Tuesday's Links (but first, two quotes)

Here is a line from Captain Kirk quoted in the Moore essay that is linked in the post below:

“We’re human beings, with the blood of a million savage years on our hands. But we can stop it. We can admit that we’re killers, but we won’t kill today.”

It's a quote I'd like more people to live by.

And here is a line from A.O. Scott, also linked in the post below:

"Rock stars have fans; opera singers have worshipers; but movie directors have partisans. Liking a given director’s movies can feel like a matter of principle, not of taste; failing to appreciate them is therefore evidence of cretinism or, at best, a serious moral and intellectual deficiency."

I definitely sense the same thing in film lovers.

A Challenge, Not a Crusade (John L. Allen, Jr.)

Yesterday I said I wouldn't link to comments about the Pope's comments. I'm nothing if not a liar and a hypocrite.

Hannibal Lecter to Drop By for Holiday Helpings (Motoko Rich)

There are a lot of intriguing things about the new Thomas Harris book, including the way it was written.

Finally, Some Prime-Time Racism: Battle of the races on 'Survivor' places discussion of stereotypes where it belongs -- in the mainstream. (Joel Stein)

Does Stein have a point?

Author Too Much Of A Pussy To Kill Off Characters (The Onion)

Mister Rogers' Neighborhood Gerrymandered To Serve King Friday's Make-Believe Agenda (The Onion)

Monday's Links, and One Comment

First, the comment.

I'm not linking to any opinion articles about the Pope offending Muslims. Here's why. The Pope is the head of a religion that believes it is the one true faith and all other faiths are wrong. From both a non-catholic and Catholic perspective, what the Pope says about any other religion SHOULD be offensive (non-catholics will likely disagree and should disregard the comments of a man who doesn't speak for their faith, and Catholics should be happy that their leader speaks firmly about what they believe to be the truth). It's preposterous to think that the head of a world religion should worry about offending people of other religions; his very stature and belief SHOULD offend members of other religions. It's not that I oppose ecumenical attempts to help adherents of different religions live in peace together (I am, after all, a pacifist; the idea of a holy war is anathema to me); but until the Pope starts calling for a new Crusade against any particular non-catholic group, by all means, let him rant.

Now, the links.

"Mr. Universe" (Ronald D. Moore)

An op-ed about Star Trek's influence on one man.

"Turkey, a Touchy Critic, Plans to Put a Novel on Trial" (Susanne Fowler)

There's censorship problems in Turkey.

"Say ‘Brian De Palma.’ Let the Fighting Start." (A.O. Scott)

For film buffs.

"India's literary elite call for anti-gay law to be scrapped" (Randeep Ramesh)

Authors and Politics in India.

"Fables of Identity, European and American" (Bill Benzon)

The Valve should be a daily reading source for theory and culture.

"Our lives! What kind of lives are these?"

Poetry
Poetry matters in our world. Poetry should matter to us as individuals. Because poetry can help us to understand ourselves; poetry can help us to make sense of our lives.

Horror
I'm a sucker for the horror genre; even when I see a horror movie that I know is bad, it usually succeeds in, if not outright scaring me, disturbing me. And I've come to realize that horror doesn't need the things that most other movies need to work. There needs to be the thinnest sliver of plausibility to horror (we need to be able to see ourselves in the character or situation), but ONLY the thinnest sliver of plausibility. Characters, institutions, and events can all behave incomprehensibly, but the film may still work because of its goal to scare or disturb. Or, if remotely worthy of the genre, it reminds us of the fact that we will one day die, and it reminds us of the darker side of human nature.

Today's Links (and why we're here)

I started Costanza Book Club in part because I missed the academic discourse on literature and theory from my time attending Grad School at St. Thomas. I wanted a place to share various ideas, but also a place to discuss various ideas (the former has worked better than the latter so far).

But I also want Costanza Book Club to be a place that can contribute something to the intellectual life of anybody who reads it. So I'll try more frequently to link to articles that I find interesting, hopefully on topics of literature and theory, but also on education, film, comedy, and history. These aren't articles that express views I necessarily agree with--just articles that have something to contribute to our world of ideas.

Also, I'll be spending time looking for other good sites around the web that deal with literature and theory. If I find them, I'll link to them. And suggested reading is always welcome.

“Comedian Turned Activist, With His Own Campaign” (A.O. Scott)

“Equal-Opportunity Offender Plays Anti-Semitism for Laughs” (Sharon Waxman)

“Turkish Novelist Faces Trial” (Lawrence Van Gelder)

“Textbook Foolishness” (Jennifer Washburn)

“When Can We Finally Be Funny Again?” (Bill Maher)

“Universities should give students the freedom to think - not threaten them with petty rules and regulations” (Marcel Berlins)

“A lament for idle summers” (Karin Klein)

“Girl Moved To Tears By Of Mice And Men Cliffs Notes”

“State of the Annotation” (Scott McLemee)

Another Link in the Chain

"Ted Hughes, the Domestic Tyrant" by David Smith
Should the fact that Ted Hughes was a raging asshole who drove TWO lovers to suicide make us appreciate his poetry less? Well, "should" isn't the right word. What does it do for you? I still think Crow is one of the truly brilliant poetry collections of all-time.

"Britain's Democracy Problem" by Tim Luckhurst
Plus you've got a freaking queen.

I figure that if I am relatively unable to contribute much to literary and theoretical discourse during football season, I can at least seek out links that may amuse you.

You might notice that there are some changes in the links at Costanza's Book Club. I'm going to continue seeking out newspapers from anywhere in the world that have particularly good Opinion and/or Books sections (I have a lot of office hours to fill). If there's a site you go for literary or intellectual chatter, let me know.

Interesting, at least

Niall Ferguson: Long Live Royal Bloodlines!

The Stupid Thing I Believe (III and IV)

I believe The Odyssey is still the greatest thing ever written.

I believe a rhyming couplet rhyme scheme (aabb) is the worst form of poetry ever devised by humankind.

Scattered Pointless Thoughts

Both/And
I'm a secular humanist and a christian. I'm a socialist and a libertarian. I'm a pacifist and I'm an overly devoted fan of a very violent sport. Certainly on one hand these contradictions seem untenable--but these seeming contraditions are something that keeps intriguing me about post-structuralism/deconstruction

Nip/Tuck
Two things make Nip/Tuck continue to work for me.
1. They continue to top themselves. The first episode gets us started with wierd and wild behavior--and each episode since goes so far over the top that the first episode seems conventional.

2. The character dynamic evolves. Which characters are ethical or depraved, safe or reckless, desiring of freedom or desiring of family, is constantly in flux.

Sources of my Ideas
You can look here, here, here, and here for some of my comments against modernism. My ideas aren't terribly original, of course--they are just expressions of whose side I lie on. Here's a quotation from Peter Barry's Beginning Theory on postmodernism and modernism that summarizes the view I have clearly (and, since this is a book I read in grad school, is one of the sources of the ideas I now have about modernism and postmodernism):

"The modernist features [fragmentation] in such a way as to register a deep nostalgia for an earlier age when faith was full and authority intact. (...) For postmodernists, by contrast fragmentation is an exhilarating, liberating phenomenon, symptomatic of our escape from the claustrophopic embrace of fixed systems of belief. In a word, the modernist laments fragmentation while the postmodernist celebrates it" (83-84)

Here's another quote from Barry about postmodernism that puts me squarely in the postmodernist camp:

"postmodernism rejects the distinction between 'high' and 'popular' art which was important in modernism, and believes in excess, in gaudiness, and in 'bad taste' mixtures of qualities. It disdains the modernist ascetism as elitist and cheerfully mixes, in the same building, bits and pieces from different architectural periods" (84-85)

Like most people, the great ideas floating around in my head are not my own: all I can do is attempt to illustrate or argue for the great ideas of others.

twofer

The Personal Canon (or, what do we mean by "I should read that"?)


This is an expansion on my pseudo-utilitarian, anti-aesthetic theoretical views expounded upon elsewhere in this blog.

There is a major problem in devoting one's life to ideas, or more particularly, books. Unless one has a prodigious talent for reading and memory (such as Harold Bloom seems to have), one cannot possibly read everything that is great, or read everything that one wants to, or read everything that one "should." There simply isn't time. So we must prioritize" we must choose what we should read and what we should pass off (perhaps for later, if death waits long enough).

In my case, I recognize the distinct possibility that I will never read another Victorian novel. This is not deliberate by any means. It is simply because when I choose what to read, I must ask myself two questions.

1. Might I enjoy this reading experience?
2. Might this work contribute something to my mind?

If you pick up a book that you won't enjoy reading, or won't contribute something meaningful in the realm of ideas, WHY ARE YOU READING IT? Should you ever read something simply because you think, "that's a well known work, I should read that"? So I don't know that I'll ever read another Victorian novel, because I doubt I would enjoy it, and I am skeptical it would contribute much to my life of ideas (and most likely the several post-modern British works I've read that deconstruct the Victorian period and its literature contribute to my lack of interest in reading Victorian novels). But I don't know--perhaps intellectual curiosity will lead me back to such books in the future.

But the two critical questions I propose are not enough for a system. The problem is that you cannot know the answer to the first question until you've at least started the book, and you might not know the answer to the second question for years after finishing the book. So students should read books that they are assigned: somebody with at least some knowledge of the work has decided that the answer to the second question is probably. And sometimes, we should read books we really don't want to because we think we should. We just might get something out of it that we don't expect or no.

So once again, no answers, just ideas.

Derrida and the Failure of Modernism

In "Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences," Derrida talks about de-centering. Roughly, the center is the main idea of a structure's meaning, and Derrida talks about it no longer existing (avoiding words that suggest a lack or loss of center but admitting language doesn't easily allow it). He also suggests there are two ways to approach this non-existence of the center:

"As a turning toward the presence, lost of impossible, of absent origin, this structuralist thematic of broken immediateness is thus the sad, negative, nostalgic, guilty, Rouseauist face of the thinking of freeplay of which the Nietzschean affirmation--the joyous affirmation of the freeplay of the world and of the innocence of becomjng, the affirmation of a world of signs without fault, without truth, without origin, offered to an active interpretation--would be the other side. This affirmation then determines the non-center otherwise than as a loss of the center" (888).

Editor David Richter paraphrases this way:

"Derrida contrasts two methods of freeplay, Levi-Strauss's and his own. The former is 'sad' and 'negative' in that it seeks a substitute for the absent center once provided by metaphysics; it is 'nostalgic' for origins, 'guilty' over European imperialism (...) On the contrary, Derrida's system of freeplay, like the philosophy of Nietzsche, is 'joyful' in its affirmation of the power of the will to assign and alter all values. For Derrida, the lack of a center betokens freedom, not loss of security" (889).

I've written here before of my waning interest in modernism (not the modernist aesthetic so much as the modernist weltenschaaung). A modernist is distressed by chaos, nostalgic for old values, generally sad about the loss of traditional authority and traditional center (the most important concept in modernism is probably "loss"). A post-modernist celebrates the loss of the traditional authority and center, for it connotes freedom to the individual. The non-centeredness means that we are free to explore and define meaning in new ways that can be independent of the center.

(These quotes are taken from: Derrida, Jacques. "Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences." The Critical Tradition: Classic Texts and Contemporary Trends, 2nd edition. Ed. David Richter. New York: Bedford:St. Martin's, 1998. 878-889.)

Old Jack's an Odd Duck

Here's an odd book: Ivan Turgenev's Fathers and Sons. I expected to read about overbearing, conservative fathers with traditional social values harshly arguing with their liberal-minded, progressive sons yearning for freedom. There is conflict over old social values, but in fact the fathers are sensitive (even overly sentimental), in awe of their sons, even try hard to impress their sons. To go all reader-response on you, I also discovered in this book I'm at a middle point in life: I don't know whether I side more with Bazarov and Arkady, or with Pavel Petrovich and Nicholai Petrovich. There is also an interesting line that Bazarov uses when arguing with Pavel that, I think, illustrates what I wrote earlier in My Ideological Paradox. Bazarov says,

"You find fault with my point of view, but what makes you think it came into being by chance, that it's not a product of that very national spirit which you are championing?"

What happens when the values of the group teach people to value individualism?

As an addendum, we now have two contributors at Costanza Book Club. You'll have to pay close attention to who writes each post, since we have vastly different views on literature, film, and theory.

Movie Recommendation

At Costanza Book Club, we're not usually in the business of recommending movies. But I must recomment the film "Tristram Shandy: a Cock and Bull Story." It's post-modern metafictional fun (it's like a comic version of the film "The French Lieutenant's Woman," which as a film missed much of Fowles' humor). And the scene with the giant womb is the funniest thing I've seen on film in a long while.

My Ideological Paradox (with many parentheticals

(this is narcissistic mostly, but to an end)

Recently I considered whether Peace were now the most important concept in my life, whether more than all else I would seek inner peace, inter-personal peace, and world-wide peace. I very quickly gave up this notion, recognizing the most important concept for me by a long shot, is, always has been, and always will be, Freedom. Freedom is not a monolithic concept, of course (e.g., the freedom to spend money and the freedom from having to work are usually, for most of us, mutually exclusive freedoms). For me the concept of Freedom is bound up with existentialism (freedom of choice, and also free will on a cosmic level, i.e., the freedom of Adam and Eve in "Paradise Lost"--btw, italics aren't working for me on this computer, so you'll get the grammatically infuriating quotation marks around titles of long works), in equality (the idea that every man and woman is my equal is an important part of my freedom), and my time (I'm peculiarly protective of how I am able to use my "free" time), and individualism (it is not like I'm out fighting for freedoms of groups, though I do believe in freedom for groups and do take up such causes; however, I live very much in the assumption of freedom of groups and focus largely on individual freedom.

So why is Freedom the most important philosophical ideal in my life? Many reasons.

1. I'm an American.
Growing up in America, I've imbibed the ideals of liberty and equality every day of my life (perhaps if "fraternite" were added to the ideals of "egalite" and "liberte" here, I would view the world differently). Liberty and equality have never exactly been regular practices in America (it's only recently that they were truly expanded as ideals to include those other than white males--and even that is not fully in practice), yet the ideals have been hanging around. I am foolish enough to believe in these ideals. My ideals would obviously be quite different if I were raised in a different country and/or culture.

2. I'm a Protestant.
I grew up in a Protestant tradition. Protestantism has a much greater emphasis on freedom, individualism, and equality than Catholicism (I base this on my experiences and studies with the ideology and practices of both Protestantism and Catholicism; I could go into greater detail giving examples, but I join Bartleby in asserting that "I'd prefer not to"). If I had grown up in a Catholic tradition, perhaps I wouldn't have such an emphasis on Freedom as a concept, or at the very least, my idea of Freedom would be different (after all, as a Protestant I was encouraged to read the Bible on my own, and was left largely to interpret it on my own. So much of my worldview is still based on my adolescent interpretations of Jesus as a guy who doesn't fight, cares about the poor, hangs out with social rejects, and forgives people). It would clearly be even more different if I had been raised in a non-christian religious tradition. Doesn't Islam mean "submission"? Don't many Eastern religions particularly de-emphasize the concept of self?

3. I'm a reader.
I read, and many of the things I've read have had a strong influence on my thinking (I realize it's hard to say whether I'm drawn to certain works based on my ideas, or whether certain works form my ideas--I call this "The Seinfeld Dilemma," since I don't know whether it formed me of drew me in because of what I am). And the readings that stick out to me emphasize freedom. Henry David Thoreau's "Life Without Principle" remains the essay that informs my ideas about work and self. Jean-Paul Sartre's writings on existentialism have pretty much become my frame for viewing existence. And John Fowles' novels exploring the meaning of individual freedom in society, particularly "The French Lieutanant's Woman" and "The Magus," have informed my more recent views on freedom of choice and behavior. My research on censorship has further convinced me of the need to allow the individual freedom against the norms of society.

So now I reach the paradox of my ideology. Quite clearly I believe strongly in individual independence from the limitations and expecations of groups. But here's the contradiction: THE REASON I BELIEVE THIS IS LARGELY INFLUENCED BY MY GROUPS. I emphasize Freedom largely because I am a member of two groups: Americans (loosely) and Protestants (even more loosely). It is the country, the culture, the worldview of the groups that have made me so emphasize separation for the individual from group expectations. Even reading, the most individual of activities, for me has been framed in the context of academia (the values and practices of the academic community have impacted what I read and how I read it, therefore, the values of another group influence my emphais on individual freedom).

I believe strongly in individualism because of the groups I was raised with/in; that is the nature of the paradox of my ideology.

And that is an illustration on the meaning of Ideology.