Ideology and Crisis

A contrapuntal essay

In John Howard Yoder's What Would You Do?, several pacifist thinkers provide answers to the "What would you do if a violent person were attacking your family" question.  Most of the responses focus on Christian pacifism, including Dale Aukerman's.  Aukerman suggests that if one accepts Christ as Lord, then one accepts Christ as Lord in crisis situations too: faith in Christ and devotion to Christ's commands should not be abandoned in a crisis moment when one isn't sure they will work:

"Perhaps a Christian says, 'If my wife or child were about to be killed, I'd certainly try to kill the guy to prevent that.'  The person is really saying, 'I couldn't have Jesus as Lord of my life in that situation; I couldn't allow myself to be limited in such a way."  That would-be disciple is deciding beforehand to go opposite from the way of Christ and, in that manner of thinking, has already turned from Christ." (79-80)

I recall this passage while reading Matthew Rothschild's "Bush Sells Free Market as Cure-All, Despite Crash." Rothschild quotes George W. Bush saying 

"I'm a market-oriented guy, but not when I'm faced with the prospect of a global meltdown."

According to Rothschild, Bush noted the market interventions the government had taken to address the financial crisis, then went on to praise the wonders and glories of the free market system.  John McCain did something similar during the election campaign: 

"In an interview with Tom Brokaw last month, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., was asked to reconcile his criticism of 'socialism' with his advocacy f a $700 billion bailout package [...] 'I'm a fundamentally strong conservative,' Mccain claimed.  'But when we're in a crisis of this nature, that's when government has to help.'" (Matthew Casner)

Bush praises the wonders of the free market, and McCain demonizes the specter of socialism.  In a moment of crisis, they are willing to abandon in practice the free market and apply government intervention.  But then they still want to praise the free market and demonize socialism.  Though their faith in the free market is challenged by the crisis, and they are unwilling to practice their faith to deal with the crisis, they still wish to uphold their faith.

I suppose we could take this in a couple of directions.  One direction would be an "anti-ideology" direction: in practice we should be pragmatic and do what seems to work best, not cling to an ideology.  Another direction would be "perfect ideology": if we claim an ideology, we should find an ideology that we are willing to stand by in good times and in bad times.

There is relevance in sports here too.  I play football video games. If I get down within five yards of the goal line, my playcalling is dependent on the situation.  If I'm in control of the game, I'll likely call some passes inside the five: it's more fun, it's a little more creative, and it can boost the stats of my quarterback and pass catchers.  But if I'm in a close game, in an important situation, I don't fool around with that: I'm calling a bunch of runs up the middle and making sure I get that touchdown.  

And in real world sports, coaches that stick to their system no matter what, that aren't willing or able to adapt their system for the abilities of the players on the team, for the schemes of the opponent, etc., get criticized.  In football the goal is to win the game.  If you believe that the best way to play football is run more than you throw, and the defense puts eight, nine, ten guys in the box to stop the run, it's stupid to just keep trying to run the ball up the middle again and again and again if you are capable of throwing it.

But that's football, with a clear goal and clear options, and significantly, no ethical consideration.  But there is a moral element to a nation's economy.  Sure the goal (prosperity) allows for multiple means of achievement, and various amoral ideas on how to achieve it.  But how far will that prosperity be spread out?  How will the poor in the nation be provided for?  What standards of equality, of fairness, of protection for people will there be?  As Rothschild points out,

"you can't have social justice and human dignity with mass unemployment, rampant foreclosures, high rates of poverty and food insecurity, and a health care system that leaves almost 50 million people uninsured."

Now back to the "What would you do?" question.  There are many ways to address it, and I don't have to do that here: I'll simply recommend Yoder's book if you're interested in some Christian pacifist approaches to the question (though not all arguments against violence in the book are religious).  But as we're on politics, let me make a very important point about the "What would you do?" question: the situation does not parallel or justify war.  The question that parallels war might be "would you throw a grenade into a crowd of people to stop the one violent person in the crowd?"  War is different: it doesn't resist just the "evildoers," but hurts many innocent people as well.  See Tom Englehardt:

"In Afghanistan, a U.S. Air Force strike wiped out about 40 people in a wedding party.  This represented at least the sixth wedding party eradicated by American air power in Afghanistan and Iraq since December 2001."

Or see Howard Zinn:

"Would we approve a police chief, who, knowing there was a vicious criminal somewhere in a neighborhood, ordered that the neighborhood be bombed?  There was soon a civilian death toll in Afghanistan of over 3,000--exceeding the number of deaths on 9/11.  Afghans were driven from their homes, turned into wandering refugees."

However we respond to the "What would you do?" question, we cannot assume that the answer implies a justification for mass warfare.  I think if you are going to argue in favor of a war, you must do so in this language: 

"Will the civilian deaths, violent atrocities, and humanitarian disasters that are bound to result from this war be justified by the ends of this war (which we assume will be achieved, even if we do not know that they will)?"

  And if you still answer yes, you may find yourself sounding a bit like Pyle in The Quiet American:

"They were only war casualties. [...] It was a pity, but you can't always hit your target.  Anyway they died in the right cause. [...] In a way you could say they died for democracy."

Sucks to your "Brand"

Gyles Brandreth has an interesting enough article at Times Online about how Oscar Wilde fits in our time. But does absolutely everything need to be discussed in terms of capitalism, commercialism, and the marketplace? We're in an age when anything remotely related to identity (or the spirit) is discussed as "branding."

Existentialist? Existence precedes essence? There is no essence? The outward forms create the inner meaning; identity is self-created (thus "branded")?

Postmodernist? The outward forms signal that the center is empty, and so we focus on the image (and identify it as a "brand," full of shifting meaning and transient image)?

Or simply dehumanizing?

(via ALD)

Do economists wish to ruin everything?

Tim Harford on Robert Frost:

"Frost's famous The Road Not Taken is as good an exploration of the economist's idea of opportunity cost as you might wish for. Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening touches on the same subject and, for me, is a far more haunting poem. Then there's Mending Wall, an inquiry into whether property rights make for a civilised society - do good fences really make good neighbours?"

When you see beautiful poetry reduced to economic terms, does your soul crack just a little bit?

On parenthood (and more)

Via bookforum, Ronald Bailey writes about why people are having fewer kids, and the relationship between happiness and having kids. Bailey finds data to suggest raising children doesn't increase one's "happiness."

Certainly, raising children is difficult and often boring. And yet I find it deeply fulfilling. I don't say that because I think it's what I'm expected to say: I say that because when I think about my son I feel deeply fulfilled, and feel horror at imagining life without him.

But that brings us to the definition of "happiness." If my primary focus in life was "happiness," I probably wouldn't do much all day besides watch TV shows on DVD. But I live with the belief that there is greater meaning than my own temporary pleasure. I read--because it fulfills and challenges me. I don't eat meat--because I believe an animal's life is worth more than my instant pleasure or "happiness."

Raising children is not about fulfilling my momentary pleasure, and to a certain extent it's not about fulfilling any empty concept like "happiness." It requires sacrifices (I've been to one movie in a theater in the past year). It requires a lot of additional work. Instant gratification doesn't take to concepts like "sacrifice," but with sacrifice can come a deeper sense of happiness, a deeper sense of joy, a deeper sense of meaning.

Bailey includes one passage that of course my very being rails against:

"So, modernity essentially transforms children from capital goods that produce family income into consumption items to be enjoyed for their own sakes, more akin to sculptures, paintings, or theatre."

Human beings are not commodities, to be defined entirely in terms of their usefulness. We're not "capital goods" or "consumption items." We have a dignity that goes beyond our usefulness, and even when used ironically, I bristle at such a reduction of human beings.

This is one way in which I recognize myself as a "Christian Humanist." Much of my religious feeling focuses on how we treat and consider other human beings. I wish to recognize the inherent dignity and holiness of every living creature, and to treat each living creature accordingly. My inspirations in my religious feelings are people like Milton, like Dostoevsky, like Yoder. When human beings are reduced to commodities and defined according to their usefulness (to whom?), the Christian Humanist in me balks in frustration.

Another note: in writing about this article, Ann at Feministing distorts an episode of The Simpsons, and as this blog is as much about TV as anything else, I can't let that pass. It is not accurate to say that in that episode, "Marge starts a crusade against 'Singles, Seniors, Childless Couples and Teens, and Gays.'" Actually, it was Lindsey Naegle that started a crusade to remove children from public life, and Marge was just responding to it.

I'm not writing this with judgment of people who choose not to have children. It is your choice (of course!), it's not for everybody, and I'm certainly not trying to imply the only way to find deeper fulfillment in life is through parenthood. I'm mostly questioning how we define "happiness" and and the assumption that "happiness" is the primary goal.

Is happiness defined as "pleasure"? As "fulfillment"? Because those are often two different things.

Consider a monk that finds fulfillment in the denial of pleasure--is he "happy"?

Look at those, Sancho Panza!

"When the Giving Is Good: Saving Christmas from the economists"

Harvey Mansfield:

"The sovereignty of individual preferences also helps economics by freeing it from having to understand human nature. Economists can make mathematical models of behavior without considering whether their mathematics describes actual human beings accurately. Economics, no longer confined to a particular subject--namely, money--can expand into other fields such as psychology, sociology, and political science."

(via Arts & Letters Daily)

"Possible Side Effects"

David Leonhardt:

"This problem plagues many of the new economic imperialists: [...] they don’t get out enough. They are asking good questions about epidemiology and psychology, but they are not spending much time with epidemiologists and psychologists, let alone with the people who are the subjects of their academic research. As a result, they arrive at conclusions that can be clever but lack wisdom..."

Torrential Downpour

"In short, anything can be said of world history, anything conceivable even by the most disordered imagination. There is only one thing that you can’t say–that it had anything to do with reason."
In a recent post, economist David Berri writes about books applying economics to other subject, and discusses the idea (as expressed by Tim Harford) that

"Rational people respond to incentives: When it becomes more costly to do something, they will tend to do it less; when it becomes easier, cheaper, or more beneficial, they tend to do it more. In weighing up their choices, they will bear in mind the overall constraints upon them: not just the costs and benefits of a specific choice, but their total budget. And they will also consider the future consequences of present choices."

In Notes from the Underground, Dostoevsky raises an objection against (among other things) the belief that human beings will behave according to their own best interests, if they could only be taught them. The man from the underground suggests that human desire cannot be easily quantified, and further suggests that "reason is only reason and satisfies only man’s intellectual faculties, while volition is a manifestation of the whole of life, I mean of the whole of human life including both reason and speculation."

It again strikes me that the mode of thinking Dostoevsky argues against is precisely the mode of thinking in economics. The man from the underground seems to suggest that people's desires transcend simple definitions of "incentives," that humans can and do behave against their own incentives or best interests (primarily in order to assert their free will, to prove they are not sprigs on a barrel organ), and that humans can't really be expected to act according to reason (as they often don't).

I'm chasing after windmills.

Finishing a book
I've been carrying Dostoevsky's The Idiot around with me for about a month. I'm a horrifyingly slow reader (ah, but I remember what I read fairly well, better than most, I think), the timing has been bad (finals week grading, Holiday visiting, lots and lots of football), and frankly taking care of a one year old limits reading time.

As I've been in Dostoevsky's world, it has felt to me as a world without beginning (since I started it at a Final, associating it with last semester, which seems worlds away by this point) and no end. And now, I'll soon be leaving this world. It's a bit...disorienting. In my thesis on John Fowles' The Magus, I argue that Nicholas the narrator's suicide attempt is inauthentic, because the weight of the pages after this chapter convince the reader that the attempt will fail. And the weight of pages of The Idiot has seemed interminable, as if the events could carry on forever (Dostoevsky's seeming lack of structure contributes).

But now I've got less than 90 pages, and it's terribly obvious that events will end. I know they soon must. And yet nothing in the book is occurring as if any denouement is on its way.

But the next book I plan to read is Dostoevsky's The Adolescent, so I won't be out of his world for long. I've really be working through the master's major works. Dostoevsky is my desert island novelist--I don't think I would need any other novels but his.

(and if you're curious, my desert island playwright is, of course, Shakespeare, and I do not have a desert island poet, as the infinite varieties and beauties of poetry cannot allow me to limit myself to but one poet).

Watching
Here's what I've been watching over winter break:

Day Watch. OK.
The Big Lebowski. Very funny.
Superbad. Very funny.
The Brothers Solomon. This is the sort of movie my wife and I frequently watch and often love: it's not technically "good," and it's low budget and unknown, but it is filled with genuinely creative, funny moments.

I've also been rewatching season two of The Sopranos, and occasionally rewatching episodes of season nine of Seinfeld.

And lots and lots of football. Miserable, miserable football.

On my economics post

I feel completely ridiculous that my post on dehumanization in economics features such a clear and obvious error--and that furthermore, this error is the result of my ignorance of the terminology of the very subject I was attempting to write about. Those who know me know this is a fault for which I can barely forgive myself (even at this little blog which has never had more than a handful of regular readers).

Let me quickly summarize here: my point in that post was not to dismiss economics as a field of study or as a useful field within its sphere. My point was mainly to express my own personal dislike of economics, what I particularly dislike about economics. My focus was on the dehumanization; in my own opinion, it's an approach to reality that reduces individuals to their productivity, defines actions by response to incentives, evaluates human behavior according to group behavior, etc. What troubles me is that economists are expanding their worldview outside of the conventional sphere of economics and are explaining many aspects of human existence according to an economist's worldview. This is fine in some areas (it's useful--though not definitive--in sports analysis), but in other areas it just doesn't work for me. I fear that an economist's worldview stretched into other fields reduces human psychology and behavior to base and limited terms. And my life as a student of literature, imbibing Arthur Miller, William Wordsworth, Fyodor Dostoevsky, John Milton, John Fowles, and others, simply balks at explanations, evaluations, and assumptions of human beings in such terms.

Economics and Human

ADDENDUM: This post contains a pretty egregious error. I've tried to explain my feelings more clearly in "On my economics post." If you're going to read this, read that too.

I don't like economics.

Part of my dislike of economics is the arrogance I perceive. In my experience, people in the Humanities are comfortable discussing their theories as theories; in literature and literary theory "truth" is not quite what you think, and even history is not merely a chronicle of what happened, but an evolving interpretation of the meaning of what happened. Even the scientists I've encountered seem comfortable discussing the theoretical, subjective nature of their work (one of my college science teachers explained cosmology as our current model of the universe, not simply our knowledge of what the universe is). Some of the economists I've encountered seem to have greater assurance in the correctness of their own statistical analysis; I haven't noticed the same comfort with doubt in their own numbers, theories, and analysis. Particularly when I read economists (and mathematicians) writing on sports, I sometimes sense that the writers don't have even a slight doubt that their numbers are pristine and infallible indicators of truth. But this is entirely subjective: I don't have specific examples, and I'm basing it on my perception of my very limited experience (which is largely based on economists commenting on subjects other than economics, like sports).

But my further dislike of economics stems from the dehumanization inherent in economics. Of course, economics explores trends, and the individual is easily ignored (or merely categorized). But it goes further. I think every reader of this blog knows of my other incarnation as a sports blogger, and I do encounter some economists writing about sports. One such economist is David Berri of Wages of Wins, a blog devoted primarily to basketball analysis. In a recent post, Berri wrote the following passage:

"In sum, our teams can make us happy or sad. Or if I were to pretend to be an economist, teams can increase or decrease our utility."

I'm not writing this to criticize Berri himself (he's not the specific problem, and furthermore the post was written with a light-hearted tone), and I don't know his precise intent with this passage. I write now because the passage struck me as microcosmic, in some way, of a larger issue. I fear this passage gets at the heart of what disturbs me about economics as an area of study: humans are defined by their utility [NOTE: see the comments: Holy Hitter set me straight on what "utility" means in economic terms. The inspiration for this post was based on my ignorance and misunderstanding of economics terminology, and so my apologies to David Berri. However, I won't eliminate the post, as I hope the points made are valid even if the impulse that inspired these points isn't].

I don't believe an individual's dignity resides in how useful or not useful he or she is; I believe there is an inherent dignity in each individual human that transcends mere "utility." If a person is defined by his or her "utility," then it is merely that person's production that matters, not the person himself or herself. And that is at the root of capitalism's dehumanization: you are only worth what you can produce. You the person don't matter; you the productive employee is all that matters. There's a place for such a view, I believe (for example, Troy Williamson the person doesn't matter to the Vikings when Troy Williamson the wide receiver is a completely unproductive employee). But the values that reduce humans to their productivity are often extended out of the fields where such a reduction is useful and necessary, and into social attitudes, social policy, and general ethics and behavior.

The dehumanization takes other forms. In economics, it seems people are part of groups that can be studied and placed into trends. People are merely the units that can be manipulated by "incentives." Provide the right "incentives," and at least according to groups and trends, people will behave in a particular (and hopefully predictable) way. It's almost a denial of free will. As Dostoevsky writes in Notes from the Underground, "as far as I know you deduce the whole range of human satisfactions as averages from statistical figures and scientifico-economic formulas."

Of course I stand with Dostoevsky's underground man (for better or worse): "the whole range of human satisfactions" cannot be so easily quantified into an economists' system. The man from the underground suggests that human behavior cannot "be worked out by those laws, mathematically, like a table of logarithms," and that humans will ignore their own best interest (or, if you prefer, "incentives") to assert their own free will. In other words, humans have transcendent spiritual needs that defy their merely utilitarian economic needs--and their behavior sometimes follows these other needs.

Human dignity doesn't reside in the individual's utility, and the complexities of human desire can't easily be fit into codified trends or defined by incentives.

Economics, of course, wasn't really intended to get at deep human spiritual needs. And yet, economists keep branching out to apply economic theory to other areas of human life. So if my criticism of economics is well off the wikipedia definition of economics ("Economics is the social science that studies the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services. [...] A definition that captures much of modern economics is that of Lionel Robbins in a 1932 essay: "the science which studies human behaviour as a relationship between ends and scarce means which have alternative uses"), that's OK. What brought on this post was two sentences in a post that replaced "make us happy or sad" with "can increase or decrease or utility"; while I'm not writing about economics as a study of "production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services" but as a field of study that defines individuals in a dehumanizing way, I don't think I'm off-base in doing so.

And at any rate, I'm just a crackpot with a little-read blog ranting about my own dislike of economics. My revolution is solitary.

The two most significant plays in American history

"Death of a Salesman," Arthur Miller
"You can't eat the orange and throw the peel away--a man is not a piece of fruit!" Willy Loman cries as he's getting fired. And in this line we see the dehumanization of capitalism. In "Death of a Salesman," Miller explores the marketplace value of humanity, where all that matters is what a man can produce and acquire, where the economic value of the man is seen as the whole value of the man...and what is lost in such a value system.

In various places, I get to see how economists and capitalists think. And I wish for them all to read "Death of a Salesman." I wish for us to see that human dignity matters more than marketplace capitalism, and that humans have value beyond their economic value. In a country where more and more economics define the value of a human, "Death of a Salesman" is the most necessary--and the most tragic--of American plays.

"M. Butterfly," David Henry Hwang
Everything is explored here. Race. Gender. Sex. Nationality. Stereotypes. Assumptions. Image. Perception. Power. No matter how many times I teach it, I still look forward to teaching it again. At one time I was asked what book every college student should read, and I said To Kill a Mockingbird. Today I say "M. Butterfly." There are ideas in this play that simply must be considered.

Downpour: the business

Deadwood, season three, episodes 1 and 2
In hindsight, it is rather simple how the show guided me from despising Al Swearengen as a villain to siding with him as a protagonist. It wasn't the attempts to humanize him with a soft side, with his confessions to prostitutes, with his appealing language, with the respect others had for him. Similar techniques failed to swing me toward sympathy for Tony Soprano (well, it did briefly, but not for terribly long). It was much more simple: bring in characters more loathsome than Swearengen (Tolliver and Hearst), ally Swearengen occasionally with our hero (Bullock), and simply have Swearengen perform fewer nasty deeds, distancing himself from his past crimes.

And now, if they ever do make a movie, I'd enjoy it if it were three hours of Bullock and Swearengen just beating the piss out of E.B., Tolliver, and Hearst.

Egalitarian Elitism 1: Plurality and Freedom of Expression
I've long held views on free expression of ideas similar to those of John Stuart Mill: let anybody say anything he or she wants, with the only limit on speech that intends actual harm. If you don't like the ideas somebody else is expressing, you have two choices: argue against it, or ignore it.

But this should not lead to the belief that all ideas are equal. Indeed, many ideas are lousy and should either be argued against or ignored. And this is where my egalitarian elitism takes a turn toward the elitism: yes, I think you should have every right to express your ideas, and society is better served allowing everybody to express their ideas. But I still retain my right to snobbery in dismissing your ideas if I think they are worthless, irrational, or just stupid. I will rarely simply dismiss--I'm almost always willing to discuss the ideas. But I don't hold all ideas equal.

And of course we come to the internet, which has as its greatest advantage the lack of a filter, and has as its greatest disadvantage the lack of a filter. Anybody can say anything he or she wants on the internet, for better or worse. Sometimes that is better, and often it is worse. We can't shy away from the freedom that offers--but we needn't become wishy-washy and accept ideas we find utterly stupid to be of equal value with ideas we find excellent.. We should consider all ideas for what is possible to understand from them, but we needn't accept them.

Still, I find if you are going to argue ideas rather than ignore them, civility and as much respect as is possible in the situation is preferable to merely insulting each other. Argument should be kept to the content of the argument, and not turned to personal attacks. There need not be a filter, and we need not accept each others' ideas, but we should at least be peaceable and as respectful as possible in arguing against another's ideas.

Lack of civility and the move toward personal attacks (explicit or subtle) are the bigger threat to open discourse on the internet.

Egalitarian Elitism 2: Snobbish in our own way
I've maintained on this blog that disrespected mediums and genres (television, horror, science fiction, comedy) have much to offer us, and are often as worthy of being called "art" as anything else. I've written about it all over, but particularly in September I began developing the idea of "Low Brow Aesthetic, High Brow Ideas" to focus on the quality of the content and ideas in works that are dismissed for their mediums, genres, or aesthetics.

And yet, I admit to a total snobbishness within this theory. I am snobbish in my own way: I'll defend the content of sitcoms I love, while expressing total loathing dismissal of sitcoms I find devoid of value whatsoever. The egalitarian anti-elitism that allows me to respect frequently disrespected mediums and genres has not prevented a strong elitism in my assessment of works within these mediums and genres. Once again, I don't consider all TV equal: I consider some horrid beyond acceptance.

Manners = Intelligence? Please. We left the aristocracy in Europe, thank you very much.
In Ken Tucker's condemnation of reality TV, I mostly agree: a lot of the people on reality TV shows are daft and dull.

And yet, I dismiss Ken Tucker as an asshole and an idiot for this line: "these studs and babes hold their eating utensils like monkeys..." Tucker dismisses most reality TV participants as unworthy of his attention...because they hold their silverware wrong. As if these customs have anything to do with wit, entertainment, or anything of cultural value.

Mr. Tucker, I've got a M.A. in English slapped up on the wall. I teach college English. Right now I'm flipping between reading Dostoevsky's Demons and some poetry by Ted Hughes. Do you want to dismiss me because I don't hold a fork right? Would you appreciate it if I dismissed you as a mere TV critic?

I always balked at economics
When I took Economics in high school, I could never accept the basic premises. The abstract concepts I spent so much much of my time considering (love, faith) never fit into the scheme of economic theory. I didn't know at the time I was expressing the same skepticism over economics' ability to explain everything that Dostoevsky might have been getting at in many of his works (particularly in Notes from the Underground, but not just there). Dostoevsky dismissed rational, scientific explanations and predictions of human behavior, believing that the complexities of the human psyche and the hunger for spiritual meaning could not be so easily quantified. I've always agreed, and even though, for example, I enjoy the deeper statistical metrics for sports analysis, I've always maintained a skepticism that they could tell me as much of the story as their more vehement advocates claimed.

David Leonhardt writes

"of the economics profession’s imperialist movement. For the last decade or so, economists have been increasingly poking their fingers into other disciplines, including epidemiology, psychology, sociology, oenology and even football strategy. These economists usually justify their expansionism on two grounds: They say they’re better with numbers than most other researchers and have a richer understanding of how people respond to incentives."

Leonhardt also expresses some skepticism over this movement. While I may be scoffed at by economists, I'm willing to stand with Dostoevsky, my master, against the tide of economics in everything.

It's Les Mis
It was $7.98 at Half Price Books for the complete original Broadway cast recording: Les Miserables is the musical I'm now living to.

OCD
Every once in a while I think I've moved past being an obsessive-compulsive mess. But then every year or so, the pure O obsessions come back strong. C'est la vie. The obsessive periods do change the way I read and think--and it's possible I get my best and most serious writing and thinking done during these otherwise internally miserable phases. Let us make the best of it all, I suppose.

Links
RK has a very entertaining new blog, The Daily Rube, where he explores Auteur theory in practice.

Motoko Rich says Harry Potter really might not be increasing reading for pleasure among young people.

I don't think I've linked to this already: Anthony Daniels' "Diagnosing Lear" looks at Shakespeare's masterpiece.

Via Arts & Letters Daily (which you should check, well, daily), Terry Eagleton says that "For almost the first time in two centuries, there is no eminent British poet, playwright or novelist prepared to question the foundations of the western way of life."

Bookslut interviews Miranda July.