Great Bookstores
Posted October 8, 2009, 19:10 ET | No Comments
Everyone has a list of favorite bookstores. But my list is of the best bookstores.
What are those, you say? Let’s start with a theory. We always need a theory. Mine is that, in the age of Amazon, there is no reason to visit a bookstore unless the bookseller can pick out interesting books one might otherwise miss. He is an informational intermediary, in the language of economists which I love.
On that basis, the best bookstore of which I know is the Seminary bookstore at 58th and University in the middle of the University of Chicago. Second place goes to Schoenhof’s on Mount Auburn in Cambridge MA. Third place goes to Nicolas Hoare on Wood Ave in Westmount Que.
Other little gems, the bookstore in the Milwaukee airport (!), Warwick’s in La Jolla, Nicolas Potter in Santa Fe.
Perhaps the worst bookstore in the world in Powell’s in Portland. Gems side by side with schlock, without discrimination. And the Strand bookseller on Broadway in NYC is little better.
Hog-butcher of the world
Posted October 4, 2009, 10:10 ET | No Comments
The reaction to the decision to award the Olympic Games to Rio is vastly amusing, in what it says about American provincialism.
In what universe does one live, if one thinks Chicago more attractive than Rio? Imagine a IOC delegate from Prague or Mumbai asking himself “where would I rather visit–Chicago or Rio.” The Loop vs. Ipanema. Not a very close one.
There are a great many undervalued American cities: Pittsburgh, Tucson, Portland, but is there a more overvalued city anywhere than Chicago, a city that boasts of boring cube-like skyscrapers and a subterranean lake? And the weather! I have a friend from Chicago with a second house in Alaska, where it’s warmer than Chicago in the winter and cooler in the summer.
Manichean Nation
Posted July 31, 2009, 11:07 ET | No Comments
In idle moments I am reading Henry Cecil, roughly Jane Austen for English barristers. Cecil is not very well known here, but I enjoy him. Nothing deep, simply a deeply honest and not unwitty fellow. No villains either, but rather the run-of-the mill larceny of one’s clients and the laziness of opposing counsel. The most typical kind of mistake is one where a lawyer makes a strategic blunder by being too much a gentelman.
I don’t read U.S. lawyer novels, but can understand why Cecil doesn’t sell over here. Instead, we have the John Grishams, where the message is one of a Manichean world, one lonely hero against a very evil world. I suspect that the appeal here is to narcissism. We are invited to see ourselves as the hero, a lone beacon of honor in a corrupt world, a world that scorns us, that does not love us, as much as our mother did in any event…
Speculators
Posted July 30, 2009, 10:07 ET | No Comments
I am delighted that the Commodity Futures Trading Commission is taking aim at speculation. We have criminalized many forms of economic misbehavior, but there is still a lacuna for speculation, which needs to be closed.
A helpful start is provided by Article 154 of the Criminal Code of the U.S.S.R. which defined speculation as the buying and selling of goods at a profit. Now some might think that over-broad, and I admit that it might be excessive to criminalize retail sales of clothing (I have Lands End in mind here, not of course Prada). However, when it comes to other kinds of commodities, notably financial instruments, the Heavens cry aloud for social justice.
The distinction between the two kinds of commodities is well made by Ezra Pound in his Usura Canto. Financial instuments, money, whatever, are not fertile, are not productive. And I think that’s what it really comes down to. CONTRA NATURAM!
Nanobots
Posted July 29, 2009, 12:07 ET | No Comments
A friend writes about his interest in nanotechnology, and as he is an expert in the law of war wonders whether nanotech weapons might contravene treaties concerning poison gas and the like. An interesting question.
From a scientific perspective, there is little difference in kind between bacteriological warfare and the microscopic nanobots of science fiction that swarm about the enemy like bees and kill them. So on on what basis might nanobots be defended?
The search is for some principle that distinguishes between humane and inhumane weapons. Now this might seem futile, in a nuclear age, where bombs are dropped from 50,000 feet. The point, however, is that nanobots are more humane than a good many other modern weapons.
Unlike B-52’s and atom bombs, nanobots can in theory distinguish between enemy combatants and civilians. And unlike poison gas, nanobots in theory offer clean kills, rapid and relatively painless, as opposed to the gas that blinded WWI soldiers.
I have a bias here, of course. Nanobot weapons favor high tech nations. And these are generally the good guys.
The WaPo’s investigative journalists hit a home run
Posted July 1, 2009, 16:07 ET | No Comments
The Washington Post nailed Gerald Walpin this morning, a bumbling bureacrat who was fired by the President for his incompetence at a 2009 meeting, and who sought to cover up his tracks by investigating an Obama supporter in 2008.
This sort of thing ought to be criminal. Probably won’t happen, but we may take some comfort from the likelihood that Walpin will be audited.
Let’s not get excited about nuclear attacks
Posted June 30, 2009, 17:06 ET | No Comments
So North Korea threatens to lob a fast one over Hawaii on July 4. I trust we won’t overreact. Prudence dictates a mesured response, one expressing disapproval, to be sure. However, we should be careful not to provoke North Korea and jeopardize the all-important peace process.
It is true that the President lived in Hawaii for many years. Crucially, however, he doesn’t live there now. His racist grandmother did, of course, but she has since passed away.
It’s not as if we’re talking about Chicago.
One thing is for sure. If (and I sincerely hope it doesn’t happen), Honolulu is levelled to the ground in a nuclear attack, it will have been George W. Bush’s fault, and one more example of the mess the President has inherited.
Setting Emily Dickinson to Music
Posted May 3, 2009, 11:05 ET | No Comments
Poems never belong to one unless they are memorized, and spoken aloud. And they are best memorized when they are sung. That’s why Emily Dicksinson is best appreciated when sung to a catchy tune, such as the Yellow Rose of Texas.
Because I could not stop for Death,
He kindly stopped for me;
The carriage held but just ourselves
And Immortality.
We slowly drove, he knew no haste,
And I had put away
My labour, and my leisure too,
For his civility.
Travel
Posted April 11, 2009, 08:04 ET | No Comments
Why do travel books, indeed travel itself, exert such a strong fascination. A natural curiosity about other people is part of it. So too, for those not wholly satisfied with their lives, is the escapist belief that we shall be happier elsewhere if we can leave our present lives behind. Such people are always disappointed, when they arrive in Greeneland, for they always brings themselves with them.
And so I address myself for the first kind of reader or traveller, the person who is simply curious about other people, other places.
What then makes for a successful travel book? Two things–interesting places and an interesting writer. Bruce Chatwin visted interesting places, but his books are now forgotten as he himself was never of great interest, shy, reserved, always seeking to disappear in his travels. And then there is the repellant Ugly Brit or Ugly American, whose smug and ill-informed book tells us: Look how backward they are, compared to us! Peter Mayle, Adam Gopnik. We are progressive, they tell us, worship us!
How different are the travel writers who sympathize with the people they visit, whose lives themselves fascinate. Sir Patrick Leigh Fermor, Wilfred Thesiger, Robert Byron.
After being explelled from his public school, Fermor decided to walk across the continent to Constantinople in 1933, with a little kit and a small edition of Horace’s Odes, and 50 years later wrote two wonderful books about this: A Time for Gifts and Between the Woods and the Water. He later joined the Irish Guards, and as a special operations officer parachuted into Crete three times, where he captured and kidnapped a German General.
Thesiger (Eton, Magdalen) went native, as only a Brit can do. He was only at home, it seemed, in Arab headdress, amongst his Bedoiun companions. In Ethiopia he had a run-in with Evelyn Waugh. How one should have liked to have seen that!
Robert Byron’s Road to Oxiana will likely never go out of print. The books tells of an obsession with Byzantine culture and a visit to pre-war Persia and Afganistan, along with the long-suffering Christopher Sykes. Sykes afterwards wrote about Byron in Four Studies in Loyalty. Byron was a fierce anti-appeaser before the war. He was at a party, wrote Sykes, when he struck a guest who had been mocking Britain. “I always do this when someone abuses my country,” he explained. His plane was shot down in 1941.
Holidays in Hell
Posted April 6, 2009, 09:04 ET | No Comments
I am planning a trip to Israel (my first) and naturally am wondering how to pencil in a side trip to Gaza. Turns out that’s harder than you might think. The Lonely Planet particularly recommends the beaches, but the Palestinian Authority’s web site is most unhelpful. You’d almost think that they dont want any tourists. And no English translation–what’s up with that?
I recognize that war zones, blasted buildings, burqua bathing suits, and the threat of kidnapping are not everyone’s cup of tea. However, the hotels are a bargain, and UNRWA offers a visit to the refugee camps–including one near the beach in Gaza City! That’s not to say that you’ll find a beach chair and a Bahama Mama, but you can visit military installations.
What is especially frustrating is the absence of information about night life. I am sure there is a vibrant club scene, but try to find it on the web! Like everywhere, I suppose, the best clubs are underground.
Titles of Nobility
Posted April 3, 2009, 14:04 ET | No Comments
After arriving in the US, I was delighted to learn that the Constitution had a “titles of nobility” clause. Before I could apply for a title, however, I was saddened to learn that the clause prevented the federal government from granting a title to anyone.
That leaves the states free to do so, it would seem. The constitutional guarantee of republican government might possibly get in the way, but that might only prevent a state from choosing a king. As for the Duke of Earl, the Baron de Boeuf, the Knight of the Doleful Countenance, all that might just be possible. I note that a constitutional amendment that would have prevented US citizens from accepting a title of nobility was proposed but never adopted. That it was thought necessary suggests that a state might create its own nobility.
The subject has been in the news because of the honorary knighthoods recently given by the Queen to Ted Kennedy and John Warner. The accepted protocol is that they might be addressed as “Sir Edward” or “Sir John” by a British subject in England, but not in America by an American.
It’s a trivially small point, but the broader one is that the republican aversion to monarchy and aristocracy has little basis in modern history or economics.
Go through the list of despotic governments, and you’ll find the republican or presidential system disproportionately represented, as compared to the Westminster system of monarch cum Prime Minister. That’s not difficult to understand, if you’re ever seen Question Period in the House. In addition, there is a tendency to hold presidents in a reverence, as one does a monarch; where Prime Ministers are usually figures of fun.
As for economics, the list of countries with the highest GDP per capita are disproportionately monarchies. There is evidently no contradiction between a healthy economy and a monarch.
In any event, how can people who celebrate the American Idol be opposed to an aristocracy?
So why not have titles of nobility in this country? I can think of one good argument: Sir Edward Kennedy. And that’s a title given by the Queen (on the advice of the PM). You can imagine who the recipients might be if the titles were awarded by Congress.
On the other hand, we might end up with a better lot of Ambassadors if political donors could be paid off with titles.
While I’m at it, let me note that the Royal Horticulture Society will test the Prince of Wales’ theory that plants thrive when you talk to them.
Solving the GM Problem
Posted April 1, 2009, 12:04 ET | No Comments
The Administration has taken a lot of unfair heat for its takeover of GM. People have wondered how it is that Obama knows how to design a car.
As if that’s so very hard. As it happens, I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about car designs while I was a child, and even produced a good many drawings. I’ve done the same during law school faculty meetings. And I don’t think I’ve done a worse job than Detroit–not that that says much.
Since you ask me, I have some very definite ideas about what a car should look like.
For starters, fins. Nothing better expresses the idea of exuberance, the striving that is never satisfied with the dull, the ordinary, the spare and utilitarian than fins that jut out and threaten to decapitate meddlesome pedestrians.
Another idea: push button gear shifts. We had them in the 1950s, then they disappeared. What happened?
Here’s another great idea from back then: two-tone paint jobs.
And the Mopar 426 Hemi engine. With batteries to enhance the energy-efficient demands of today.
I don’t say that everyone will like this, immediately in any event, but I have a plan for that too. The problem here is the consumers, the same consumers who wanted SUV’s and who cost the GM CEO his job when he sought to satisfy consumer demand.
What I’m going to need are mandatory aesthetic classes that train consumers to appreciate the kind of car I have in mind, and nudge them in my direction. That’s of course what the Administration will need, as it weans us from SUVs.
I knew a CEO who had just this problem. He liked photo-realism (as I do), and bought some Richard Estes for the board room. He loved them, but no one else did. When he heard that his tastes in art weren’t shared, what did he do? Return the paintings? No, he asked all his execs to take art appreciation classes.
How To Write a Novel
Posted March 28, 2009, 11:03 ET | No Comments
Nothing easier. There are, after all, only two stories.
A Stranger Comes to Town: The Iliad.
A Man Goes on a Voyage: The Odyssey.
Some say that there is a third story: A boy meets a girl. But that is usually subsumed under the above two stories. Or else it is quite another genre, that of comedy.
In a comedy, boy meets girl, boy is opposed by elder (senex), and triumphs over him. A comedy ends in a wedding, and the boy and girl afterwards live in a cross-hall 1920s house. This might made of brick, but is more often made of wood, painted white. In either case, there will be rose bushes.
There are minor variants on this. Boy meets girl and girl; or girl meets boy and boy and boy. But these tend to belong to a particular genre, and formerly were published only in Paris.
Now, novels also have action and characters. Good or bad things might happen to good or bad people.
In some novels good things happen to good people. This is the genre of hagiography. Recent examples include Bill Clinton’s My Life.
In some novels bad things happen to good people. This is the genre called tragedy. Recent examples include Bill Clinton’s My Life.
In some novels good things happen to bad people. This is the genre called satire.
In some novels bad things happen to bad people. This is the distinctively moden novel. There is no better way to attract readers today than to write about a rotter and make him sympathetic. The logic of this kind of a novel is so strong that the reader may find the character sympathetic even though the author was repelled by him, and in time even the author may come around to admire the character. This is what happened to Camus’ The Stranger.
Have I ever written a novel? No. And what’s your so-called point?
La nouvelle vague
Posted March 25, 2009, 19:03 ET | No Comments
We celebrate this year the fiftieth anniversary of the French New Wave, with the release of Truffaut’s Les quatre cent coups in 1959. That’s how I count things in any event. 1959 was also the year of Resnais’ Hirsohima mon amour, Godard’s A bout de souffle and Chabrol’s Les cousins, but for me it was Truffaut’s story of a boy sent to reform school, through the force of circumstances which reflect little upon his character.
Would The Four Hundred Blows have been so remarkable without Jean-Pierre Leaud? I don’t think so. Consider the scene where he is interrogated by the psychiatrist, and reflect that he was only 14 at the time. Because Leaud the child so little resembled Leaud the adult, I have always been captivated by his characteristic expression of surprise–eyes wide open, a little smile. But for that we’d scarcely know it was the same person.
So what made the New Wave? And why was it indigenous to France? Why was there nothing like it in other countries? Truffaut et al. turned their back on cinematic conventions and produced stunningly beautiful and intelligent films with very little money. When John Cassavetes tried to do the same thing, he made boring, ugly films. Wells made intelligent films with little money, as good or better than anything the French did. But it wasn’t the same thing.
So what was it, then? Let me suggest one thing: an awareness, characteristic of French literature, and informed by French moralists, of the possibility of self-deception.
Where does one see that in American films? In one great masterpiece: The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance.
Denmark
Posted March 24, 2009, 18:03 ET | No Comments
I have begun watching Danish films, the hook being the scores by Johan Soderqvist. For their earnest, humorless moralizing, their determined effort to exclude any possibility of joy from life, they surpass even Canadian films. Here’s a review of Festen (1998) from IMDB:
I have seen this film more than I’ve bothered to keep track of. That’s not to say that I’ve seen it an unusual amount of times(it’s probably not more than three), just that I’ve never bothered to keep track. Anyway, my point is, every time, it’s like seeing it for the first time. I keep discovering things that I must have noticed before, but don’t remember seeing earlier. Tonight, I finally realized why; I’m blocking them out. I’m blocking out almost every single second of this film, and here’s why; it reminds me of everything I hate about Denmark and being Danish.
How to Write Satire
Posted March 23, 2009, 18:03 ET | No Comments
It is sometimes thought that satire is no longer possible, as reality has outstripped it. There is nothing left to mock. But there always is something, and nothing is easier to write than satire. Merely find a bad idea, and take it to another level. “We take Gay Pride Month very seriously indeed, here at Hillary Rodham Clinton Middle School…”
But that’s merely the satire of Christopher Buckley, unmemorable, a little trite. The best satire identifies an idea so perverse that we had buried deep into our consciousness, so as to be able to live with it. This is the satire of Joyce’s The Dead, when seen as a satire. And in truth this kind of satire is close to tragedy, for it reveals the lies we tell ourselves.
This is the satire of Le misanthrope, when we recognize ourselves as Alceste.
Lincoln-Darwin
Posted March 22, 2009, 09:03 ET | No Comments
I have been putting together a program on Lincoln an Darwin, the hook being the fact that they were born within a few hours of each other. Happily Poe was born a few weeks before, so I didn’t have to worry about him.
Lincoln and Darwin shared several personal traits. Both were subject to bouts of depression and were possibly manic. Both came from an inferior stata of society. The Darwin family was very rich, to be sure, and Darwin did attend Cambridge, but there was nevertheless a social gulf between him and, say, Captain Fitzroy of the Beagle. Both Darwin and Lincoln were raised in a tradition of religious dissent (again, a good deal more primitive in Lincoln’s case). And both were leading nineteenth century intellectuals.
It is at the level of ideas that the similarities are most striking. Lincoln was no scientist, but he did hold a patent, and celebrated the discoveries of science and the progress of industry. Forget the log-cabin posters. If there are three words that summarize Lincoln’s views about work, they are “I hate farming.”
As for Darwin, we tend to forget that he was a strong abolitionist all his life. A grandson of Wedgewood (those “Am I not a man and a brother” plates), he married another Wedgewood, and joined the Jamaica Committee that sought to bring Gov. Eyre to justice.
Several books in recent years have looked at all this. No one should read Adam Gopnik’s shallow Angels and Ages, and David Contosta’s plodding Rebel Giants is scarcely better. However, the Desmond and Moore Darwin’s Sacred Cause is a fascinating if overstated look at the effort to combat racism from within the scientific community.
American Laughter
Posted March 21, 2009, 17:03 ET | No Comments
Other countries, other laughter. American laughter emphasizes the social bond between joke-teller and listener more than it does the sense of superiority to the butt. Not that I find this in any way attractive, as it expresses an excessive concern about fitting in, about communicating subservience to the joke-teller.
Judges know this. When appointed to the bench they are told that they’ll never again know whether their jokes are funny.
This is also the laughter of the faculty meeting, the good-natured, shared pleasure in expressing amity and support for one’s chairman or dean. What in other countries is called sucking up.
A related kind of laughter is the in-joke told not to express wit but rather to show one’s membership in a community defined by its higher aesthetics, morality or politics. Bush jokes, for example (unless told by Bush himself, for those jokes were often funny.)
It’s All Right When We Do It, vol ccccxxxviii
Posted March 20, 2009, 17:03 ET | No Comments
I happened to see Joe (”the Plumber”) Wurzelbacher last night, and recalled his effrontery in questioning Barak Obama. What was especially galling was that he had once had a tax lien registered against him, as we discovered through the good offices of the Ohio tax department. The point is that a person with a questionable tax record simply doesn’t have moral standing to question Obama. Here’s Talking Points Memo on the scandal.
After all, it’s not as though he were merely a cabinet secretary.
It’s All Right When We Do It, vol. cccxxxvii
Posted March 13, 2009, 07:03 ET | No Comments
On July 7, 2008, Melanie Sloan, Executive Director of the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (”CREW”), reported on Huffington Post that CREW had filed complaints against Bush DOJ staffers for politicizing the Justice Deparment by firing liberal U.S. District Attorneys.
So here is the same Melanie Sloan in today’s Washington Post. “They can’t want all these [U.S. District Attorneys]. These are all very, very conservative Republicans.” Her ethical judgment on the matter? “It’s going to be tricky.”
Tricky? No, I don’t think it’s going to be tricky.
Springtime for Hitler
Posted March 8, 2009, 09:03 ET | No Comments
At 10 am it’s already over 70 degrees. The seasons have changed. The crocuses are out and the daffodils will soon follow. Spring has arrived, and with it a spate of news stories about Hitler. I don’t try to explain this. I simply note a curious fact of modern journalism.
Michael Dirda reviews Hitler’s personal library in yesterday’s Post. The Fuhrer loved a good western novel. And who doesn’t? Sadly, the vegetarian books were all looted.
The controversial Bishop Robinson, charged with being a Holocaust denier, has said that he’ll now examine the evidence. Always a good move. And so the good bishop has turned to David Irving for advice on the matter. And whom else?
Irving, for his part, is a little hard up, and is selling some of his Nazi memorabilia, including a lock of Hitler’s hair.
I save the best for last. An Argentine historian has discovered a town in the deep south of Brazil whose inhabitants are nearly all German, where one in five pregnancies resulted in twins. The explanation for the boys from Brazil? Dr. Mengele was a frequent visitor to the town and treated the women.
Museums
Posted March 6, 2009, 19:03 ET | No Comments
In Milwaukee a few days back I visited the splendid Milwaukee Art Museum, housed in the striking Quadracci wing designed by Santiago Calatrava.
The museum reinforced my belief that it’s not enough to have money–you must have money at the right time. Having money in the 1970s resulted in ink blob modernism and brutalist concrete buildings. But if a city was rich 100 years ago, ah then one sees something fine. I once toured Greece with a very old Baedeker, and found it more helpful than any modern guide. (Betrand Russell thought that, for concision of style, the philosopher should model himself on Baedeker.) Similarly, the visitor to the United States should be guided by maps ca. 1900 or perhaps 1800.
The museums had two excellent Bouguereau’s and a wonderful Chuck Close. Bougureau was the great art celebrity of 120 years ago. Nowadays he is scorned, but I much prefer him to his expressionist contemporaries. Surprisingly I also saw Tissot’s London Visitors–a loan from Toledo perhaps?
Worst Unmade Films
Posted March 4, 2009, 18:03 ET | No Comments
Rendition II. If they don’t make it, the audiences will have won…
The Virtue of Selfishness. Alan Greenspan reads from Atlas Shrugged, leaving out the quite incidental plot.
Siddhartha, with Sean Penn.
The Helen Thomas Story, with Barbra Streisand
Blago: The Movie, starring himself.
It’s only a matter of time…
Best Unmade Films
Posted March 3, 2009, 18:03 ET | No Comments
The Trial of Socrates
The Master of Ballantrae (it’s been done before, but a great story)
The Pre-raphaelite Tragedy: John and Effie take a Scottish holiday with John Millais
R. v. Somerset. Before Wilberforce there was Blackstone and Lord Mansfield. On emancipation, the common lawyers got there first. Dread Scott in England in 1772. “The air of England is too free to be breathed by slaves. Let Mr Somerset go free.”
The Canada-USSR hockey series in 1972. Like Miracle on Ice, except a lot more dramatic. Greatest sports series ever. Violence, KGB, triumph in the last seconds.
Travel
Posted March 1, 2009, 09:03 ET | No Comments
Off to Milwaukee and Chicago for several days
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