Talkin' Tea Bagger Paranoid Blues

I wrote the following to a group of friends who asked if my school was allowed to show the Obama speech:

Yeah, our superintendent got calls all day yesterday and the day before. So we can only show it to the kids who want to watch it.

I'm just going to lock the doors and pull down the shades and have the students hide under their desks until the whole thing is over. Our kids are so vulnerable to socialist notions! (especially because they are all Mexican) Socialism is such a powerful doctrine, however subtle (I mean I bet the guy doesn't even say words like "proletariat" and "class struggle.") I just don't want our parents to have to now spend all their free time un-brainwashing their own kids. Parents should not have to contend with a charismatic president and his espousal of ideas like "stay in school" and "don't drop out." These are socialist ideals. We are all familiar with the literacy rates of places like Cuba. We don't want a country full of do-gooding doctors, especially not in this political crisis.

The other suspicious thing about this speech is the length. It's going to be about 15-20 minutes of pure brainwashing. This is what I'm afraid of: smart people. Obama obviously knows that teenagers' attention spans are short and he's keeping the speech within the average. If this kind of cunning does not scare you then you are a socialist.

What I'm really afraid about is that Obama is going to say some things that on the surface are going to sound like he's encouraging kids to become educated, but really he's going to have a subliminal policy speech on socializing health care. I mean if kids come away from this speech saying things like, "I'm really interested in the idea of a public option, but I'm not sure it goes far enough to reform the health care system," or "I think that the profit motive in insurance companies might not be the most effective way to ensure the health of people in this country," or "the fee-for-service model is an unsustainable model," I'm just going to pick up and move to the nearest libertarian country. I mean I can really imagine my kids saying those things, and it's frightening!

If George W. was giving the speech, I would let the kids watch it. I mean this is a guy who has a great life story about his education. The guy went to the most elite private schools; he made C's. That's speaking to kids on their level. Obama was just primed from an early age to be an elite socialist. I mean this guy was raised by a single, socialist mom who made him get up at 4am and actually study! That is not the American Dream, and I'll be damned if those are values I want my kids to have, much less hear from a president who has benefited from them!

All in all, I think that understanding socialist ideas is dangerous. Keep the government out of my kids' schools!

"Now Eisenhower, he's a Russian spy,
Lincoln, Jefferson and that Roosevelt guy.
To my knowledge there's just one man
That's really a true American: George Lincoln Rockwell.
I know for a fact he hates Commies cus he picketed the movie Exodus."
- Bob Dylan

Clinton reads...

During the 2008 election, I don't think I ever really thought that I wouldn't go back to loving Bill Clinton. I wish he hadn't made the "Jesse Jackson" comment after South Carolina, but it's all in the past, and there is almost no one I can think of whose reading list I am more interested in.

The LA Times blog "Jacket Copy" is apparently on that list. Carolyn Kellogg apparently received a letter from Bill Clinton (pictures of the letter on official Bill Clinton stationary are - I don't want to say it but I will - somewhat exhilirating) who read a post of hers that credits Clinton as literary and muses about what he may be reading now. His letter unveils his current reading list and all the books are ones I wish I was reading now. I put "Uranium" on my wishlist and might even up the priority level to a 4 (out of 5).

Anyway, read it here:

The Novel as Epic

The word “epic” makes for a terrible slang word. It seems to have gone the way of words like “gnarly” and “bitchin,’” relegated to strict usage in a small section of surf culture or coteries of uber-cool high schoolers whose slick-smooth use of irony works well alongside multi-layered inside jokes. Maybe the reason it has such an ephemeral existence in the slang world lies in its inability to be properly used in the language of literature.

Leaving aside all the seemingly ubiquitous hyper praise, claiming So-and-so is this generation’s James Joyce, it is really difficult to apply the word “epic” to a piece of modern literature and be taken seriously. American writers may make an obvious an nearly successful attempt at writing the “Great American Novel,” however elusive even that is, but even the term seems to steer clear from the status associated with “epic.”

Reading Georg Lukacs’s The Theory of the Novel is no picnic despite its mere 150 pages, but its appeal lies in its premise which is, the epics, for which Homer, et al. are revered, can no longer be written. It is a form that has died along with something else inside us, and only the novel form can hold a candle to the epic, and then, only if it’s done right.

It must be said here that Lukacs dispensed with the ideas in his book as he went on to ditch Hegel for Marx. His book The Historical Novel is his final word on the novel and is more Marxist in content. Yet, the concept in The Theory of the Novel is still… novel and appealing if for nothing else than its musing on the relationship of man with nature and nature with the novel. And reading this shows the thinker on his way to Marxism by contemplating man’s historicity and its connection to relevant art.

The man in the age of the epic was fundamentally different from modern man. His connection to nature allowed him a type of freedom that connected his interior world (life of the mind, etc.) to his exterior world (life in relation to nature and environment) to an extent that the mixture of the interior and exterior lives were homogenous. Man’s consciousness and conscience were one with nature; meaning and essence were pervasive and obvious. In this way the epic reinforces this idea by having heroes whose lives are untroubled by questions of society and alienation. The heroes are sure of the rightness of their actions and sure of the fact that their fates lie in the hands of the gods. Man was at home in his existence.

At some point along the way a split between man and nature occurred. Man began questioning his relationship with nature and found out that he and nature were no longer one. This questioning led to a focus on the interior mind. Morality and conscience were no longer plain as day, obvious, a priori. Man woke up and found himself homeless and lost, and the epic no longer has its place in society.

Lukacs argues for the novel as the only form that can take the place of the epic, but only if it’s done right. Here’s where it gets a little messy. The novel must find the right balance of interior perspective (author’s subjectivity) and exterior world. In other words, a novel that’s centered too much on the author’s subjectivity or too objective in portraying reality, cannot accurately portray the reality of the split and thus cannot portray a rounded portrait of reality as humans experience it. On the other hand, a novel that can maintain the balance can achieve a “transcendental homelessness” that can match the epic.

Lukacs uses the example of Don Quixote as a novel that transcends. This novel portrays the discrepancy between interior and exterior worlds by pitting one man’s fantastically romantic ideals with the brutal reality of the real world. Without trying to overly romanticize the story (like the authors of the Don’s favorite books), Cervantes engages in a type of irony that is essential for a novel to depict if it is to account for the split.

Balzac, Goethe, and Tolstoy also find themselves in the good graces of Lukacs idealistic (i.e. Platonic or Hegelian) formula in their balancing inner life with society, all in an effort to achieve recognition of man’s current state.

On some level the ideas in this book mesh very well with any idea of man’s fall from grace, whether it be Plato, the Garden of Eden, or Daniel Quinn’s Ishmael. The idea that somewhere along the way man was alienated from his original and best state and there may not be a way back. While Lukacs may have dispensed with this notion later in his career, the basic premise of man’s alienation from nature is one that still seems relevant and resonates with people, especially in an age where our way of life has been defined more by our relationship with machines than with nature, but also where man may have the ability to turn the tide and embrace his environment in a new way. Until that time, the novel still holds its place as the preeminent form… of literature anyway.

Rushdie's Beautiful Fire

Though they are mostly British, some critics consider "Midnight’s Children" the "Ulysses" of the second half of the twentieth century. Personally, having never so much as opened "Ulysses" to just read the first sentence but having just heaved my way through "Midnight’s Children" I think it’s fair to say, “okay, fair enough.”

Narrated by Saleem Sinai who was born on the very instant India gained its independence, "Midnight’s Children" is a chronicle of modern India as it parallels Saleem’s own disappointing and tumultuous life. Rushdie appropriately chooses the magical realist style in an attempt to reconcile the deep seated mythology of pre-colonial India with the post-colonial modern reality as it comes into its own after so many years of British rule.

Rushdie, a remorseless, sharply critical political writer, carries Jonathan Swift’s torch, not so much to light the room to see the contradictions and hypocrisies of the political and religious leader catching them in perverted sexual positions, urinating on the carpet, and rummaging through purses, but to burn down their curtains. Scathing in his fictional characterizations, he persistently describes Indira Gandhi’s son, Sanjay, a man with labia lips. One doesn’t have to use too much imagination to get at what Rushdie would be calling him had he been grown up in New Jersey. And that's just one example. Indira Gandhi is a witchy widow who tortures childre, and the whole Nehru clan is rife with nepotism and designs on an inherited autocratic rule.

Yet, one can’t help but think that if Rushdie wasn’t such a master of everything literate, it might not hurt so bad. And his writing is phenomenal in the truest sense of the word. His pace is quick, descriptions rich, allusions many-layered, allegories vivid, execution bull’s eye precise, and comic vision hilarious. In one section of the book, he and three soldiers, masterfully described as a caricature of a single character and three separate characters all at once, are wandering in the jungle where they shoot Father Time, stuff their ears with mud to avoid the voices of the dead they’ve killed and wander into a Siren lair where they being to turn transparent. When they come to their senses they are washed away in a tidal wave.

It’s a rarely noted rule that you shouldn’t get your history from fiction. Rushdie does not let you assume you can read this novel and come away with some knowledge of India, Pakistan, or Kashmir, but for someone who does not know much about the subcontinent’s modern history, I can’t help feel like I got to know it a little bit, in the way you can get to know a town you didn’t grow up in. Though I think Rushdie may have trouble getting readers to sympathize with his characters, I did sympathize with India. Not the history but the cycle of intermittent optimism and imminent disappointment and the inevitable return of hope.

The Trance of Narrative

In John Steinbeck's novel East of Eden he creates a character meant to fully embody evil. He defended his choice of making this woman, Cathy Ames, by saying it was surely conceivable that a person could strip away all sense of right and wrong and live to enjoy the suffering of others. While this is no doubt the characteristics of a sociopath, the inconceivable thing is that a sociopath could be quite as successful at being so evil without getting caught, all the while maintaining a very visible presence in the public eye.

The Scarlatti Inheritance by Robert Ludlum was given to me by a friend a few years ago when he was cleaning out his room before moving. Its 300+ pages and tattered cover gave off a faint you're-wasting-your-time air, you-should-be-reading-Pynchon. But after trying to read big hard books for a year, I thought it might be okay to read just one piece of trash. What I found after having spent a year trying to read the good books is that I can read 300+ pages of trash in no time. And as a tribute to Nabokov, I feel it's my duty to tear up this little flower and examine its parts and whiff its aroma for all it's worth.

If Ulster Scarlatti has an aroma, it's sulfur. He is Ludlum's evil incarnate, his Cathy Ames. He is the spoiled, ungrateful, sadistic child of a power couple who consolidated power in an ultra-competitive early 20th century corporate market place, and if there's any naturalism in Ludlum then Ulster got all the traits of competition and thirst for power from his parents and not really a trace of anything else. He is a World War II veteran who shoots at his own men in a ruse to get himself a medal of honor, steals securities, leaves his wife to hide in Europe, consorts with the most corrupt of corporate Nazi sympathizers all over Europe and plans to be an integral part of helping Hitler (who makes a subdued cameo) take over the world. He's not only evil in the head, but he's huge and seems to scare people by making them think he's going to punch them in the nose.

On the other side we have our two heroes. One is Mrs. Scarlatti, Ulster's mother, and the other is our government employee, bureaucratic everyman hero. She is the ubermensch capitalist femme who gathers all of Ulster's European corporate fascist cronies together and scares them, not with force but with business skill. She is the reason that Hitler did not gain as much financial backing that would surely have led to his eventual status as a world potentate.

Matthew Canfield is flawed but honorable where it counts. He redeems Ulster's neurotic wife by marrying her and taking care of her kid. He saves Mrs. Scarlatti's life a few times and forms the weaker half of an odd couple that may be somewhat distanced because of class barriers but definitely grows into respectful and appreciative relationship.

And there you have your archetypes. And there you have your story which is confined to the possibilities of the archetypes. In cases like these the author knows the reader has simple expectations. The good guy has to win. The bad guy has to be really bad - beyond any sort of humanity or even humor. He, in fact, has to make the Nazis, who were the most evil people history has ever seen, look like a redeemable people with at least a perceivable code of honor. The heroine has to be tough as nails to stay on top in a dog eat dog corporate world, and though she does some mean things along the way, they can be undone by our government employee hero, so that we can maintain our notions of competitive but benign corporate system and the humble heroism of our government subordinates.

There is no other way to think. This is the trance of narratives. The author respectfully upholds the readers expectations, carrying them the entire way through the comfort of a thrilling plot. The author controls the imagination by fully illustrating their character so that their is no question to or complexity in who they are. The reader is willingly hypnotized because they trust the author to get them through this tunnel of suspense safely so that our own lives are exactly where we left them safe and sound. And we are still made to celebrate the patriotism inherent in our corporate system.

Often the purpose of the evil incarnate character in literature is to provide a foil and reveal the humanity of the main character. Ultimately the devil character loses out not to goodness but to humanity because the reader gains insight into how good can navigate its way out of the complexities of human nature and manifest itself in the world despite its antagonists. Ulster Scarlatti, on the other hand, ultimately emerges victorious. He does not challenge the humanity of his characters; his murder is accepted without thought. Instead he confirms the simplicity of their character and the complicity of the readers in accepting an easy answer and a false representation of humanity.

Lonesome Books

If you're ever driving on your way to Albuquerque from Dallas, take a little detour south of Wichita Falls down to Archer City where the Texas author Larry McMurtry resides and take a stroll through the four old and rare book stores he owns in town.

When Sheila and I waltzed into this town of, oh I'd say about 1500 people, we drove around a little. Saw some ol' boys workin' on a truck; saw a feed mill; and we saw a bed and breakfast called the "Lonesome Dove Inn."

We swaggered into the local library, I put my elbow on the counter and asked the lady if she knew where to find these book stores of Larry McMurtry's. She was much obliged to tell us all about 'em. I asked if ol' Larry hangs around town much, and she said "Oh, sure. You'll see him walking around with a cup a' coffee in his hand. You c'n say hello, but I don't think he's much of a talker." Her teenage daughter snickered a little and rolled her eyes. We got the impression that ol' Larry isn't much of an Archer City socialite.

Anyway, you can walk into the bookstores and look around and no one even tends to 'em, 'cept in the main store, Booked Up No. 1. We thought the place was dead because we started at No. 2 and there weren't nobody in there. We were surprised to find that we weren't the only tourists in this one horse town and some people even had armfuls a' books.

I sighed and told Sheila I didn't want any books from here. She asked if I were sure. I told her that I like my books like I like my women: fresh and with a nice little forward from some other famous author who's got a more contemporary perspective on the work I'm about to read.

Ol' Larry may never be able to write another "Lonesome Dove" but he turned a little horse and tractor town into a classy minor tourist destination.

Economist's top books

The Economist also put out a best of the year book list that's worth a look. There are a number of categories, not just fiction/nonfiction, which allows for more books. And, as should be expected, the list is made up of primarily non-fiction books. They did include the novel "Lush Life," however.