Stupid Summer Project: The Statue

Jerry: Kramer?  Kramer?  It's Jerry.  Jerry!  From next door.  Nevermind where I am.  Yes, Jerry Seinfeld!

Kramer: Just make love to that wall, pervert.

Comment: The early season episodes really get at the tragicomic destiny of George Costanza.  He finds an object that will redeem a mistake from his past, loses the object, gains it back after an ordeal, only to see it break in the stupidest way possible.  

This episode features a common motif of the show: the conflicting self-interest of friends.  When one character stands to benefit from an event which hurts another character, they argue about what should be done.

But truthfully, I've seen this episode too many times to receive any particular pleasure from it now, and will try to avoid it in the future.

art to the marrow

a contrapuntal essay

If literature is just for pleasure, I don't need it: I can seek better pleasures elsewhere.

If literature is just for the appreciation of beauty, I don't need it: the world is full of great beauty uncreated by man or woman, and I can appreciate that.

If literature is just for the exploration of ideas, I don't need it: ideas don't require literature for exploration (and there is, after all, plenty of nonfiction to read).

This is not to say that literature doesn't offer pleasure, appreciation of beauty, exploration of ideas. It does offer those things to me, but that alone might be insufficient for literature's dominant place in my life. So why do I read literature?

For language. All poetry is ultimately "about" words, about language itself. Literature offers language in ways creative and energizing (aside: I'm just beginning to learn Italian, and finding the joys and challenges of immersing into a new language). And for stories. Centuries of human history (I think of Homer. I think of fairy tales) speak to the human desire for entertainment through narrative. But still for something else.

I sometimes tire of a detached, analytical critique of the aesthetic. I sometimes tire of the way we often talk about literature. For what I want literature to offer me can't quite be approached on those terms.

I want literature that reaches to my sinews, to my very marrow. I want literature to reach me in the depths of my soul, and to touch the heart of how and why I live. I want it to teach me, but to teach me not just intellectually, morally, but spiritually, passionately. I want to feel the literature in my very being, for it to grasp onto the core of a lived life.

This is not a common experience, and sometimes it is not felt immediately. It is not all literature which reaches me so strongly. King Lear does. My body and soul leap with energy when I encounter King Lear, or even when I simply talk about King Lear. King Lear has told me something I can barely put into my own words, that I can only encounter in the play and hope others can too. Dostoevsky, too, touches me with rare depth. Weeks, months, years later, the characters and images from Dostoevsky's great novels continue to haunt me, to call to me in moments both quiet and loud. Since reading Demons, a certain image of those two characters who had gone to America will enter my mind. I don't even remember their names or personalities, but I see them laying and suffering in a small dark room, and I see them later living in the same building but simply not talking to each other, because of what they shared. Why, from that entire book, is that the image that clings to me? I cannot say. Since reading The Idiot, I feel all the darkened places where Rogozhin and Prince Myshkin meet. Their meetings may work at an intellectual level, but I don't think those darkened places: I feel them. Some lines of Wordsworth's poetry cling to me and periodically emerge. Perhaps Wordsworth was my "first poet," and thus will always be there for me to measure all other poetry against.

I demand much from literature, and though I rarely find what I demand, I don't know whether I've found it until much time is passed. Wordsworth's language cries to me still. Shakespeare and Dostoevsky make demands of me, requiring me to examine and re-examine myself. And I need them to. I seek in literature the very stuff of life.

This essay is, a bit abashedly, Romantic. I offer no program of reading, no literary theory, nothing useful to understanding or appreciating literature. In fact I am writing about that which (for me) transcends such ways of thinking and reading. I don't wish to cheapen what reading literature can and has offered me. It demands the romanticized language I'm using: reading literature has been a spiritual guide to my soul.

Synecdoche, New York

Synecdoche, New York reminded me of things.  In its casual acceptance of the absurd, it reminds me of Mulholland Dr.  In its story of the confused conflation between the artist's life and his work, it reminds me of Moulin Rouge!.  In its willful and playful abandonment of realism, it reminds me of both those films.

But to say these films remind me of each other is not to deny their intense uniqueness.  Charlie Kaufman, David Lynch, and Baz Luhrmann are each Auteurs worthy of the label, their works always recognizably original and creative.

torrential downpour

Internet Culture

Given that I've never sent a text message and joined Facebook about three weeks ago, I had assumed my students were much more technologically aware than I am.  However, today I found out a large majority of my students have never heard of Twitter, LOLcats, or Rickrolling.  Since I read a lot online, I apparently keep up with things better than they do--even things some in the media tell me they are experts about.  But certainly there is an internet culture, about which those "in the know" are casually familiar, and those on the outside have never even heard of.

Moving away from novels

Once I finish Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita, I'm off novels for a while.  I'll be reading drama, non-fiction, and poetry.  This novel makes me not want to read novels.  Maybe that could be a blurb on future editions: "This novel makes me not want to read novels."  But I have a lot of non-fiction I want to read, and I enjoy reading drama a lot, so it's a fine thing.

Mostly Vegan

It was about a year ago I went mostly vegan with the intent of doing it for a year.  A year later I'm 59 pounds lighter than I was.  I will mostly maintain my current lifestyle, but I'll allow for more exceptions.  Possibly many more exceptions.

The Club

It was about three years ago I started this blog, which I'd mostly call a colossal failure that I continue to work on.  But apparently late March is a time when I do lasting things, so it's a good time for swearing off novels for a while.

The Stupid Thing I Believe

I sort of believe that if there is no God, then "everything is permitted."  It's not that there aren't foundations of morality away from religion; it's that if the universe is random and nothing has inherent meaning, if death is the end of individual existence and there is no afterlife, then those foundations are built on nothing, and it doesn't matter if you follow them.  I think I only sort of believe this.  My feelings for my son make me think maybe I don't believe this.

It can't be a treat to be married to me

I shared much of the above thought with my wife this morning, about ten minutes after I woke up and while she was brushing her teeth.

Sergius in _Arms and the Man_

When reading Bernard Shaw's Arms and the Man, one might respond negatively to Sergius. He does, after all, attempt to cheat on his fiancee, he's demeaning and domineering (even to the point of violence) to the servant Louka, and he comes of as a hypocrite.

But I sort of like Sergius. Rather than calling him hypocritical, I see him as conflicted over ideals like "Honor," "Nobility," and "Heroism," under great pressure to maintain an image that he doesn't quite believe in. But more than that, I just think he's funny. He's a cad, but an amusing, harmless sort of cad. His seduction of Louka is hilarious--he attempts to kiss and grope his fiancee's maid, and when she responds by speaking disrespectfully to him and about Raina, he lectures her about the honorable behavior of a "gentleman" and the proper behavior of a maid. Louka's response is classic:

"It's so hard to know what a gentleman considers right. I thought from your trying to kiss me that you had given up being so particular."

It's not that I necessarily find Sergius sympathetic (though it is possible to do so--he is wrestling with the same doubts about stated ideals as Raina). It's just that I find him amusing, not the least bit detestable. If I read the play hating Sergius, I might not be able to laugh at him.

Compositional Radical

Today I told students not to be afraid to include new ideas in the conclusion.  If I had told them not to be afraid to stand on the ceiling, they'd have been no less shocked.

Perhaps other college composition teachers share this experience.  Many students have been taught rules on writing throughout their education, then get to college and find teachers telling them it is OK to break those very rules.  I don't think I'm a radical on composition theory (I'm almost certainly not), but when I tell students it is OK to use the word "I" in a paper, they look at me like I am telling them cats have wings.

I don't want to be a sprig on a barrel organ

At Salon, Gordy Slack talks to Alva Noe about "why you are not your brain."

King Lear on TV

See Ian McKellen as King Lear in PBS's Great Performances on Wednesday night.

"And, everyone keeps calling me 'S'"

It's the little details that make this a masterpiece.  From The Onion:


Prague's Franz Kafka International Named World's Most Alienating Airport

Stupid Summer Project: The Stranded

Elaine: Have you noticed, people don't use straws as much as they used to for some reason.

George: One of the guys in my cell threw a piece of gum at him.

Jerry: Oh, we all hated him.

Comment: Jerry's "Oh, Kramer, uh-huh" can be used to understand a lot of silliness.

Julia Louis-Dreyfuss is really funny; I even watch The New Adventures of Old Christine, but then I'm a sitcom rube.

Torrential Downpour

Animal Rights and “Righteousness:” further exploration on reason and faith in the secular
Another bit not intended as a developed argument, but an attempted articulation of swirling thoughts. This is why I write (even for a little read blog): working out ideas in writing helps me feel more grounded.

In an earlier exploration of Animal Rights, I suggested that even in this secular argument, it is irrational leaps of faith that guide thought and action (I don’t see a good rational argument that animals should be regarded as equal to humans, though I’m also not sure there’s a rational argument that humans are superior and can thus use animals in any way we see fit). I think the residue of religious sensibilities in this secular argument run deeper than that. From reading the writing of some vegans, vegetarians, and animal rights activists, I get the sense there is a belief in and desire for a secular version of “Righteousness,” an inner purity that separates one from the impure.

For Gary Francione, the demarcation for purity runs between vegans and everybody else; to be vegan is to be “pure,” and to consume any animal products at all puts you on the other side of the purity line (Francione: "There is no morally significant difference between meat and dairy [...] There is as much (if not more) suffering in a glass of milk as in a pound of steak "). I obviously think there is a morally significant difference, and I would put that line between meat eaters and vegetarians: I see a fundamental difference between consuming the flesh of killed animals, and not consuming the flesh of killed animals. On the issue of animal treatment in this society, I think vegetarians and vegans share more in common than vegetarians and meat eaters. But maybe that sentence itself betrays the fallacy of such a "line" of fundamental separation; the better graphic symbol is probably a set of intersecting circles.

I recognize a religious desire for Righteousness in my own vegetarianism; it is more about avoiding complicity than bringing about change (and thus if I ever do go completely vegan, it will be because my own conscience demands it, not a desire to fulfill somebody else's standard of moral purity), though I doubt other vegans and vegetarians have the same view. But the desire for inner Righteousness, an inner purity, is not exclusively religious and drives many secular conflicts. Republicans and Democrats sometimes seem to demand "ideological purity" from their members on particular issues (notably abortion). Whenever we ask a question like "Is So-And-So racist/sexist/anythingist?" we're assuming a line of demarcation between the pure and the impure (and perhaps implicitly overshadowing unconscious assumptions of racism/sexism/anythingism, and of institutional racism/sexism/anythingism). Again, I see the residues of religious issues in secular arguments.

Links
Review of The Face on Your Plate: The Truth About Food, by Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson (LA Times).

Christopher Hitchens on Karl Marx today (The Atlantic).

Eric Margolis on war in Afghanistan (Common Dreams).

I generally don't like audience interaction/participation in theater; I've got the weird feeling the actors are treating me like a rube and they think they're better than me (The Onion).

The logic of militarism

I'm pulling this quote from Andrew Sullivan out of context, but I think it is worth it:

"It's also important to note that war crimes happen in every war - and that the way to judge a society is how it handles such things."

Follow the logic here: since war crimes are an inevitable part of war, the way to judge a society is on how it treats war crimes when it chooses to go to war.

I think to reach this conclusion over the inevitability of war crimes is insane (or, if you prefer, highlights intrinsic acceptance of militarism). To me, the inevitability of war crimes in war calls into question the effectiveness and morality of warfare, and suggests the way to judge a society might be how much of its resources it devotes to warfare, the efforts it takes to avoid war, and how and why it chooses to go to war. To a pacifist, Sullivan's statement is a bit like saying that if you let your kids throw rocks at passing cars, they'll inevitably hit a few pedestrians, but what matters is that you tell them to avoid hitting pedestrians, and punish them if they do.

But if you accept (or support) warfare, and you accept that warfare inevitably leads to war crimes, you're left with the conclusion that what matters is how the society treats the inevitable war crimes. When you've accepted a culture of militarism, you don't reach the conclusion that war itself is the problem.