A Wide Margin

Post for All Hallow's Eve

2009-10-31T08:37:00.000-07:00

It's scary that Windows 7 is striking me as pretty good for an operating system. Whatever flavor of IE I have to run not so much, but the office package is pretty good too. I still imagine a much simpler text editor would be best for first drafting of anything, but I am not of a mind to abandon the PC paradigm for this iteration. Like I said, Scary.

Setting Fire to Straw

2009-02-26T11:47:00.000-08:00

When I was first introduced to New Historicism ...

I really wish that I remembered what I was getting based on the headline. It's suggestive and perhaps it's something I overheard. It's also snappy, which is more than I can say for the first line of the blog, which I am afraid sounds to me pretty 2004, although for some reason I felt somewhat exercised about the New Historicism as recently as last February. Do kids today care about the New Historicism? It had its charms and dooms as almost any literary theory, but for the life of me I can't remember what I had to say back in February 2009.

The Partiality of Postmodernism

2009-02-25T12:29:00.000-08:00

It is curious fact, but rarely noted, that all the American novelists that literary journalists* consider who were born before 1950 (Roth, Bellow, Updike, Mailer) have written novels that are (avowedly or not) are "postmodern." Bellow, the seeming exception, with his curmudgeonly paleoconservatism in fact became well known because of his most postmodern work, Herzog, where the professorial protagonist writes to all and assundried historical figures or not in the Berkshires, in search for authentic history, while only bringing back pastiche. Ravelstein has its own irony (figured in the title and name of the character in "ravel," that term where the negative means to make straight), turning upon itself, even as it formally outs a friend of Bellows.**

Roth and Updike are more conscious practictioners, although the latter takes to it more as yet another demonstration of his facility, while Roth writes his most postmodern work The Counterlife (a book strange enough to be compared to Philip K. Dick's Valis) about a rant against diasporism--postmodernism fits self-conscious Roth like a glove. There are of course (successful) exceptions--Robert Stone has never resorted to an ironic structure or narration in his major works, while Alice Munro lovingly mines a territory worthy of Faulkner in a manner worthy of Chekhov--but the presence of postmodernism in the reviewers' canon belies their multiple insistences that arid theses of this mode dry up meaning and muffle readerly empathy. The most insistent demonstration of this is the fact that, after writing The Naked and The Dead, Norman Mailer in his highly conscious quest to be the Great American Novelist had his greatest impact with Advertisements for Myself and his nonfiction novels, The Armies of the Night and The Executioner's Song. More power to the Norman, but at some point American literary journalists should come clean about how, a clean well-lit be damned, they loves themselves some postmodernism.

*Imagine Michiko Kakutani or Sam Tannenhaus, and then try to imagine writers with more imagination, intelligence or, what the hell, elan. There are exceptions to this paradigm, but they do not include Jonathan Franzen when he reviews.

**and presciently diagnoses how (postmodern) Straussian neoconservatism works

28 Years: 1

2009-02-24T22:46:00.001-08:00

A post by Paul Krugman on his blog explains why even the good times just weren't that good under Bush II: the jobs were never really there. This achievement, mind you, is the result, of exactly the same policy of tax breaks and stimulus checks that Republicans in Congress, as well in some Governor's offices and state legislatures, have been pushing as the cure for current economic problems. Not that this is much of a policy: if the government gives back money without asking for anything in return, one can't claim that much thought has put into the plan except for the part about giving away the money. Admittedly, Bush II's first tax cuts had had some thought put into them: priority for giving back money was given to the wealthy.

There are perhaps more articulate or at least longer explanations that could be given for these policies, but they would obscure the one characteristic of Bush II's policy initiatives: their consistency in asking for no actions.

Magic Books

2009-02-24T22:46:00.000-08:00

Laura Miller is nice, but what does the mean that even our smartest book reviewers don't read any literary criticism.

Elaine Showalter, "A Jury of Her Peers" | Salon Books

What Was the Culture War, Anyway

2008-09-16T16:41:00.000-07:00

Benjamin Schwartz has a chip on his shoulder, which he seems to have transferred to celebrated author of Christian Lander's Stuff White People Like. Schwartz is a hater of the old school, occasionally letting off riffs better suited to The New Criterion than the once Boston Brahmin Atlantic. If it weren't clear that his politics are similar to those of Thomas Frank, as the nostalgic "those who strive for truly radical -- that is, class-based -- political change," it would be easy to write off Schwartz completely off. His reviews can be interesting when he is on his own ground, but Schwartz' own predilections often peek through as in the case of this jumble of assertions, starting with his calling the Port Huron Statement a "gaseous manifesto." (Do I need to say he who smelt, dealt it?) In the case of his editing, the Atlantic often does feature well-considered reviews, but it also have provided a platform for two of the most intolerant and incoherent writers to appear regularly in general interest magazines: Caitlin Flanagan and B. R. Myers. Whatever else one might say, Schwartz likes a literary squabble as much as the next person.

One gets a sense of how hard it is for Schwartz to set aside his chip when you realize that SWPL is little more than an Official Preppy Handbook for the age of the blogosphere. Lander's work is sort of thing most folks who have gone to a liberal arts school or graduate school in the humanities have done at one time or another: devising a hot or not list based on what is likely to be labeled as politically correct. If it is sociology--at all--it is the quote unquote comic sociology of David Brooks, with more than a little tendency to bend the truth if its makes the joke funnier.

What goes unremarked by Schwartz (and Lander) is what is really interesting about this phenomenon: that the capacity to simultaneous embrace and disdain certain cultural artifacts indicates a high degree of bad faith or, to put it bluntly, self-hate. It goes unremarked because of course cultural artifacts are mere trivia compared to economic concerns. The good society will not depend on whether you can get a decent macchiato or that the latest best-seller is literate. I have spent enough evenings with people going over in loving detail about how things are done better in Europe not to have some sympathy with this view. But why the animus if the said artifacts are trivial, if the good life could be had whether Jacqueline Susanne or Toni Morrison or George Saunders is our a leading author? Could self-hate be a constitutive part of what white people like? I can't say for sure, but the success of American Idol, which must have as part of its audience numbers of ironic consumers, suggests that the secret to popularity now is finding that achy sweet spot between the entertaining and the mortifying. What this says about the future of the culture I am not sure, but it does not appear to lead to the good society.

Games That Academics Play

2008-07-01T11:15:00.000-07:00

One of the U.'s psychology professor has parlayed tales of evolutionary psychology (the academic drinking game formerly known as sociobiology) in various editorial pages and elsewhere for some time now. He has even wrote a book of literary criticism, though admittedly the profession of critic has few standards for either plausibility of methodology or tenability of evidence: it's pretty much a game you can play if you show up. (This among other things explains Michael Medved.) I enjoy factoids about animal behavior as much as anyone, and learning about other species' naughty bits is indeed fun.

But tell me, is there anything illuminating about this smug analysis about Eliot Spitzer's downfall? What, precisely, does the professor add to the social truism that men with power are attracted to--and attract to them--temptations ranging from infidelity to exposing how much you "throw like a girl" in Fenway? Exactly how do the mating habits do swans help illuminate this particular politician's preference for high-priced call girls, rather than cigars and interns? Barash does nt say how non-monogamous swans are: could it be that a swans do swan around sometimes* but also experience the same rituals of shaming and repentance as humans? He mentions the contention that most cultures were polygamous before the rise of Western society. Never mind that this claim is anthropology, not biology; exactly how non-monogamous were these cultures? Was it something everyone did, or was it a sign of power restricted to the few? You can't exactly say, either, that the West has eradicated monogamy, because parts of it are always backsliding and/or making exceptions. (This is not even to start a discussion about, well, what is this thing you call the "west"?) A recent example of polygamy, conveniently located way out west in the US, is an exemplary instance of patriarchy, up to and including abuse of young women and the ostracizing of young men who question the leader. This is classic pack behavior, but it is also classic cult behavior, so to call it "natural" or in the language here, a matter of "evolutionary fitness" begs questions rather than explains anything.

(1) That "swan" can be used as a verb to mean "vainly strut around" suggests loyalty is not the only thing that is connoted by them.

The Life and Death of Literary Criticism

2008-06-01T12:00:00.000-07:00

a paroxysm as usual the antinomy of relativism and objective standards; criticism=crisis (find the DeMan quote); do the etats-unis have a literary culture per se; is the very idea of literary culture a conservative idea;

Have You No Decency, Sir?

2007-06-27T14:58:00.000-07:00

McCarthyism is alive and well.

or perhaps this is a version of the, Rousseau led to the camps argument.

the idea of something being "impeccably researched" which claims that political correctness of some systematic oppression on all college campuses -- are conservatives still bemoaning the fact that they weren't popular at Dad's alma mater?

of course, at this point there is probably nothing that is not fascist, so perhaps the aim is to undo the argument, or rather assertion ... fascism is not collectivism or planned economies, fascism is nothing to individual, everything to the state. its the resacralization of the state and the sacredness of the state (Burke's lament for Marie Antoinette and the age of chivalry) is what the first modern version of conservatism (rhetorically) held up as an ideal. without regulation, you live in Russia, which apparently is quite hospitable to strong men and authoritarians still. yet Britain & France which for years operated under existing socialism with active communist and socialist parties have never flirted with authoritarianism.

Pastures Green and New

2007-05-03T14:56:00.000-07:00

This blog takes its name from an idea that Henry David Thoreau returned to time and again: that of having a "wide margin." Broadly speaking, having a wide margin is the aim of Thoreau's philosophy in two senses. As ascetic as Thoreau may seem--what with his principled disobedience and his year in the woods--his notion of work was not that of his puritan forebears: “The really efficient laborer will be found not to crowd his day with work, but will saunter to his task surrounded by a wide halo of ease and leisure. There will be a wide margin of relaxation to his day. He is only earnest to secure the kernels of time, and does not exaggerate the value of the husk.” Idle hands were far from the devil's workshop for Thoreau. At the same time, writing in notebooks with wide margins provides room for revision (indeed, room for error). Such margins in published books provide room for dialogue, thereby opening debates rather closing them.

A blog so titled then with evince two traits (the blog lords willing): 1) strenuousness in argument will not come at the expense of ease or wit; 2) posts here will open up questions rather than close them. The latter, especially, is not an easy task in online writing, the sine qua non of which is getting attention, and attention is usually gotten by being loud in some fashion. There will not be a total absence of snark here -- we all have our snap judgments. Nevertheless, the credo of a wide margin will hover over, from varying distances, everything that is written here (again, the blog lords willing).