St. Germaine Part Deux

Chapter XVI of St. Germain's dialogues makes an excellent point about equity:Equity is a right wiseness that considereth all the particular circumstances of the deed, which also is tempered with the sweetness of mercy. And such an equity must always be observed in every law of man, and in every general rule thereof: and that knew he well that said thus, Laws covet to be ruled by equity. And the wise man saith, Be not overmuch wise; for the extreme right wiseness is extreme wrong: as who saith, If thou take all the words of the law giveth thee thou shalt sometime do against the law...it is not possible to make any general rifle of the law, but that it shall fail in some cage...Would that this advice were better heeded, even today! The class from which this reading comes focuses on the development of the rule of law in the Anglo-Saxon tradition, which has meant, thus far, a lot of reading of the likes of Coke, More, St. Germain, Fortescue, the Magna Charta, and, as Puff the Magic Dragon might have said, "other fancy stuff." I'm regularly shocked to realize that basic precepts that are ignored in our 2007 discussion of law were being advocated more than 600 years ago. Nothing new under the sun, though from time to time some things get sunburnt and we think we've found something entirely novel. Or at least I do. Get sunburnt. And find old things that I--...never mind.

Regardless, I'd bet you Gene Healy would have a thing or two to say about equity and the law.

Wikipeida & Plum

Demonstrating once again that she is a fickle mate, ever wont to change her ways, Wikipedia has gone and pulled the rug from under my feet. I stole into her depths (hrm, that doesn't sound right), probing (still not right) a fact about a P.G. Wodehouse that I had once found there. The fact in question had disappeared, but a number of other troubling facts had since emerged, not least among them, Wodehouse's German internment.

Although Wodehouse and his novels are considered quintessentially English, from 1924 on he lived largely in France and the United States. He was also profoundly uninterested in politics and world affairs. When World War II broke out in 1939 he remained at his seaside home in Le Touquet, France, instead of returning to England, apparently failing to recognize the seriousness of the conflict. He was subsequently taken prisoner by the Germans in 1940 and interned by them for a year, first in Belgium, then at Tost in Upper Silesia (now in Poland). (He is recorded as saying "If this is Upper Silesia, one must wonder what Lower Silesia must be like...".)

While at Tost, he entertained his fellow prisoners with witty dialogues, which, after being released from internment a few months short of his 60th birthday, he used as the basis for a series of radio broadcasts aimed at America (but not England) he was persuaded by the Germans to make from Berlin. Wartime England was in no mood for light-hearted banter, however, and the broadcasts led to many accusations of collaboration with the Nazis and even treason. Some libraries banned his books. Foremost among his critics was A. A. Milne, author of the "Winnie the Pooh" books; Wodehouse got some revenge by creating a ridiculous character named "Timothy Bobbin," who starred in parodies of some of Milne's children's poetry. Among Wodehouse's defenders were Evelyn Waugh and George Orwell.

It's too late for me to defend P.G., so I'll save that for a later date. For now, check out Orwell's defense. G'nite.

Primo, Writer

I overlooked this interesting bit of news earlier this month. I guess it got lost in the avalanche that is the web. The New Yorker recently published some short stories by Primo Levi, translated from Italian for the first time. Part of a broader effort to expose readers to the writer's work outside his Holocaust literature, among the interesting pieces is "A Tranquil Star." It caught my eye by being described as Kafka-esque. I couldn't resist seeing if the animus I share for the inestimable Kafka would extend to Levi's newly translated stories. The verdict? Well, here's a passage.

Once upon a time, somewhere in the universe very far from here, lived a peaceful star, which moved peacefully in the immensity of the sky, surrounded by a crowd of peaceful planets about which we have not a thing to report. This star was very big and very hot, and its weight was enormous: and here a reporter’s difficulties begin. We have written “very far,” “big,” “hot,” “enormous”: Australia is very far, an elephant is big and a house is bigger, this morning I had a hot bath, Everest is enormous. It’s clear that something in our lexicon isn’t working.

But it's not clear that something in the story isn't working. I just haven't yet decided how I feel about the story. So, I guess you'll have to read it as well. So there.

Pages vs. Wages

Purchasing books has long been a compulsion of mine. Typically, though, the practice was limited by my income and relatively little access to a decent used bookstore. Between the boxes that have started flooding into the Salvation Army, Thursday specials at the Huntington Annex, and, the mother of them all, Amazon used-book sellers, my book buying has exploded.

Amazingly, this comes at a time when I have unprecedented access to free books, largely through castoff pile of books that don't get reviewed at work. As a consequence, my library has been growing by leaps and bounds, even though most new arrivals are either ratty copies of classics or clean, crisp volumes that I will glance at maybe once. So, my library will be full of crummy editions of what I do want to read and classy copies of what I don't. A lose-lose, I guess.

That, at least, is the charge that has been leveled at me by those in my immediate circle: family, friends, co-workers, and the best beloved herself. And, I admit, it's a charge hard to deny.

That being said, I defy you. All of you. All the naysayers, all those who chuckle "what a packrat," each and everyone who looks askance at my four paperback copies of Bleak House (I've read most of it, and written a rather astounding research paper on Mrs. Jellyby, thank you very much). I scoff at all of you. Go ahead, leave me, because my books certainly never will.

The most recent salvo from the would-be book burners comes from a family member who passed along this article from the WSJ Personal Journal. Tunku Varadarajan writes:

I was once told by an old graybeard (was he a teacher at school? an uncle in Madras? alas, I can't remember . . .) that a cultured man should have very few friends but very many books. I must have been a youngish mite at the time, for I feel that I've carried the imprint of those words for as long as I've been sentient.

As my friends--all 2 1/2 of them--will testify, I've remained true to the first part of the sage's dictum. And my wife, bless her--and bless, also, her fortitude--will leap to give evidence that I've not merely been faithful to its second half but have complied with its dictates in a manner that might easily be described as fervid. A veritable Katrina of books deluges the two places we call home, and a day seldom goes by without my slinking in the front door with even more of the darn things in the pockets of my trench coat.

Ah, a kindred spirit, I thought, which immediately aroused my fears. They were justified:

So imagine my consternation when, on having to pack up the contents of my office last week--I start a new job at the Journal, and must park myself in a new cubicle, with fewer shelves--I was faced with a devilish question: What to do with the books I'd accumulated there these last four years, books numbering, conservatively, well into four figures.

Tunku is forced (spoiler alert) to purge his books. Apparently, the kind soul that forwarded me this article intended to warn me of the dangers of clutching too tightly to every book that comes my way.

Happily, Tunku's fears are not my own. For though I never received the maxim the "graybeard" imparted to him, I've followed a version of it. Many books I own, and many more I will acquire soon, but few among these books are my friends. At the core of my collection lies a select group of works which I can't part with. Outside this inner sanctum circle all kinds of books about all kinds of subjects, with whom I might not part willingly, but without violent attachment.

Take, for instance, one of my weekend tasks. I've been lucky enough to come into possession of a pair of fascinating tomes: one profiling four centuries of Virginia history, the other seven generations of the Lee family. The two seem to complement each other from my cursory reading, but odds are long that I'll have a chance to do either justice. So, I plan to ship them off to an uncle in Virginia, whose home lies not far from the haunts of the Lee dynasty. He has an encyclopediac knowledge of the area and, I hope, would find much of interest and use in the two books.

Further, my library's new acquisitions, which went through many other hands before they sat on the castoff shelf, don't simply gather dust at my house. I've managed to delve into at least five this year alone, getting through three cover to cover. A stack of thin paperbacks from Osprey Publishing were a smash hit with my brothers. My sister snatched up a book of short passages on celebrated events in English history (the name of which escapes me) before I could look at it myself. And I've got two takers for P.G. O'Rourke's book as soon as I'm done pretending I'm going to review it for some publication.

I won't lie. A wall of books is an attractive sight. But better the books be read, and they are.

William Graham Sumner: Crotchety Ass

Well, the votes are in for grouch of the century and Sumner wins hands down. I'm reading through a number of his essays for a class, and I can safely proclaim myself no fan of his.

But before I get into the meat and potatoes of this meal of criticism, perhaps a little background is in order. Graham's claim to fame is not the cracker that bears his name. Rather, Sumner was, of all things, a Yale professor (strike one):

He graduated from Yale College in 1863, where he had been a member of Skull & Bones. Later he was appointed to the newly created Chair of Political and Social Science at Yale. As a sociologist, his major accomplishments were developing the concepts of diffusion, folkways, and ethnocentrism. Sumner's work with folkways led him to conclude that attempts at government-mandated reform were useless. He was a staunch advocate of laissez-faire economics. Sumner was active in the intellectual promotion of free-trade classical liberalism, and in his heyday and after there were Sumner Clubs here and there. He heavily criticized socialism/communism. One adversary he mentioned by name was Edward Bellamy, whose national variant of socialism was set forth in Looking Backward, published in 1888, and the much more powerful sequel "Equality."

Like many classical liberals at the time, including Edward Atkinson, Moorfield Storey, and Grover Cleveland, Sumner opposed the Spanish American War and the subsequent U.S. effort to quell the insurgency in the Philippines. He was a vice president of the Anti-Imperialist League which had been formed after the war to oppose the annexation of territories. In his speech "The Conquest of the United States," he lambasted imperialism as a betrayal of the small government ideals of anti-militarism, the gold standard, and free trade. According to Sumner, imperialism would enthrone a new group of "plutocrats," or businesspeople who depended on government subsidies and contracts.

Hey, wait! Sumner doesn't sound so bad: anti-communist, thinks socialism is crap, like free trade...hell, he's a 'classical liberal.' How bad could he be?

To be honest, I don't know. He does sound like a great guy, until you read him. I'm not going to use the phrase, "tedious as hell," but I'm sure some other student has. More importantly, regardless of how much he loved free markets, he had an extreme stick up a certain bodily orifice. This specific example comes to us via his essay, "The Forgotten Man."

Now you know that "the poor and the weak" are continually put forward as objects of public interest and public obligation...The paupers and the physically incapacitated are an inevitable charge on society. About them no more need be said.

Weeeeeeeeell, la dee-frickin'-da, Mr. Sumner. No more to be said about the poor and crippled, eh? What do you do when you see a bum on the side of the road? Run him over? Hey, I'm glad ol' Steve Hawking wasn't your child, Sums. I can picture you bricking him up in some corner of your drafty old house and destroying his birth certificate. Hell, who cares? He's an inevitable charge on society. There's nothing he could contribute, right?

Of course, even though "no more need be said" about these subhuman scum, Sumner continues his campaign for captain of the snotbag team.

The weak who constantly arouse the pity of humanitarians and philanthropists are the shiftless, the imprudent, the negligent, the impractical, and the inefficient, or they are the idle, the intemperate, the extravagant, and the vicious.

Hey Summie, you missed "the filth," "the dirt beneath my feet," "the sewage in the river of humanity," and "cockroaches I want to crush." Seriously, dude. I considered myself pretty unsparing when it came to welfare reform and the indigents by the side of the road. When an able-bodied man asks me for change, I tell him to get a job. Just two nights ago, I passed by a girl in a wheelchair begging, who made the mistake of getting dressed up in a Goth outfit (not sure why she thought that would really call forth the denarii). When she tried passing the cap, no doubt to fuel a couple more purchases of spikes and leather, I laughed in her face (and her non-functioning legs).

So, William, I get where you're coming from. You hate the welfare state, the nanny state, just about any state and idiotic charities that promote slavish dependency instead of rehabilitation of the fallen man. Once upon a time, we were on the same side.

But, dude, you blindsided me with this viciousness. I know, I know, all you want to do...

is point out the thing which is overlooked and the error which is made in all these charitable efforts. The notion is accepted as if it were not open to any question that if you help the inefficient and vicious you may gain something for society or you may not, but that you lose nothing. This is a complete mistake. Whatever capital you divert to the support of a shiftless and good-for-nothing person is so much diverted from some other employment, and that means from somebody else. I would spend any conceivable amount of zeal and eloquence if I possessed it to try to make people grasp this idea.

Believe me, WG, you don't have it, so please spare yourself the trouble. All you've accomplished is given my hardcore libertarian peers reason to talk like complete jerks.

I'd go on, but this rant needs to end so that I can accomplish some schoolwork. More coming on Sumner the Bummer later, if I can stomach it.

Kafkannated: No. 58

It's time for our daily dose of the Zaphorisms (if you're curious as to why this is a daily feature, poke down the blog a day or two, where all is explained). Today's special? No. 58.
The way to tell fewest lies is to tell fewest lies, not to give oneself fewest opportunities of telling lies. Thank heaven for Franz Kafka, what would we do without him? "The way to tell fewest lies is to tell fewest lies." Ah! I see! It's been staring me in the face this whole time! For years I've been walking around with a polygraph permanently attached, giving a constant readout of my veracity to any in the vicinity (there has to be some way to get those words closer together). If only I had read the big K, I would have known that instead of having my manservant rap me over the head any time falsities tumbled off my lips, I could just not tell them. Oh, thank you Franz, thank you. I can take off the wires and spare my head from Rabadash's lumps.

(Bonus points in the ongoing DT Challenge for anyone who can tell me who my fictional manservant is named after...)

Curious Word: Noetic

The latest star in the constellation Curious Word comes to us via P.G. O'Rourke in his latest work, a dissection of Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations. Sadly, I've once again managed to lose the exact page...actually, I don't have any idea what the page was. I finished the book late last night after soaking up the remains of decent bottle of the ol' chard from Clos du Bois. Of course, the remains of a bottle were not nearly enough, so Mr. Daniels and I struggled with the last few pages as a team.

As a result, I can't tell you quite where the word was used. Fortunately, after a little research to become better acquainted with the term, I can tell you what it means.

Noetic:

The term is usually philosophical in its usage, and is broadly defined, though everyone seems to agree that it has something to do with your noggin or whatever is canoodling about inside the old bean.

Okay, I admit, that is a definition of my own invention. Let's turn to some wikimagic for a better description.

In philosophy and religion, the word noetic, from the Greek νοῦς (nous) is usually translated as "mind", "understanding", "intellect", or "reason". Most dictionaries define the term noetic as a synonym of "mental" or "intellectual." From the nous emerges the world soul, which gives rise to the manifest realm.

Hmm. There you have it. Happily, the term is eminently flexible, as you can see by the various, vague definitions offered. For instance, one might readily employ the term to sketch a thoughtful versifier: "What a noetic poetic."

Indeed.

Kafkannated

The essential philosophical writings of one of the twentieth century's most influential writers are now gathered into a single volume with an introduction and afterword by the celebrated writer and Kafka scholar Roberto Calasso.

So begins the jacket description of The Zürau Aphorisms, by Franz Kafka. I say that's a bunch of hooey. Or better yet huey, as in Huey Lewis. Moreover, I think anyone who has ever bothered to crack the cover of Kaf's Zaphs (as they are derisively known) would agree with me. The aphorisms are "freshly translated," culled from Kaf's original notebooks and laid out as he had done. The result, visually, is quite pleasing, and it's an attractive little volume. Until you start reading, that is.

I took a look at this book (to paraphrase LeVar Burton) for two reasons: a) it looks nice and readable, and b) it was free. As a bonus, I kinda hoped I might be able to casually drop snobby statements at cocktail parties: "You'd like another drink, as well? Well, I guess we're all shooting to reach Kafka's number 5...oh, I'm sorry, I've been reading Zürau. No. 5 of the aphorisms is 'From a certain point on, there is no more turning back. That is the point that must be reached.' Sounds to me like the point of being sauced. Hey hey!"

As a matter of fact, I think I will use that line at a cocktail party. Watch out, socialites and local soaks.

But, I will also add Kafka as a feature here on the Doughty Traveler, to spare you the pain of reading this tripe...well, actually to inflict upon you the pain of reading this tripe, albeit leavened by my bitter criticisms of it. I could start with the saying just listed, but who are we kidding? Kafka, that clever little saying is nothing more than a crappy version of the lyrics to an Andrew Lloyd Webber song. Except it's much easier to sing "past the point of no return," than "Frooooom a certain point, there is nooooooooo more turning baaaack."

So, let's offer up another aphorism for skewering...ah, No. 15:

Like a path in autumn: no sooner is it cleared than it is once again littered with falling leaves.

Zür-wow, Franz. You font of profundity. Oh, the agony of sweeping the walk, that perennial torment of the later months that inspires such despair in the soul. Raking leaves, what an exercise in futility, how it conjures up that despair of the soul occasioned by laboring in vain. Congratulations, FK, for that piece of polenta prose (no offense to polenta-lovers).

Journal of Love

Another bleeding edge find (from yesterday) in the Wall Street Journal. Affairs to Forget: How Hollywood lost its romantic groove:

Among many similar spam emails, I recently got one from a hook-up site headed "No commitments." It began: "Its [sic] your birth right to 'Date-Beautiful Women and Men' " [sic, sic, sic].

Okay, so it doesn't start out very promisingly. But it does make an excellent point about love, believe it or not. In short, how much can love matter when the stakes are so low?

In an era when anyone can be, as Catullus put it in the Amores, a "horse-jumper of love," the stakes for any given romantic relationship are slashed. Where's the tension, the terror, the drama in a relationship when you don't believe in your one true love? But hey, I'm not doing justice to the topic. Let's let James Bowman explain this one:

The origins of romantic love, like its name, lie in the verse romances of the Middle Ages, which took from the troubadours of the 12th century the novel idea that the lover's whole life could depend on his lady's willingness to grant him her favors.

This idea later became a commonplace of medieval love poetry. The anonymous 13th-century English lyric that begins, "With longygne y am lad," for instance, includes the lines: "Lady, have mercy on me! / You have brought me to piteous sufferings / Be you the remedy that I beg / My life depends on you."

People were well aware that the last line was, at least partly, a figure of speech. But it also stood for a daily reality at a time when the cultural expectation was that love, like marriage, was for life. In Shakespeare's "As You Like It," Rosalind, in male disguise as Orlando's love-tutor, rehearses for him the stories of those who are supposed to have died for love and then dismisses them: "These are all lies," she says. "Men have died from time to time, and worms have eaten them, but not for love."

It's a wonderful and concise argument against the idiotic approach to relationships that characterizes most of my peers. Fie on them. But up with James Bowman.

On Fairy Tales

Just last night, while helping the best beloved slog through another inane assignment for her Masters program (it's in education, go figure), I came across this bit of babble.

Children receive messages from literature beginning at a very early age. We teach them social roles through seemingly innocent fairy tales. We teach girls to be passive and wait for a handsome and charming prince to sweep them off their feet so they can live happily ever after. We teach that everyone is white, able-bodied, and heterosexual...Clearly, we must begin to educate children as early as possible that oppressing people based on race, gender, sexual orientation, religion, disability, class, age, or anything else is wrong.

Whooooeee, that's a handful. We can thank Jesse W. Birnstihl of St. Cloud, Minnesota, for that crapola. Perhaps if he wasn't so busying canonizing elements of the weather, he'd have taken the time to make some sense.

• Jesse is responding to an article to Education Journal about social justice. I'd rather not get into a broader discussion of that topic at the moment (I still need to read several articles for class in an hour), so I'll stick to my quote above. Serious logic jump there, Jesse. Maybe I missed something in the ellipses (which were in the original, mind you), but how exactly do the teachings listed "clearly" imply that kids will be discriminatory as a result. So, you tell girls to grow their hair long and play Rapunzel in the playhouse. Is that really one step from them burning crosses? Or is it more subtle: will they be emotionally abusive to the shorter-haired girls on the playground?
• Numbah two, I dunno what fairy tales you've been reading, Jess, but they sure weren't those fed to me. Take Hansel and Gretel, for instance. The witch was going to eat them. Oh, look at that innocent fairy tale. No, sorry Birnie, but fairy tales often made me lay awake at night.
• As regards those passive females: whose being so passive? It's a pretty active move to kiss a frog; Cinderella was working her little tuckass off; the original mermaid in The Little Mermaid dances for her prince even though it's like dancing on knives (and she loses her voice...and she loses her life); Jesse, what fairy tales are you reading?
• Oh, wait, perhaps JB is focusing on modern interpretations, those pretty Disney-fied versions. But, in all those cases, we tend to get strong female characters as well. Remember how Nala pinned Simba, even when he was older and tougher? How about Beauty saving Beastie's life? And let's not overlook the celebration of Mulan, which pretty blatantly challenges whatever passivity stereotypes existed.
• Further, what about modern fairy tales? What about the C.S. Lewises, the Lloyd Alexanders, the J.R.R. Tolkeins? Do they fit neatly into these white man stereotype boxes? I think not. If you need any persuading, take a look at the book I stayed up way too late last night reading: The First Two Lives of Lukas-Kasha. Among the topics dealt with: racism, slavery, class conflict, the role of women in society, social justice. Of course, this is all done organically, as it should be. These themes become part of the story because they are aspects of the human condition, not because of some idiotic writer's social agenda.

Ack, I'd love go on, but I just realized what time it is, and the demands of class are pressing. I'll leave you with a quote from an interview with Lloyd Alexander that I agree with heartily:

When asked how to develop intelligence in young people, Einstein answered: "Read fairy tales. Then read more fairy tales." I can only add: Yes, and the sooner the better. Fairy tales and fantasies nourish the imagination. And imagination supports our whole intellectual and psychological economy. Not only in literature, music, and painting spring from the seedbed of imagination; but, as well, all the sciences, mathematics, philosophies, cosmologies. Without imagination, how could we have invented the wheel or the computer? Or toothpaste? Or nuclear weapons? Or speculate "What if—?" Or have any compassionate sense what it's like to live in another person's skin?

For me, writing fantasy for young people has surely been the most creative and liberating experience of my life. As a literary form, fantasy has let me express my own deepest feelings and attitudes about the world we're all obliged to live in.

A paradox? Creating worlds that never existed as a way to gain some kind of insight into a world that is very real indeed? The paradox is easily resolved. Whatever its surface ornamentation, fantasy that strives to reach the level of durable art deals with the bedrock of human emotions, conflicts, dilemmas, relationships. That is to say: the realities of life.

Who you gonna believe? Jesse W. Birnstihl or Einstein. Exactly.

The Third Book

The Third Book is a term I will employ from here on out when describing the books I am actually reading (as opposed to all the books I'm supposed to be reading...say, for school or other such important endeavors).

The favored tome of the moment (or the past two hours) was Graham Greene's The Third Man (aha! See the parallels? Clever? No? No. Humph.). Yes, I'm aware that what I'm holding in my hands (that's right, I'm typing this with my nose...try it, it's not that hard) was never intended to be published. The book version is, in fact, a draft of the plot written up for a screenplay Greene was working on.

The movie, starring Orson Welles and...other people, is apparently a classic. No, I haven't seen it. Nor have I seen Citizen Kane. Or The Godfather. Or Psycho. Or Chinatown. Or anything made by George Romero. I haven't seen plenty of classics, so don't give me grief about this one. If it's any consolation, this is the first text I've read that made me think, "Great book. I bet the movie is even better."

Whether or not such a statement is true must wait, sadly, for scholastic demands are beckoning. Or they would be if I'd remembered to pick up the packet of essays for my class tomorrow. Since I did not, I think I'll take a walk down memory lane and investigate this text, which just fell from the hands of a now sleeping sibling. Poifect!

Books and the Platonic Soul

While I hope my tombstone doesn't resemble Royal's, I wouldn't mind so terribly if it mentioned a thing or two about being a bibliophile (presumably after such phrases as devoted husband, loving father, and all the important things). I'll be the first to admit it: I love collecting books almost as much as I enjoy reading them. In the case of classic works such as, say, Dicken's Bleak House, the order of preference is reversed, which is why I have three copies of the volume and have spent little scrutinizing it for anything other than the significance of Karl Popper's reference to Mrs. Jellyby in the Open Society and Its Enemies. But either way, me and books jive pretty well...especially if I don't have to read them, a demand that a class might make.

I've been troubled for some time now by a phenomenon that must plague every partisan of the printed page. One can collect books at about seventeen times the rate one can read them. With unlimited resources (as are occasionally available to me when drink and Amazon collide), the ratio grows even more dire. After a time, when one stops collecting books previously read and moves onto tomes that one's eyes have yet to examine internally, the question must arise...should I stop? That is, should I stop purchasing books at a much faster rate than I can read them?

Though this question has troubled me for quite some time, I can say, with complete confidence, it troubles me no more. The answer: no. The answerer? Plato.

Yes, indeed, Plato's quick sketch of the soul has liberated me from this concern.

As everyone knows (ahem), Plato divided the soul into three parts (okay he divided it a bit more than that, but three will do for now, thank you very much). Each portion of the soul has a love or desire. The philosophic part loves wisdom, the courageous portion honor, and the desirous or money-making loves gain. In short, the trick to happiness is making sure that each part minds its own business, which for Plato means that the reason-loving part gets to kick the crap out of every other part.

Ooookay. So, book loving...how does that fit in hear? Well, I ask you, what's the better way to satisfy the reason-loving part of your soul? Presumably, when you can't get in a good argument, to read a good book. And does not a sweet book collection make you the envy of your intellectual (read: worthwhile) friends? And doesn't the purchase of massive numbers of books sate that gain-loving beast that inhabits the depths of your soul?

Ah, yes, thank you Plato. With your aid, we would never have realized it's okay to buy lots of books and that the world should like The Giver.

Okay, come on all you smart*** philosophy types. Tell me how stupid this comparison is. I dare you. Plato's got my back.

Frosted Tips

Okay, let's be honest. The Notebooks of Robert Frost isn't (aren't?) a piece of cake. It's not bathroom literature, nor does one read it casually. You can't read it straight through, at least I can't, and large portions of it don't make the slightest sense if you're skipping around.

All that being said, I'm glad it's on my shelf generally, and, more recently, in my hands. First off, I'm a big fan of the introduction. Yes, it may sound silly, but without it, there wouldn't be any reason to pick up the notebooks. Given Frost's opaque and obscure writing, it would be largely unintelligible to the layman, and completely unintelligible to the average village idiot, myself possibly included. For instance,

As Frost puruses his meditation on 'gossip,' he makes casual reference to another ancient wise saying, ;Good fences make good neighbors.' This line in "Mending Wall" isusually quoted as Frost's invention, although in these notebooks he says otherwise. The poem's famour competeing maxim, 'Something there is that doesn't love a wall' is usually quoted without reference to the other line. Both those sayings play off of a remarkable proverb in an earlier poem, "The Tuft of Flowers": 'Men work together I tell him from the heart / Whether they work together or apart.'

That small passage illuminated a phrase often bandied about in today's debate about immigration and was part of a deeper discussion of Frost's epigrammatic style and nature. Extremely thought-provoking, both in its broad questions (What makes a writer epigrammatic, particularly since so many memorable and beloved poets and authors never acquired the skill?) and particular (Will I ever write an epigram? Will I ever write an epitaph? Will I have an epitaph? Will it be as boring as the epitaph gracing the grave of the first Lee, the Lee whose seventh generational descendant was the famous Robert E.?). We owe a debt of gratitude (about sixty-four cents or so) to Robert Faggen, who edited the notebooks and authored the intro.

The notebooks themselves, though, are fun to page through, intelligibility be damned.

My name is Christopher Columbus
I cant be moved by all this rumpus
Put up your knives and go below
We're members of the O.Hi.O.

Bob Frost. Inscrutable, but entertaining. More thoughts as they come to me while browsing through this beast of a book.

Cook the Books

Ha! Following close on the heels of my earlier post, I have managed to score my very own copy of the The Notebooks of Robert Frost.

This thing is a tome and a weighty one at that. The cover consists of a curiously unattractive image of an aged Frost, jotting away with a lap desk. There are no pictures inside.

These are my initial reflections. When I actually have some time to read it...er, more like breeze through it hastily, I'll offer some more feedback. While TNR apparently deemed it worthy of a review, this august publication cast it aside like yesterday's dryer lint, though I had to battle an editorial assistant (who was busy ransacking the castoff pile for other such finds).

Politics & Politics

God bless the Harold Marches of the world:

Harold March, the rising reviewer and social critic, was walking vigorously across a great tableland of moors and commons, the horizon of which was fringed with the far-off woods of the famous estate of Torwood Park. He was a good-looking young man in tweeds, with very pale curly hair and pale clear eyes. Walking in wind and sun in the very landscape of liberty, he was still young enough to remember his politics and not merely try to forget them. For his errand at Torwood Park was a political one; it was the place of appointment named by no less a person than the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Sir Howard Horne, then introducing his so-called Socialist budget, and prepared to expound it in an interview with so promising a penman. Harold March was the sort of man who knows everything about politics, and nothing about politicians. He also knew a great deal about art, letters, philosophy, and general culture; about almost everything, indeed, except the world he was living in.

So begins Chesterton's novel, The Man Who Knew Too Much. I have given up entirely upon Ignatius Press and their supposed efforts to publish the entire Chesterton canon and have instead resorted to what is publicly available online. Thus my evening reading begins, aided by a glass of dry Spanish red and a healthy quantity of pepperjack and Triscuits. Alright, so the evening is long over...I should have said, so my painfully early morning begins, which result in my midday beginning later than it should. But back to GKC.

Pickwick and Plato

Somehow, when revising my Plato paper, I found myself wading through a page of G.K. Chesterton reviewing Dickens. Don't ask me how I got there; how does the ladybug happen to land on your finger or the butterfly wend its way into the heart of a city? What errant turn sends the swallow to the coast instead of Capistrano, the goose to California rather than Canada? On one of those invisible paths, I lost my way, but it was to my great fortune and your own:

Now laughter is a thing that can be let go; laughter has in it a quality of liberty. But sorrow has in it by its very nature a quality of confinement; pathos by its very nature fights with itself. Humour is expansive; it bursts outwards; the fact is attested by the common expression, "holding one's sides."

But sorrow is not expansive; and it was afterwards the mistake of Dickens that he tried to make it expansive. It is the one great weakness of Dickens as a great writer, that he did try to make that sudden sadness, that abrupt pity, which we call pathos, a thing quite obvious, infectious, public, as if it were journalism or the measles. It is pleasant to think that in this supreme masterpiece, done in the dawn of his career, there is not even this faint fleck upon the sun of his just splendour.

Pickwick will always be remembered as the great example of everything that made Dickens great; of the solemn conviviality of great friendships, of the erratic adventures of old English roads, of the hospitality of old English inns, of the great fundamental kindliness and honour of old English manners. First of all, however, it will always be remembered for its laughter, or, if you will, for its folly. A good joke is the one ultimate and sacred thing which cannot be criticised. Our relations with a good joke are direct and even divine relations. We speak of "seeing" a joke just as we speak of "seeing" a ghost or a vision. If we have seen it, it is futile to argue with us; and we have seen the vision of Pickwick. Pickwick may be the top of Dickens's humour; I think upon the whole it is. But the broad humour of Pickwick he broadened over many wonderful kingdoms; the narrow pathos of Pickwick he never found again.

Of all Dickens' works, I must say I found the most of life in The Pickwick Papers. And I think, Chesterton nails the greatness of Dickens without diminishing his other works. I was so affected by Mr. Murdstone I once dreamt he was the anti-Christ, who was storming about town, literally ripping people apart. But every time I reread David Copperfield, it is Mr. Micawber who lures me back (to whom credit goes for the quote: "Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen nineteen six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery.") Similarly, though Pip does make the heart ache on occasion, aided largely by that venomous vixen Estella, it was not his torments that draw me back to Great Expectations, but Wemmick and "The Aged."

Insofar as that corresponds to what Chesterton is arguing, I agree wholeheartedly. I will now proceed to reread every book Dickens wrote before I continue my papers.

Post-It Poetry

I've had these stickies in my pockets for weeks now and I just realized what on earth they were. Stranded without computer power on the way to work during Christmas break (somehow I only had schoolbooks that I couldn't bear to open), I spent my time on the bus jotting down notes about the people around me. The better thoughts I attempted to distill into lines or phrases that might be useful when penning verse. Whether or not I had any success is another matter. A sampling of the poetic bits, and just some random notes:

• Say good morning to all the bus stop angels
• Lost dreams play at the B.P.O.E
• The AM alcoholic reads, "What Is Right To Do"
• Three day suits, filled with muni transfers
• Liquid amber leaves litter California oaks
• Palms wave at the Blue Oak Park
• Evergreens browning at La Parisienne
• Rubber tears leak cold
• Apollo's laser heats heads
• The bikini-clad coteries pass in caravans
• Citrus Cove's elite thumb their nose at the college

A quick glossary:

• The B.P.O.E. hosts a bingo game on Wednesday nights
• A fellow named Apollo has a hair replacement practice
• Citrus Cove is The Gates of Azusa, CA, just up the street from the community college
• I don't have the faintest clue where the bikinis come from

Whenever the democratic man in me decides to turn to poetry, I'll see if I can't stitch something together using a line or two from this bunch. If it ever happens, I promise to debut on The Doughty Traveler, a TDT exclusive. Ooo deh lolly!

Out of This World

I wish him the best of luck, but this sounds like it's going to be a real challenge...

LONDON (AP)— Astrophysicist Stephen Hawking says he wants to undertake a zero-gravity flight aboard an airplane this year as a precursor to a journey into space, a newspaper reported Monday.

“This year I'm planning a zero-gravity flight and to go into space in 2009,'' he was quoted as saying in The Daily Telegraph newspaper.

Hawking, 65, has said he hopes to travel on British businessman Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic service, which is scheduled to launch in 2009. The service will charge space tourists about US$200,000 (about 100,000 pounds; euro155,000) for a two-hour suborbital trip some 87 miles (140 kilometers) above the Earth.

Rosen at War

Today's current favorite quote on Plato is provided by Stanley Rosen's study of The Republic.

...the most frequent consequence is victory for the multiplying unnecessary pleasures, which storm the acropolis of the young man's soul and conquer it with the sweetness of democracy.

Curiously, "storming the acropolis of a youngwoman's soul doesn't sound intellectual or innocent in the slightest.

Great Books

Success! I just came across (or, rather, was directed to) a set of The Great Books of the Western World. First seen, by me, in Nim Cohen's closet, I've coveted this set despite the miniscule font and generally unreadble printing. Now, for the pittance I won off the Rose Bowl this year (the set retails for a cool grand on Amazon...heaven knows what it would cost at the old brick 'n mortar), I have made the collection my own. Here's a little from the wiki on the collection:

The project got its start at the University of Chicago. University president Robert Hutchins collaborated with Mortimer Adler to develop a course, generally aimed at businessmen, for the purpose of filling in gaps in education, to make one more well-rounded and familiar with the "Great Books" and ideas of the past three millennia. Among the original students was William Benton, future US Senator and then CEO of the Encyclopædia Britannica. It was he who proposed a series of books presenting the greatest works of the canon, complete and unabridged, to be edited by Hutchins and Adler and published by Encyclopædia Britannica. Hutchins was wary, fearing that the works would be sold and treated as encyclopedias, cheapening the great books they were. Nevertheless, he was persuaded to agree to the project and pay $60,000 for it.

Not a bad concept, eh? Of course, there have been dissenters. The more vociferous trot out the "dead, white males" line (which, in my very early youth, I misunderstood for years as some kind of strange reference to maladdressed correspondence); no women, no minorities, blah, blah, blah (hrm, hope that doesn't sound insensitive). But I take seriously some of the other lines of attack:

Others thought that while the selected authors were worthy, there was too much emphasis on the complete works of a single author (even less notable ones) rather than a wider selection of authors and representative works (for instance, all of Shakespeare's plays are included, but no Christopher Marlowe or Ben Jonson.) Defenders of the set have pointed out that any reasonable number of volumes cannot possibly represent all authors or works that some readers might find desirable, and that any selection of authors and works is bound to be controversial to some extent. The second edition of the set already contains 130 authors and 517 individual works. Ironically, the inclusion of so many writers and so much material has led to complaints of cramped typography. The editors point out that the guides to additional reading for each topic in the Syntopicon refer the interested reader to many more authors—including, incidentally, Marlowe and Jonson.

That defense sounds like a serious cop out to me. Let's face. I love the Bard as much as the next guy, but a complete collection of his work includes more mediocre works than you can shake a spear at (thank you, thank you)...or at least I'm told by the Claremont Shakespeare Club, which has seen fit to never invite me to their august gatherings. Apparently, they're plugging through all of Bill's works, without exception. Upon hearing that, I decided not to take exception to my exclusion.

But this is all neither here nor there. I concur heartily with any critic who cries loudly for Johnson or Marlowe to join this canon, if it means culling the fat from the Shakespeare list.

Whoof. Anyway, I should be getting back to work, which is why I'm in the library to begin with.