tsunamis wait for no man. Interestingly, the Washington Post reports the FDA is getting behind the testing of certain illegal street drugs to help the terminally ill cope with facing the end.

"When taken under adverse circumstances by ill-prepared individuals, there are substantial psychological risks," said Charles Grob, a psychiatrist at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles. "But when taken in the context of carefully structured and approved research protocols and facilitated by individuals with expertise, adverse effects can be contained to a minimum."

"So far they have had very impressive results in terms of amelioration of anxiety, improvement of mood, improved rapport with close family and friends and, interestingly, significant and lasting reductions in pain," Grob said of the first few patients to enroll. "These are extraordinary compounds that seem to have an uncanny ability to reliably induce spiritual or religious experiences when taken in the right conditions."

One More Midnight Clear

I received today, as perhaps many here did, an email from the Kerry campaign suggesting a donation to Operation Phone Home (a USO deal, so I'm assuming it's okay), a program that provides phone cards to soldiers in Iraq so they can call loved ones free of charge. I'm not advocating participation in the program, I'm just saying I got the email.

I don't have kids in Iraq, though my kids are old enough to be there.

Of course, the cynical side of me would see Kerry keeping his name out there. But on this Christmas Eve my heart is large - if not a touch broken for other parents who's kids we couldn't protect when they sat down for lunch - and I'm thinking the Blue States kicked butt in November.

Christmas in jail, etc.

Actually I'm feeling a little bit giddy at present due to just having learned that a person I worry about will not be literally spending Christmas in the Hall o' Justice after all. In honor of which I wonder if anyone feels like reviving the Weird Christmas Pop Songs tradition. Got no new contributions myself but maybe others have?

Slate changes hands

Lookit, Slate has been bought by the Washington Post. With Microsoft's mitigating circumstance excised now, maybe I can slang Bill Gates in peace around here...

The Grinch Meets American Digest

And what happened then...?
Well...in Horizon they say
The Anti-Holmes’ small heart
Grew three sizes that day!
He clicked on a passage the Allport provided
Finding a file sure to make Holmes fans delighted
And he brought back the news! This Anti-Holmes fink!
And he…
...HE HIMSELF...!
The Crank published the link!

Just a Little Blood and Guts, Please

Found this blurb in Saturday's Slate:

The NYT goes below the fold with word that California plans to build a second death row next to the existing one in San Quentin. A new building is needed not only because so many people get sentenced to death in California, but also because so few inmates are actually executed: The leading cause of death on death row is old age. The glacial pace of executions seems inefficient, but some believe that's a good thing. "It may function to give us exactly what we want," says one law professor. "A death penalty without executions."

I don't want to get into the merits of the death penalty, and I'm very sorry for bringing up Scott Peterson here, but last week I was disturbed to read of the cheers that went up from the crowd when his (recommended) sentence was announced. It seemed barbaric. At first thought, it seems to conflict with the above. Then again, I guess not.

It is barbaric to cheer. Which may be the point. Later, when we have to follow through, our humanity gets the best of us and the pleasure is drained out of the event.

XXXmas

My son's sort-of-Nativity play at his sort-of-but-not denominational nursery school was this morning: so far as I can make out they managed to tip-toe around the whole God-specific thing quite well, but Thomas ended up as a red-nosed reindeer, which is surely a nod to Santa, which is surely a nod to St. Nicholas, which is surely ... what, exactly? Speaking as one atheist who finds this whole "Happy Holidays" thing rather fatuous (I seriously doubt any passing Jew, Sikh or Zoroastrian is going to be spiritually contaminated by my doling out blessings in the name of a Deity I don't believe in either), I do wonder what Dana Stevens was expecting from a show called Christmas in Washington if she really did "wait in vain for one politically correct, non-Christian number". The Rockettes in burkhas?

Virtually Clueless

For $26,500, an Australian has purchased an island that doesn't exist. This is a wise investment because he will be able to sell virtual beachfront property as well as mining rights to virtual gold.

I dimly understand the economic value of non-existent property. Maybe with a little help I can grasp this:

Earlier this year economists calculated that these massively multi-player online role-playing games (MMORPGs) have a gross economic impact equivalent to the GDP of the African nation of Namibia.

Or maybe not.

Burmese Days Literary Club #4: Getting to Know You

Chapters 5 through 8 perform an audiacious, if bizarre trick: it sets up everything the reader needs to know about John Flory, introduces Elizabeth Lackersteen then sets up everything the reader needs to know about Elizabeth Lackersteen. And with all that, Orwell lets these two people--whom the reader knows are polar opposites and want vastly different things--get on with interacting with each other, blithely unaware of the other's true needs. I never realized how early it was indicated that the relationship between Flory and Elizabeth was completely and utterly doomed, but here it is by Chapter 8!

I agree with Bobby Farouk's sentiment in our last discussion that "It’s difficult to make a point with living, breathing people. Which is not to say his characters were uninteresting or wooden or unbelievable. But they did have to conform to where Orwell wanted them to go." and I think no where is that more evident than the biographical sketch of Flory that takes up chapter 5. The whole chapter feels like one of Orwell's essays from his Wigan Pier period, only barely disguised as clunky exposition. Flory seems, more than ever, a type than a character. And it's a type that I think Orwell used through his entire career: what I call the "Orwellian" character: someone who is aware that the situation he is in isn't right and wants to rebel, and tries to rebel, and fails.

And it's hard not to see Orwell's own biography in Flory's in some ways. Which may be why I find Elizabeth's background less inexpert in its handling. Orwell has to rely on his own imagination more, perhaps, and draws less off his own personal experience (although his descriptions of the pensions of Paris do have the smell of Down and Out about them...). I love how Orwell describes her code: "It was that the Good ('lovely' was her name for it) is synonymous with the expensive, the elegant and the aristocratic; and the Bad ('beastly') is the cheap, the low, the shabby the laborious".

But I don't want to completely trash Orwell's character skills because once you have these two almost mutually exclusive backgrounds out of the way, the relationship between Flory and Elizabeth is achingly poignant. Flory--who even his Indian friend is a supporter of the Raj-- is desperate for an intimate, someone who will see Burma with the same passion; of course, Elizabeth sees all of Burma as 'beastly'. When I read this book as an 18 year-old my identification was totally with Flory, because I understood as a teenager who couldn't get a date that massive yearning for someone to talk to who sees the world in your terms.

I was hoping to find a good link about pwe and pwe dancing but so far I haven't found one. If anyone finds one let me know.

Veblen's Latin

Veblen provides an infuriating counterpoint to the Gibbon quote about mathematics I wrote about earlier. However, not having studied the classics, I can't translate the Horace quote. Anybody?

The fact that classical learning acts to derange the learner's workmanlike attitudes should fall lightly upon the apprehension of those who hold workmanship of small account in comparison with the cultivation of decorous ideals: Iam fides et pax et honos pudorque Priscus et neglecta redire virtus Audet.

Full quote:

The classics, and their position of prerogative in the scheme of education to which the higher seminaries of learning cling with such a fond predilection, serve to shape the intellectual attitude and lower the economic efficiency of the new learned generation. They do this not only by holding up an archaic ideal of manhood, but also by the discrimination which they inculcate with respect to the reputable and the disreputable in knowledge. This result is accomplished in two ways: (1) by inspiring an habitual aversion to what is merely useful, as contrasted with what is merely honorific in learning, and so shaping the tastes of the novice that he comes in good faith to find gratification of his tastes solely, or almost solely, in such exercise of the intellect as normally results in no industrial or social gain; and (2) by consuming the learner's time and effort in acquiring knowledge which is of no use,except in so far as this learning has by convention become incorporated into the sum of learning required of the scholar, and has thereby affected the terminology and diction employed in the useful branches of knowledge. Except for this terminological difficulty -- which is itself a consequence of the vogue of the classics of the past -- a knowledge of the ancient languages, for instance, would have no practical bearing for any scientist or any scholar not engaged on work primarily of a linguistic character. Of course, all this has nothing to say as to the cultural value of the classics, nor is there any intention to disparage the discipline of the classics or the bent which their study gives to the student. That bent seems to be of an economically disserviceable kind, but this fact -- somewhat notorious indeed -- need disturb no one who has the good fortune to find comfort and strength in the classical lore. The fact that classical learning acts to derange the learner's workmanlike attitudes should fall lightly upon the apprehension of those who hold workmanship of small account in comparison with the cultivation of decorous ideals: Iam fides et pax et honos pudorque Priscus et neglecta redire virtus Audet.

"a large event on the megathrust locked zone"

Seismologists may be learning how to predict earthquakes.

Good news for those of us who are ready to jump out of our windows at the first sign of seismic activity.

Making Consumption Fun Again

I was reading an article covering a Thorstein Veblen conference, so of course when I came across a link right in the middle of the article to another article on "The season's most conspicuous consumption", I couldn't not look.

I never knew you could buy a custom fitted suit of armor at Nieman Marcus. I wonder sometimes if I'm the only one who notices this post-911 recidivism. Or was it happening long before that?

Vietnam in Film

We were talking a while ago about Bridge on the River Kwai and the opinions veterans had of it. At that time I was going to mention that my dad was an infantryman in Vietnam and for some reason he loved Apocalypse Now and hated the supposedly realistic treatments of the war, including Kubrick's Full Metal Jacket.

Vietnam movies are an interesting genre in themselves. Compare the big Vietnam movies:

Platoon: Bloated and smug morality play, uses Barber's Adagio (the tritest piece of movie music since Carmina Burana), attempts to be naturalistic. One of the most overrated failures in cinema by the most overrated director. Don't remember what my dad said about it, but I don't think he liked it much.

Full Metal Jacket: Kubrick was a genius and this is not his worst movie. I love it, although I've always felt that the twist ending didn't twist as much as it was supposed to; probably a generational difference. Kubrick obviously wanted to be true to the experiences of infantrymen in that war. Though his style, as usual, is far from naturalistic, I think the film is mostly successful in that sense. My dad liked it but was disappointed that the outdoor sets, created in England because Kubrick refused to fly, didn't look right.

Apocalypse Now: Another proof that sometimes the most horrible disasters unaccountably wind up being good. It is hyperbolically worshipped by film students in their 20s, but that's no reason to knock it. I gather that the film captured a mental atmosphere of confusion and surreality that my dad recognized from his experiences. In that sense you could argue that Apocalypse Now is the most realistic of all of them. He obviously believed that it captured something important because he insisted that my mother see it when it came out. (I went along, at the age of six, because they thought I was too young to follow it. Of course a human of any age knows what's going on when somebody gets impaled through the chest with a spear.)

I'm forgetting a couple, but I think these illustrate the main approaches one can take toward the subject: the maudlin, the traditionally realistic, and, for lack of a snappier word, the psychologically realistic.

Eating Crow

Selected by Joel from our new toy, the 1961 English-language Larousse Gastronomique:

Crow. CORBEAU -- The meat of this bird, except when young, is too tough and fibrous to be considered as a food. Nevertheless, in many forest regions where crows abound, they are often eaten or at least, to be more correct, they are used to make a soup which is as a rule far from succulent. This soup can, however, be tasty if one takes care to follow the humorous advice of Cuniset-Carnot, in his interesting Vie aux champs. The recipe is simple. One has only to make, according to the sacred rites, an ordinary, good pot-au-feu. On the lid of the pot (the lid is reversed for the purpose) one puts a plucked crow. Then after 5 or 6 hours of gentle cooking one '.....throws the crow in the fire and enjoys the pot-au-feu.....' We advise our readers, if the occasion occurs when they have to prepare crows -- we must emphasise very young crows -- to prepare them as the English do, that is to say in a pie.

There seems, however, to be no entry for vache enragée.

The Unified Theory of What Ails Us

My friends fault me for my lack of spontaneity. If they only knew I'm like this for the good of the country. Jonathan Jones has this to say about the Wild New World:

'Improvisation is America's art, its self-expression - and its disaster.'

Apocalypse Now is the death of this illusion. There is plenty of freedom here - nothing else except freedom, and self-expression. Americans fire from helicopters for fun. The war is a riff. When a marksman shoots into the night to the sound of an electric guitar solo, it could so easily be a sax. At the end of the river, Marlon Brando improvises a monster so disorganised that some feel the performance itself is nothing but chaos. He lisps, "Have you ever considered any true freedoms?"'

Winter No Matter How You Shovel It

The snow came, followed by freezing rain, but I was prepared. Friday, in that ugly building, pretending to do our stupid jobs, doing nothing, my office mates and I spent the day following the weather reports, studying streaming radar images on the internet, and discussing what movies we'd watch over the weekend since it looked like we'd be snowed in. On the drive home I picked up Tanner '88 which had been issued on dvd this past election season.

The Altman-Trudeau collaboration was an eleven episode series for HBO. A satire that doesn't always stick to satire, it's got lots of guests spots that were unscripted and come off as true as fiction gets. A sort of meta-political event.

The 2004 release has introductory commentaries by the characters, looking back on the campaign. In episode five, Jack Tanner (Michael Murphy) discusses the outcome of his arrest at an anti-apartheid rally:

Unless you're Nelson Mandela there's not really a big electoral payoff to going to jail. It doesn't have the glamour that it does in other parts of the world. In the Czech Republic or Argentina, past imprisonment is part of your political narrative; it's your log cabin. But in this country being arrested is a liability. Better to be busted on a few DUI's like Bush. That's just cars and beer. It's manly. It's American.

Mary Poppins' Perpwalk

For those Horizon readers with long-term aspirations for high public office (we all know who you are), but who also have or plan on having young children, I have one word of advice for you:

Daycare. Daycare. Daycare!

Yes, I know there's a Gilded-Age cachet about having servants draped around the place, but really: do you want your nominating press conference to be interrupted by awkward questions about Rosario and Lupe's visas? Do you really want to have to spend more time with your family? (Heck, that was the reason you got a nanny in the first place, wasn't it?)

Mountains Out of Dustheaps

Searching for some insight on Paul Johnson (I like reading him but he annoys me and I'm never sure I should trust him) I came across this review of his little book on Napoleon by Victor Davis Hansen. Well, it was on the Claremont Institute site so what did I expect but to read: 'So what accounts for those who professed beauty but worshipped evil?' Which is a legitimate question but also an editorialization that ignores the complexities of human beings and the times they find themselves living in. Naturally, Hansen senses a kinship with the author of Intellectuals.

But I got stuck on this statement concerning the French Revolution: 'Lest we think Napoleon perverted the French Revolution's idealism, we should remember that he in some sense embodied the very brutality of that entirely unnecessary event.' This perhaps offhand comment - and yes, I am making too much of it - seems odd for a professional historian. The fact of a historical event's lack of necessity is beside the point.

Can anyone name an event that was necessary?

Winning Beats Losing

No doubt everyone tonight will be raising a glass to a milestone in empire building. November 10, 1898, the Treaty of Paris is signed, ending a splendid little war.

A Lemon Entry

a great, spooky article (sadly unavailable online) in the New Yorker this week about the mysterious death, and possible murder, of the world's greatest authority on Sherlock Holmes. Conan Doyle is one of those authors who has fans (as opposed to simply readers or admirers - Austen is another, and the Brontes, and Tolkien), and, in a pattern that's familiar to all fan fiction, there's a sharp divide between the Doyleians (predominantly academics who write serious, dry stuff about the writer) and Sherlockians (amateur mavens who in some cases literally affect to deny the existence of Conan Doyle, demanding that the books and short stories were all really written by Dr. Watson). I've never read any of the Sherlock Holmes stories, though I know Gordon Comstock used to treat them like brain candy - anyone want to emerge as a closeted deerstalker buff?

Burmese Days Literary Club #3: It's Alright Ma (Hla May)

Today's essay question: Is Ma Hla May some weird-ass prophesy of Sonia Orwell? Discuss, with reference to how Ma Hla May a) manipulates people, b) uses her sex to do so and c) seems only concerned with her status being connected to Flory even though she doesn't actually care very much for Flory.

Seriously (and I was being caustically flippant above. You don't have to write an essay), what is it with Orwell and the female characters in his books? Ma Hla May--arriving here in Chapter 4-- belongs with Hilda Bowling and Rosemary from Keep The Aspidistra Flying in the annals of unsympathetic female characters who wind up in your face at the outset, leaving the reader to wonder what kind of a loser is the male protagonist that he would have this sort of bad luck. Admittedly, Orwell is setting up the seemingly better option that Elizabeth will allegedly provide and ultimately the doom that faces Flory. But Ma Hla May is so shrill and predictable. Or at least that's how she seems at a first glance.

Part of what complicates things is that, as with U Po Kyin, it feels as though Orwell is employing the same stereotyping he accuses others of employing on the Burmese natives. And while Dr. Veraswami is meant to be sympathetic, Orwell phonetically spells out his somewhat broken English and Flory seems a good sight more intelligent than him which doesn't really help his case: it's the dark-skinned bumbler who the tortured white guy should protect. That said, come to think of it, Flory seems a good sight smarter than the people at the club. But then, he's a classic Orwellian outsider--he's always out of step.

Still there are some fascinating lines that hint to so much more: The way Ma Hla May "put her arms around him again and kissed him, a European habit which he had taught her." speaks volumes about what Flory is looking for in a woman, what cultural differences are at play, and how Ma Hla May is prepared to use both to get what she wants.

And there's also Ko S'la who is the most interesting figure in chapters 3 and 4 for my money.

There is more evidence of the nascent Orwellian wit: "The meal was pretentious and filthy. The clever 'Mug' cooks, descendants of servants trained by Frenchmen in India centuries ago, can do anything with food except make it eatable."

Stand by Your Man

The not-entirely-whitebread urban sophisticates gathered round the turkey (?) on the homepage of ConservativeMatch.com look suspiciously like chardonnay-swillers to me, certainly not homespun heartland types, although the fellow second from the left has a hard and slightly menacing stare - he looks like he's going to buttonhole you any minute and start ranting about black helicopters. But really, it's a strange business, this red-state sectarianism, isn't it? The ads are equally odd, though fascinating. Women have to be particularly careful not to appear too strident (surrendered wife, everybody!) - "I am a very old-fashioned type woman but I also like to have fun. I love a good conversation, but I am not one for arguing"; "I am feisty (not to be confused with "aggressive""). Others suggest an intriguing backstory that isn't quite explained: "I from Russia and I live in Kirov city. To me of 27 years. Children are not present. When it was not married. I seeking a male for serious relation. I hope to have found my love in the internet." Children aside, something that is also frequently not present is flexibility: "I am seeking a non smoking serious practicing Catholic between the age of 22 and 27 years old. You must believe that abortion is wrong, euthanasia is wrong, using contraception of ANY kind is wrong. I don't like guns, so if you own one, please don't ..." (the ad cuts off there, but I expect "...worry about it" isn't what follows.)

(And yes, before anyone says it, I'm sure there are liberal sites just like this, and that they're every bit as daft.)

Give Me Safety ...

Earlier today on a different blog a few people raised the question (well, i'm putting it generously - a few people baldly asserted) that living under a dictator was the worst thing that they or anyone else could imagine, so bad that life could become unbearable. The dictator under the lens was this fellow, but the question is I suppose equally valid in a more general sense. Are the New Hampshire license plates correct, and is better to die than not to live free?

It seems like an open-and-shut question. A dictatorship like Saddam's was so ugly, its attitude towards human rights and dignities so contemptuous, that it's difficult to imagine how anything could be worse. And of course for the many people who were killed during this and other tyrannies, the question is moot: dictatorship, for them, meant death. But what about the majority of people who weren't killed, who only experienced the relatively pedestrian crimes of the state? Were they living in an inverted Panglossian worst-of-all-worlds? If we're going to be honest - and brutal honesty is a prerequisite here - probably not. The one thing that human beings consistently excel in is stoicism. We adapt and accept, motivated subconsciously perhaps by the hardwired genetic knowledge that species history is measured in the millenia, and that whatever tribulations we are experiencing today are scarcely the blink of an evolutionary eye.

What does it mean to say, anyway, "give me liberty or give me death"? Would you rather die than live in Stalin's Russia? Possibly. What about Brezhnev's Russia? Neither had any respect for the democratic values that we take for granted. But one was a place of messianic carnage, whereas the other was merely shabby and degrading. Would the absence of an independent media and the ability to vote for a candidate loosely of one's choice every four or five years really portend suicide?

Perhaps part of the problem is what we mean by "liberty". Because live-free-or-die rhetoric is usually employed in an explicitly political sense, we tend to think of public liberties - democracy, freedom of speech, and so on. But for the majority of us, most of the time, these are distant abstractions - important, perhaps, but hardly a part of our daily life. The freedoms that mean the most to us in an everyday sense are the personal ones - the freedom to spend time with people we like and love, to have children, to enjoy peace and quiet, to live a tolerable life. Now, dictatorship clearly does detract from these freedoms; but not nearly to the same extent as it does, say, the freedom of the press. Which suggests to me that Franklin was wrong, and that most of us would indeed sacrifice (some) liberty to purchase a little temporary security. This might not be the noblest observation to make, but I would suggest that it's an eminently human one.

Michael Arlen

c/o the Oxford DNB:

"Arlen, Michael [formerly Dikran Kouyoumdjian] (1895-1956), novelist, was born on 16 November 1895 at Rustchuk, Bulgaria, the son of Sarkis Kouyoumdjian, an Armenian merchant ... in 1922 he was naturalized in the UK, and changed his name by deed poll to Michael Arlen, the name under which he had begun to publish novels and short stories. His writing was soon to achieve considerable, if temporary, fame. His first novel, The London Venture, was published in 1920 on the recommendation of Edmund Gosse. Three more books in the next three years established him on the literary scene, and in 1924 came The Green Hat, which was acclaimed, attacked, parodied, and read, to the most fabulous degree of best-sellerdom; and made him a comfortable small fortune. It was a romance suited to its decade—cynical, sophisticated, yet sentimental, highly coloured, and glittering. If the colours later faded, and the glitter became mostly tarnished tinsel, the book certainly cast a spell in its day and influenced many young writers. The character of the heroine, Iris Storm, set a new fashion in fatal charmers; and Arlen's pictures of London café society were as exact as glossy photographs. ‘The Loyalty’—recognizable as the Embassy Club, at which the smartest people, including young princes, then danced to the blues—was depicted almost table by table, with a mixture of mockery and romanticism which delighted those who read of themselves.

Perhaps because he was a foreigner, who while mingling among them viewed them from outside, Michael Arlen had free licence to satirize these people. Rather as English society had petted the young Disraeli, it forgave Arlen his cleverness and his exuberant elegance. Even when poor and struggling, this young man had contrived to be elegant; and in prosperity, it was said that his white waistcoat always seemed to be whiter than anybody else's; but Arlen himself was forestallingly ready to disarm criticism—describing himself as ‘Every other inch a gentleman’, ‘The one the Turks forgot’, or ‘A case of pernicious Armenia’. His wit not being above the heads of his fashionable hearers, they found him the best of company; moreover, he was a man of whom his friends spoke with lasting regard ... he never believed himself an important writer, and in later years steadily declined to have his ‘rubbishy’ best-sellers reprinted ... his collection of essays, Living-Room War (1969), originally published in the New Yorker, was referred to by one critic as a ‘glib masterpiece’. Eventually he settled in New York at 23 East 74th Street, where he died on 23 June 1956 after a long illness."

It's Still Better Than Michael Arlen

Is admitting you’re fond of For Whom the Bell Tolls like confessing you’ve been putting tinned meat in your sandwiches? I’m considering rereading it and feel I’m owning up to something less than noble. It’s not Hemingway’s finest hour but is an improvement over the work of the 30’s (although I like To Have and Have Not and I don’t care what anyone says). Edmund Wilson’s New Republic review swims with way too much praise.

As an action/love story I’m sure it still stands up. Will I get choked up again when Anselmo buys it at the bridge? There’ll be that wonderful dialogue that looks good on paper but sounds dumb out loud.

The 1943 film version is disappointing, and I’m hoping somebody does a remake and gets it right this time because there’s no reason why it can’t be a great flick. The original is not just an example of what happens when you try to be faithful to a Hemingway text; the sets look phony and the characters are like cartoons. Then there’s Gary Cooper, filmdom's most convincing corpse.

Horizon: A Testimonial

I rarely discuss what I do for a living because the honest answer is: nothing. Oh, I have a job and an income, a place to go, a parking space, desk, job title, co-workers to annoy, bosses to hoodwink, clients to bamboozle, a picture in the company directory, and a favorite snack in the vending machine. But my actual workload can be compressed into roughly 45 minutes per day and is of no consequence to anyone anywhere. Eventually there’ll be lay-offs when upper management realizes all the nothing going on can be done by fewer people. Then they’ll win a new contract and see the need for more employees doing less. This is what’s known as the business cycle, except it’s more like a mobius strip.

Meanwhile, I need to look industrious while I’m doing nothing. Accomplishments may come and go, but the illusion of activity lives forever.

This is where Horizon comes in. Horizon has increased my perceived productivity dramatically. The link Graeme provided for the online edition of Burmese Days has overnight revitalized my career of doing nothing. I didn’t think I’d enjoy reading a book online, and I don’t – at home; but at the office it has transformed me into the model worker. With my monitor’s back to the door I can spend the day reading Orwell at my leisure and appear focused and determined. I frown, knit my brow, screw up my eyes, sigh with comprehension, cut and paste, take notes, and ignore clients. People are impressed. My boss says she wishes she had 50 staffers just like me. The CEO smiles at me in the hall. I think I may get a special recognition at the company Christmas party.

Horizon has changed my life. Already I’m flying back up the corporate ladder.

Lukacs on Liberals

An interesting Chronicle essay from an old European (in all senses of the phrase) conservative, John Lukacs, commenting on something that we have discussed here also - the paradox that while we are (almost) all liberals today, we are (almost) all indignantly in denial, or at least embarrassed, about the fact.

Lukacs makes a particularly important point that neither liberalism nor conservatism is inherently synonymous with democracy - and in fact both are (and ought to be) in conflict with it from time to time.

"When it came to the formation of the democracies of the West, the concepts of liberalism and democracy, while not inseparable, were surely complementary, with the emphasis on the former. Among the founders of the American republic were serious men who were more dubious about democracy than about liberty. They certainly did not believe in -- indeed, they feared -- populism; populism that, unlike a century ago, has now become (and not only in the United States) the political instrument of "conservatives," of so-called men of the "Right." It is significant that in Europe, too, the appeal of the term "liberal" has declined, while "democratic" is the adopted name of a variety of parties, many of them not only antiliberal but also extreme right-wing nationalist.

Yes, democracy is the rule of the majority; but there liberalism must enter. Majority rule must be tempered by the rights of minorities and of individual men and women; but when that temperance is weak, or unenforced, or unpopular, then democracy is nothing else than populism. More precisely: Then it is nationalist populism. It may be that the degeneration of liberal democracy to populism will be the fundamental problem of the future. True, many liberals have contributed to the inflation -- the degeneration -- of the original meaning of "liberal." But the acceptance of the word "liberal" as a connotation of something damnable, unhealthy, and odious is to be deplored."

Watch Out, Deconstruction

...cause Generative Anthropology is gunning for you.

Revealed: mimetic crises!
Employed: new, completely duplicative terminology!
Discovered: the Origin of Language! (We know you've been wondering.)

Another example of intellectuals' preference for studying language rather than, well, what they are ostensively supposed to be studying?

Any better than Deconstruction? All texts are not considered phallic anymore, I guess that's some kind of step forward.

As far as I'm concerned, if they don't start finding things like Parasitic Culture Gaps, then anyone practicing Generative Anthropology will be definitively exposed as a poseur.

When She Was Good

Born this day in 1873, Willa Cather. Enjoyed The Professor's House, My Mortal Enemy, and Death Comes for the Archbishop several years ago. Wonder how they'd play now.

My favorite quote comes from Archbishop :

Men travel faster now, but I do not know if they go to better things.

Burmese Days Literary Club #2: Belly Laughs

I hope Graeme won't mind if I pre-empt his next posting, but since the original thread seems to have turned to a discussion of Northern Californian brewing (an honorable subject in itself I'm sure), it may be time to refresh. What follows are in the way of random thoughts about the first chapter.

I second Bobby's earlier comment: Orwell is much funnier than everyone remembers, isn't he? "'The editor will get six months' imprisonment for this,' he said finally. 'He does not mind. He says that the only time when his creditors leave him alone is when he is in prison.'" "U Po Kyin had furnished [his house] 'Ingaleik fashion' with a veneered sideboard and chairs, some lithographs of the Royal Family and a fire-extinguisher." OK, Wilde it's not (and I can't really see U Po Kyin speaking in polished drawing-room epigrams anyway), but it's chuckle-worthy stuff that the author doesn't get enough credit for.

Speaking of U Po Kyin, I can't help but think what a mint he could make as a "political researcher" these days.

When Ba Sein suggests inciting a mutiny in the prison, this is I suspect a reference to the riot at Rangoon Central Jail in June 1930, for which the Indian staff were subsequently blamed in the government inquiry. The tensions between British, ethnic Burmese, members of the other indigenous races, and diaspora Indians were quite complex, and the playing off of one people against another (not always by the imperialists) was very much a part of Burmese politics. I don't know how many people are aware of it, but the most dramatic event of Burmese Days' Act III - the ill-fated rebellion - is also based on a real-life uprising that happened a few years after Orwell left. When we get closer to that part of the story I'll elaborate on this a bit more.

I wonder if the "young English police officer" who once sat in U Po Kyin's best chair and drank a bottle of beer was an Old Etonian with a pencil moustache and a taste for carpentry?

"U Po Kyin turned away from the mirror. The appeal touched him a little. He never, when it could be done without inconvenience, missed a chance of acquiring merit. In his eyes his pile of merit was a kind of bank deposit, everlastingly growing. Every fish set free in the river, every gift to a priest, was a step nearer Nirvana. It was a reassuring thought. He directed that the basket of mangoes brought by the village headman should be sent down to the monastery." Orwell really had no time for private charity at all, did he?

Is there an economist in the house?

Hoping someone can answer this question: if we buy a car that was union-made within the United States at a plant owned and run by a foreign company, will we be doing our part to reduce the U.S. trade deficit? What if we buy one second-hand?

And Several Years Later God Gave Us Lenny Kravitz

The story goes that on this day in 1877, Thomas Edison made the first sound recording on his cylinder phonograph, reciting Mary Had a Little Lamb. Not an invention I can fault - that I am the Walrus episode notwithstanding. As a demonstration of how good big government can be, our National Park Service has provided us with some early recordings, including the earliest known recording of Edison's voice.

Asa Briggs

Barbara and I were at a dinner last night held for Lord Briggs of Lewes (Professor Asa Briggs), official historian to the BBC amongst many other things. I had a chance to buttonhole him about Orwell; he only met him once, although he knew Sonia quite well (natch); and their main interaction seems to have been GO's rather sniffy rejection of an idea for a radio talk when he was a programme developer for the India Section. Professor Briggs admired Orwell's taste for ephemera (which he shares) and his pioneering cultural studies work, but didn't care much for Burmese Days, thinking (and who doesn't) that it was too soaked in GO's obsessive working-out of his messy childhood experiences.

Cromer on Iraq

Responding to a recent Harry's Place post, I had cause to cite Evelyn Baring's (Lord Cromer's) apologia for the British occupation of Egypt in 1882. It's well worth reading in full. Lest I appear to be making too glib a comparison (perish the thought!) between the New Imperialism of the 1880s and events today, I should point out that Cromer's criticisms of the Khedive's administration were accurate; that he himself (British proconsul from 1883 to 1907) was an unusually competent administrator whose reforms undoubtedly benefited Egyptians of all classes; and that laced with all the cynicism of the Pax Britannica was a sincere wish to better the lot of the Egyptians, a wish that was often translated into action. Whether or not one approves of all this depends on whether one approves of imperialism - still, to my mind, a debate worth having. But my main point was that Britain's story in Egypt was a long one. As I said over at HP:

"Gladstone's government intervened on the strict understanding that the occupation would be a temporary affair, until all the necessary conditions of good government were restored; indeed, this transitional period was supposed to be measured in months rather than years. Sixty-six times during the next 40 years they indicated that withdrawal was imminent.

British troops were in Egypt until 1952."

The Fortress of Solitude

Joel and I have been reading Jonathan Lethem's The Fortress of Solitude -- actually, we've been stealing it from each other all week. Well written, not afraid of old-fashioned big metaphors, and resonant with much, though hardly all, of our own Gen-X experience. Brings up a lot of issues that have emerged here. Many have to do with the protagonist growing up as a bullied semi-middle-class white kid in a tough majority-black neighborhood. There the author is well aware that he's skating close to stereotype, and it's hard to know what to say without having been a witness to the real events Lethem has distilled -- was life really so racially determined in 1970s Brooklyn? But there's also stuff about nerds taking easily to punk culture, which weirdly I hadn't understood, and interesting talk about the American flavors of guilt, and a wickedly described science fiction conference. I'll defer to Burmese Days rather than suggest anyone start reading it for discussion purposes, but has anyone read it already?

More Like They Were Then Than Ever Again

Rescued a copy of Arundel by Kenneth Roberts from my father's house awhile back, a 1956 reprint with superb map endpapers. Inside the title page is this recommendation from Margaret Deland:

When I think of the thin, tinny novels which tumble from the press today, to be forgotten within a few months, I feel that Arundel is a permanent contribution to the literature of this country. I go around telling people to read it; but I despair - until they have read it - of making them realize its quality. It seems to me like a perfectly splendid plum pudding! No, I think it is more than that; I think it is brown bread, and roast beef, and beer! It is the real stuff, and while I congratulate the author upon having written it, I congratulate all of us novel-reading folk even more heartily. How anybody can lap up whipped cream when he can get Arundel, I don't understand!

They don't write blurbs like that anymore. All those exclamation points! And such regard for brown bread!

Hitting the Grail on the Head

The very words "Knights Templar" are enough to start me yawning, so I guess it's not surprising that I'm less than fascinated by that perennial favorite bit of historical voodoo, the Holy Grail. But I do think we've come to an odd pass when a former Bishop of Edinburgh is required to tell otherwise intelligent and educated people that a longstanding religious myth is "good fun but absolute nonsense ... a dream for publishers, who know the world is full of gullible people looking for miracles and they keep on promising that this time the miracle's going to come true." I can never decide whether we're more gullible today than our ancestors. Orwell, of course, suspected that we were, because we rely more on the authority of vague and unchallenged expert opinion than previous generations ever did. But the conspiracy theory has a very ancient lineage. You can play a game akin to Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon by linking any world event - the French Revolution, the Influenza pandemic, JFK's death - to the Freemasons, or the Jews, or the Jesuits, or my personal favourite, HRH Prince "Slitty Eyes" Philip, through a few connecting associations; and you can pretty much guarantee that someone has already beaten you to it, possibly by centuries.

BASKET CASE NATION

How does one square America's superpower status with it's being the planet's most medicated people? Our ability to shock and awe may have less to do with military prowess than with our appetite for pills.

Of course, running the world can knock the stuffing out of anyone. One must expect the insufferable headaches that come with selflessly serving ungrateful neighbors. Then there are those days lacking sufficient hours when fearless broad shoulders could use a little something to recharge the batteries.

But in the interest of national security, shouldn't we ban television advertisements for prescription drugs? I can't think of a better way of instilling hope and patience in our adversaries than by trumpeting our ailments. Watch a half hour of network evening news and you'll learn we've got heartburn, hemorrhoids, flatulence, constipation, depression, clogged ateries, sore joints, short attention spans, weak lungs, insomnia, bad backs. And we've lost that lovin' feelin'. An enemy would have to conclude all they have to do is wait and eventually we'll just pass out.

How Aryan is Aryan?

It's interesting to note while reading Burmese Days that prior to the coming of the Nazis, the word "aryan" had a completely different meaning-- as MacGregor says, "The Burmese are Mongolians, the Indians are Aryans or Dravaidians...." Which is, looking at the OED, now the secondary meaning ("a member of peoples speaking in any of the languages of the Indo-European [esp. Indo-Iranian] family.") totally eclipsed by the post-World War II primary meaning ("in Nazi and Neo-Nazi ideology a Caucasian not of Jewish descent")

Anyone know how two totally different conceptions of the same word came to be?

Burmese Days Literary Club #1: Rock On U Po Kyin

In honour of the 70th anniversary of its publication and because my desire to re-read Orwell's books has been on two consecutive New Years Resolutions lists without success, I have taken up the opportunity to re-read Burmese Days for the first time in more than a decade. I thought I'd post a running commentary here in the hopes that a) others might read the work or at the very least b) people will discuss it.

Right now I've read the first two chapters. I read Burmese Days for the first time at 18 (and made subsequent re-reads in my twenties) when my attitude toward literature from another era or culture was "I'll pick up the references later", so I let a lot of the specific references to the Raj pass by me harmlessly. Of course, now I read it and I have nothing but questions about the British occupation of Burma and how it related to their occupation of India, because it's obvious the two are quite closely related.

As to the story so far...well, it's far more obvious to me now this is someone's first novel--oh, look! Flory's facial birthmark is an externalization of his own self-loathing!. U Po Kyin feels more and more like a penny dreadful villain-- a grotesque that almost approaches the sort of stereotype that Orwell accuses his English characters of making with the natives. Perhaps this will change.

But, on the other hand, Orwell writes with such conviction and passion you pretty much forgive all this. I found Burmese Days an absorbing read back when I read it for the first time in 1988 and find it so now. Once Orwell gets into the club with its requisite racism, blithering and such I found myself completely engrossed. You can see several of the ideas that would consume Orwell later: the obsession with everyone in the club toward dirty limericks and then there's Ellis correcting the servant's good grammar with "Have you swallowed a dictionary? 'Please, master, can't keeping ice cool'--that's how you ought to talk." which presages Nineteen Eighty-Four's interest of oppressive control through language.

More to come...

DON'T FORGET THE FLOWERS

On a day when the steroids scandal has touched Barry Bonds and diminished the accomplishments of a great player, I am thinking the demise of any endeavor can be perhaps traced to that point when it's poetry gave way to statistics. I'm unclear why but I thought of this introduction to a day at the Polo Grounds in October 1951 by Don DeLillo in Underworld:

He speaks in your voice, American, and there's a shine in his eyes that's halfway hopeful.

Longing on a large scale is what makes history. This is just a kid with a local yearning but he is part of an assembling crowd, anonymous thousands off the buses and trains, people in narrow columns tramping over the swing bridge above the river, and even if they are not a migration or a revolution, some vast shaking of the soul, they bring with them the body heat of a great city and their own small reveries and desperations, the unseen something that haunts the day - men in fedoras and sailors on shore leave, the stray tumble of their thoughts, going to a game.

Translation goof du jour

Today I had to opportunity to proofread a set of messages for my product that had been machine-translated into French. Among the mess of nonsense and poor grammar, "user-entered amount" became "quantité utilisateur-pénétrée", and the request to "please type Anonymous" became "satisfaire le type anonyme." Sigh.

"Frankly, Fiona..."

The British Film Institute ranks "Gone With the Wind" as the most viewed movie in UK history.

Would someone mind explaining why? (Was Sonia Orwell's Clark Gable fascination part of a trend, then?)

Bizarre British Love Triangle # 72,829

The blind Home Secretary, his pregnant married lover, the dodgy train ticket, and the fast-tracked Filipino.