¶ A maxim for our times from La Rochefoucauld:
Nous promettons selon nos espérances, et nous tenons selon nos craintes.
We make promises according to our hopes, but we hold back according to our fears.
¶ Lord Chesterfield writes to his son about the importance of paying attention: a favorite theme. The advice is all very paternal, but the close is quite sweet: (more…)
I fiddled with the format this week, and will probably fiddle some more in the coming weeks. I think that the colors that I’ve chosen to code fiction titles are all wrong. But, hey, I lost my Internet connection last night and am still working without WiFi.
Just when I think I can’t go on reviewing the Book Review, I discover a new reason to forge ahead. I want to use this feature to forge an idea of what a humanist reading list would look like today. Of course, I’ve got to define “humanist,” and I’m working on that as well. Although I have a working definition to hand, I’m going to let my decisions about the Book Review‘s choices polish the finer points.
If you’re looking for a good book about humanism and education, Anthony T Kronman’s Education’s End: Why Our Colleges and Universities Have Given Up on the Meaning of Life is worth looking into. It has the feel of a classic, and I hope that its popularity on conservative campuses (if its achieved) doesn’t harm Mr Kronman’s reputation. His argument is lucid, persuasive, and scolding-free.
¶ In La Rochefoucauld, variations on a theme: If we didn’t have faults, we wouldn’t take pleasure in noticing others’/If we weren’t proud, we wouldn’t complain about the pride of others. If such maxims still hold true in society, I’m unaware of it. (more…)
A tract for our times. The title might have been improved: How Readers Work.
¶ Matins: I was worried about voting machine chicanery — I hope that it’s clear by now that Republican Party operatives will stop at nothing, short of outright putsch — but I’m dismayed to see that the states with the most foreclosures — and thereby address-less, disqualified voters — are either solidly Democratic or important swing states.
¶ Lauds: Louis Menand writes about Lionel Trilling, The New Yorker. As current cultural history, it doesn’t get any better.
¶ Tierce: As regular readers know, I was never a partisan of either Democratic Party contender for the nomination. I could see the appeal of both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, and both were clearly cut of presidential timber. Right now, though, I’m wishing that the lady had gotten the job, and the lead Times editorial this morning will tell you why. Hillary is more of a leader than anyone anywhere currently on the scene.
¶ Sext: We can only hope that Ronald Fryer will turn up something interesting in his “rigorous” study of theories of education.
¶ Advising his son against disparaging women in general, the Earl of Chesterfield goes on to discourage generalizations generally.
All general reflections, upon nations and societies, are the trite, thread-bare jokes of those who set up for wit without having any, and so have recourse to commonplace. Judge of individuals from your own knowledge of them, and not from their sex, profession, or denomination.
Amen!
¶ In Moby-Dick, one of the scenes that I remember from the Classics Illustrated edition: Queequeg makes his mark when he signs on to the Pequod. I remember thinking that it must be pretty easy to forge. More interesting at the moment is Ishmael’s defense of Queequeg’s religion, when Peleg and Bildad balk at signing on a cannibal.
Finding myself thus hard pushed, I replied, “I mean, sir, the same ancient Catholic Church to which you and I, and Captain Peleg there, and Queequeg here, and all of us, and every mother’s son and soul of us belong; the great and everlasting First Congretation of this whole worshipping world; we all belong to that; only some of us cherish some queer crotchets noways touching the grand belief; in that we join hands.”
I don’t think that Melville was being optimistic about the universality of faith. People simply did not not believe; atheism was for crackpots. It’s a lost world.
¶ In Don Quixote, the famous encounter with the flocks of sheep, within whose dust-clouds our hero makes out Alifanfarón, PentapolÃn, and other figures from his “lying books.”
¶ In Squillions, a spate of amusing letters by Noël Coward — what a refreshing change. Here he is in Havana, enjoying a mid-run break from the Broadway production of Private Lives:
It feels funny having a holiday in the middle like this, and very enjoyable. My Spanish came in very useful in Havana, I was surprised to find out how much I knew. It really is a beautiful place. Heavenly drives in the country through Sugar Cane and Banana plantations and masses of every conceivable type of flower.
We dined out in restaurants outside the town, with trees hung with lights and Spanish orchestras playing very softly. The Oliviers are in Nassau and are meeting us tomorrow. I am sorry to see Arnold Bennett is dead.
¶ A N Wilson addresses the change in the status of women after World War I, discussing Lady Astor, Marie Stopes, eugenics and contraception, and Radclyffe Hall. It is a pleasant chapter, very much in favor of “the belief that the world might be a better place if men and women regarded one another* a little more tenderly.”
* See my “Exercice du style,” 16 August. I am aware that my recommendation contradicts an earlier preference, and I recognize that there might once have been a compelling semantic underpinning to Wilson’s usage. But I stick, somewhat obstinately no doubt, with my prescription.
In my ongoing argument that the Book Review ought to confine its attentions to works of literature — in which I include thoughtful books of every kind — I’m pinched by need of a definition of “literature.” And I think I may have got one, in a quotation that appears in James Wood’s How Fiction Works. Permit me to mull it over for a few more weeks — at least until my page on Wood’s book pops up. As for this week’s….
Staying at the table after dinner, indulging myself with a book instead of cleaning up, I came upon a relatively brief passage from The Maias that captures Eça de Queirós’s wonderfully light hand. (more…)
Still gasping for time, I read no new Maxims or Letters, but I did remember a bit from one of Chesterfield’s letters to his son that really ought to be mentioned, because it’s one of those points that becomes more salient with age.
Certain forms, which all people comply with, and certain arts, which all people aim at, hide, in some degree, the truth, and give a general exterior resemblance to almost every body. Attention and sagacity must see though that veil, and discover the natural character.
A staggering number of pages today. Melville surprised me with a very long chapter — twelve pages, that is, after a string of two- and four-pagers. Squillions threw up a long “Intermission” about Noël Coward’s professional relationship with Gertrude Lawrence. I’m afraid that I’ll still be writing it all up at dinnertime. (more…)
The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.
So opens The Go-Between, a novel originally published in 1953. Every once in a while, I read a novel that I’ve heard about but not gotten round to, and it is so good, so well-done, so satisfying, so much the compleat English novel that I wince with painful embarrassment. How could I have been such a moron, not to read this book sooner? The Go-Between is one of those books.
The NYRB reprint (2002) sports a startling blurb by Ian McEwan:
The famous formulation about the past sets the tone: this is a strange and beautiful book. I first read it in my early teens, and its atmosphere for yearning for lost times and of childish innocence challenged has haunted me ever since.
That’s got to be the literary understatement of the decade. Mr McEwan had just published Atonement, an obvious hommage to Hartley’s novel.
¶ Two of Lord Chesterfield’s letters today; one to Bubb Dodington, a fellow Tory, about Parliamentary maneuverings. An auld lament:
I entirely agree with you, that we ought to have meetings to concert measures some time before the meeting of the Parliament; but that, I likewise know, will not happen. I have been these seven years endeavouring to bring it about, and have not been able; fox-hunting, gardening, planting, or indifference having always kept our people in the country, till the very day before the meeting of the Parliament.
In a letter to his son, Chesterfield tries to make the case for paying attention by painting a humorous portrait of the inattentive man, who trips over his sword when he enters a room, eats with his knife, &c. Did it make little Philip Stanhope laugh? (more…)
In the middle of the Morning Read today, I discovered that the water in our line of apartments was shut off, would remain shut off for about two hours. I threw on some clothes and walked over to the Museum, partly to have lunch, also to take another look at my favorite Turner painting in the show that’s closing this weekend (Approach to Venice, Exh RA 1844), but mostly to walk into the Park to take some photographs for next week’s Daily Office. Because I’d had a bit of a walk yesterday, my legs began to complain as I came round the Museum toward Fifth Avenue — I’d the bright idea of walking the perimeter of the Museum, taking two sets of photographs (for two weeks of DO’s — pletty crevel, no?). I’d have taken a taxi home, but I was in no hurry to find out that the water was still off. Limping up to the building, I asked Dominic, the doorman on duty, to find out the status of my water supply, lest I have to go round to the Food Emporium to buy some Poland Spring. Never has a thumbs-up been so welcome as Dominic’s report.
Cleaned up and comfortably seated, I found that I could hardly pay attention to what I was reading. I wanted only to sleep. My impressions are correspondingly lackluster.
¶ Lord Chesterfield writes to his son (a boy of seven) about Roman History. (more…)
¶ Matins: It’s too bad that this somewhat meandering piece about depression and sadness and the persistent difficulty of deciding how to treat them appeared so soon after the suicide — a depression-related death, by all accounts — of David Foster Wallace and yet does not mention him.
¶ Lauds: When my globetrotting correspondent Gawain wrote to me from Lisbon, retailing the pleasures of that city, I remembered that I had wanted to read The Maias, by José Maria Eça de Queirós. So I ordered it from Amazon, and began reading it yesterday.
¶ Tierce: What percentage of American voters, do you think, is unaware that our diplomatic relations with Venezuela have been severely curtailed? What percentage is aware that Bolivia is falling apart — and that the United States supports (as it does in Venezuela) the losing side? Simon Romero’s brief report in today’s Times shows Bolivia breaking up on several fronts, from oil royalties to drugs.
¶ Nones: While I’m unwilling to waste my time attacking The Infernal Machine — Sarah Palin is doing a dandy job of living up to the nickname that I slapped on her the day she was nominated — but I would be happy to see billboards plastered with her extraordinarily degraded syntax. Has the woman ever finished a sentence? She makes Dubya sound — presidential.
In the current New Yorker, Philip Gourevitch registers an interesting dissonance in Ms Palin’s speech.
Trooper Wooten has admitted to Tasering the boy and shooting the moose, and he was disciplined for these things within the department, but, under the union contract, he could not be fired at the Governor’s whim. (He had been cleared of the threat to Palin’s father, but disciplined for drinking and driving, which he still denies.) It was obvious that this continued to frustrate Palin. She also seemed to forget that you should not talk about your affairs when they’re under investigation. Troopergate was the one subject about which she seemed keen to explicate the details. She wanted to persuade me that firing Walt Monegan had nothing to do with Trooper Wooten; that it was in no way a conflict of interest or an abuse of power. But, as she spoke, she seemed to be saying something else—that her vendetta against Wooten was wholly justified.
But for the true flavor of the Machine’s façon de parler, one turns a few pages back in the magazine, to George Saunders’s “My Gal.” (more…)
With two very strong non-fiction titles in this week’s issue, I might be thought curmudgeonly for heaving yet another sigh of discontent. But, oh, the fiction: five out of six reviews are almost soporifically uninteresting.
Why, I wonder, did Joseph O’Neill recommend this book to me? Why did it pop into his mind? Had he just read it himself? Or was it a long-time favorite? A novel that came out when he was twelve years old… In any case, I was glad to read The Easter Parade.
It’s all I can do to keep from pulling down Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead in order to perk up my recollection of the details of Jack Boughton’s difficult life, as told, in that book, by his father’s best friend, the very disapproving Jack Ames. Instead, I’m letting Home refresh my memories. Home, we’re told, relates events “concurrently” from the point of view of Jack’s sister, Glory, a good woman who has seen more of life than her family suspects. Glory has come back to Gilead to take care of her ailing, widowed father — but that isn’t the whole story. The whole story unspools in what can only be called immense narrative piety.
She thought. Yes, a little like the old times. Graying children, ancient father. If they could have looked forward from those old times, when even a game of checkers around that table was so rambunctious it would have driven her father off to parse his Hebrew in the stricken quiet of Ames’s house — if they could now look in the door of the kitchen at the three of them there, would they believe what they saw? No matter — her father was hunched over his side of the board, mock-intent, and Jack was reclined, legs crossed at the ankles, as if it were possible to relax in a straighted-backed chair. The popcorn popped.
In the best sense in the world, Marilynne Robinson is a great respecter of persons.
¶ Matins: Lucy Q Denett, former associate director of revenue management at the Minerals Management Service, the government’s second-best source of revenue after taxes, was frank with investigators — up to a point:
But the report quotes Ms. Denett repeatedly telling investigators such things as “obviously I did it and it doesn’t look proper†and that in retrospect she had made a “very poor†decision. She also told them that “she had been preoccupied with a very stressful personal issue at the time,†which the report did not spell out.
Justice (Dept of) has already decided not to prosecute. Charlie Savage reports.
¶ Lauds: What a concept: a clutch of readable novels is up for the Man Booker Prize. That would exclude Salman Rushdie’s The Enchantress of Florence.
¶ Tierce: In the Times, this anniversary morning, a few then-and-now photographs of notable structures that are no longer backdropped by the Twin Towers.
What do you see first when looking at the old photographs on the left? Almost certainly not the intended subjects. One of the pictures is meant to show the Woolworth Building. Another is of the Brooklyn Bridge. The third is supposed to depict Division Street.
Well, the thing is, I do see the Woolworth Building. It is in every way a more meaningful building than the lost towers, which achieved significance only in destruction.
¶ Sext: Queens University Belfast will be offering a course called “Feel the Force: How to Train in the Jedi Way.” Won’t Mum and Dad be glad to hear about that! That old lunchbox will be great for lugging mobile, iPod and other kit to class.
¶ Compline: Jean Ruaud reports that his cousins in Houston are staying put. So is my sister, in Port Aransas. The other day, she wrote to say that she’d be evacuating the next morning at six. Carol, if you can read this, our prayers are working!
¶ A N Wilson writes about the first great press baron, Alfred Harmsworth, Lord Northcliffe, and his (inadvertently) not-very-bright conduct of the Great War. He was, after all, out to sell newspapers.
Fireside chats with political leaders would, for many a decade to come, and perhaps for ever, be one way in which political deals were brokered, and power wielded. But the days in which the political class met in clubs and country houses, and could conduct their nation’s affairs without popular will or consultation, were over.
It was one thing for “the Press” to corral politicians. It seems to be quite something else when “the Media” try to do the same. (more…)
Helene Cooper’s The House at Sugar Beach looks very good, but snagging the cover of the Book Review is no substitute for a review that engages with the book instead of merely telling its story. What’s definitely on my list is Alissa Torres’s American Widow.
