Collected Miscellany

I have said it before, and I will say it again: If you aren’t reading the New Pantagruel you should be. Being absent minded and easily distracted, I regularly forget to check out this unique publication and then kick myself when I eventually click over. So this is just as much a reminder to myself as a recommendation to you.

Anyway, the reason for this admonishment is my recent review of their latest issue. There one will find an interesting review of one of the most talked about books around the lit blogosphere: Phillip Roth’s The Plot Against America. After an extended discussion of the novel’s successes and flaws, Randy Boyagoda offers a harsh conclusion:

The novel’s most telling flaw, however, is that its main focus blurs when it could be sharpest. Roth has devoted 45 years, and thousands of pages, to tearing down simplistic ideas about Jewish identity, taking on all comers at all times with muscular style and a cutthroat intellect. In testing the Jewish claim to the American experiment in the most difficult context he can imagine, however, The Plot plops. Halfway through the novel, we come across a classic Philip Roth phenomenon: a two-page single paragraph meditation on the double meaning of Americans “being Jews.” Through punishing prose, Roth rejects God, rejects synagogue, rejects race, rejects ancient language, rejects schmaltzy ethnic pride — rejects most every imaginable source and standard for a people’s self-definition, save one. At the end of this streaking comet of a passage, this is where we land: “Their being Jews issued from their being themselves, as did their being American.”

Is this Philip Roth, or Dr. Phil?

To be Jewish is to be yourself? To be American is to be yourself? No further commitments, obligations, virtues, histories, traditions needed? Just be yourself? At the core of this moving, horrifying book, the intellectual formulation of Jewish and American identity proves to be a puddle of drippy, 21st century identity-speak. In vain does one search this late fiction from a great American writer, from perhaps the great Jewish American writer, for finer knowledge of what American Jews drew on when they were expelled from their innocent Garden State, into a stars-and-stripes-and-swastikas desert.

Others might disagree with Boyagoda, but he offers interesting criticism and takes the work and the author seriously. I enjoyed it despite not having read Roth (perhaps I should . . .).

Rick Brookhiser on Modernism over at National Review Online’s The Corner:

Modernism was a fashion in the arts. It began in French poetry in the mid/late nineteenth century, then effectively ended in the 1950s. The technique of Modernism was to pull everything apart, and then put it back together. It was often alleged that the stresses of modern life had done the pulling. Sometimes World War I was mentioned, though modernism was already in full cry before the guns of August. The real causes were probably the itch to try something new, and the unbelievable prosperity of mature capitalism. Artists not only became free of aristocratic patrons, they were free of the very mass market that capitalism created–free at least to get by. (“Nobody actually starves,” as Philip Larkin put it.) They could live, and feel misunderstood–a delicious combination.

There are some side issues: was jazz modern? were movies? Were they new forms actually pursuing old ends, and thus only accidentally modern? These questions only trouble theorists.

We are now in some new fashion, maybe post-modern, where artists know both much more and much less than modernist artists did. They know all the techniques of their predecessors, while they know next to nothing of the world their predecessors tried to recreate.

Modernism has left behind some great beauty–Matisse, Bartok, Yeats, Eliot–some great botches, with beautiful moments–the careers of Picasso and Pound–and many failures, which have sunk back into the womb of oblivions even more rapidly than our successes ultimately will.

True or untrue? Fair or unfair? Irrelevant?

Michael Crichton’s latest novel State of Fear is an ambitious experiment: to fuse an anti-global warming polemic with a techno-thriller. Did he pull it off? You ask. Well, yes and no. He has certainly combined the two, and both are compelling at times, but the connection is a little rough. It is an interesting attempt to weave cultural, political, and scientific arguments into a fast paced thriller, but in the end the polemic drags down the thriller and the thriller adds little to the polemic. The author would have been better off separating the two threads so the argument could stand on its own and the thriller could keep its focus and its pace.

The basic story line centers on the activities of a non-profit environmental organization called the National Environmental Resource Fund, a.k.a. NERF. NERF’s director Nick Drake is a former litigator turned environmental crusader. His chief concern, besides preventing the apocalyptic end of the earth, is fundraising. Environmental activism, it turns out, is an expensive endeavor. Drake’s biggest patron is George Morton a dedicated conservationist and fabulously wealthy philanthropist. Morton has promised to bankroll NERF to the tune of $10 million. $1 million is designated to a lawsuit against the United States Environmental Protection Agency on behalf of the tiny island nation of Vanutu and another $9 million will finance future research and lawsuits on behalf of the environment. The Vanutu suit claims that the actions of the world’s largest emitter of carbon dioxide are causing global warming and thus the flooding of this South Pacific nation. This flooding will force the eight thousand Vanutu residents to flee. NERF is pushing the Vanutu case as a way to focus media attention on the issue of global warming.

Before the papers for this massive gift can be finalized, however, Morton begins to have second thoughts. Into the picture comes the mysterious Dr. Kenner, a M.I.T. professor and research director on extended leave and with mysterious ties to various government agencies. Also pulled into the intrigue are Peter Evans, a lawyer who works almost exclusively for Morton; Sarah Jones, the highly attractive assistant to Morton; and Jennifer Haynes, the equally attractive jury consultant on the Vanutu case. As the novel develops these characters are thrown together to solve the mystery of Morton’s death/disappearance and to prevent a series of environmental terrorist attacks.

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Michael Crichton’s latest novel State of Fear is an ambitious experiment: to fuse an anti-global warming polemic with a techno-thriller. Did he pull it off? You ask. Well, yes and no. He has certainly combined the two, and both are compelling at times, but the connection is a little rough. It is an interesting attempt to weave cultural, political, and scientific arguments into a fast paced thriller, but in the end the polemic drags down the thriller and the thriller adds little to the polemic. The author would have been better off separating the two threads so the argument could stand on its own and the thriller could keep its focus and its pace.

The basic story line centers on the activities of a non-profit environmental organization called the National Environmental Resource Fund, a.k.a. NERF. NERF’s director Nick Drake is a former litigator turned environmental crusader. His chief concern, besides preventing the apocalyptic end of the earth, is fundraising. Environmental activism, it turns out, is an expensive endeavor. Drake’s biggest patron is George Morton a dedicated conservationist and fabulously wealthy philanthropist. Morton has promised to bankroll NERF to the tune of $10 million. $1 million is designated to a lawsuit against the United States Environmental Protection Agency on behalf of the tiny island nation of Vanutu and another $9 million will finance future research and lawsuits on behalf of the environment. The Vanutu suit claims that the actions of the world’s largest emitter of carbon dioxide are causing global warming and thus the flooding of this South Pacific nation. This flooding will force the eight thousand Vanutu residents to flee. NERF is pushing the Vanutu case as a way to focus media attention on the issue of global warming.

Before the papers for this massive gift can be finalized, however, Morton begins to have second thoughts. Into the picture comes the mysterious Dr. Kenner, a M.I.T. professor and research director on extended leave and with mysterious ties to various government agencies. Also pulled into the intrigue are Peter Evans, a lawyer who works almost exclusively for Morton; Sarah Jones, the highly attractive assistant to Morton; and Jennifer Haynes, the equally attractive jury consultant on the Vanutu case. As the novel develops these characters are thrown together to solve the mystery of Morton’s death/disappearance and to prevent a series of environmental terrorist attacks.

Continue reading →

Book lists are of course a regular part of year end discussions and lists of various types have been posted and linked across the media and blogger landscape. As a blogger I feel compelled to join in and participate in this tradition. What follows is not a “Best of 2004” in the traditional sense (a list of books published this year) but rather a list of books I happened to read this year and enjoyed no matter what their date of publication. To date I have read 58 books. Below are five fiction and five non-fiction works that I found particularly enjoyable during the course of 2004.

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Interesting question first posed at Mark Kleiman’s place (raised by a reader):

Are there any modern (say post 1700) novels of high literary merit that can reasonably be characterized as pro-war? Or, at least as pro-war as the Iliad?

Kleiman offers Starship Troopers but wonders about the definition of “high literary merit.”

The discussion is taken up over at The American Scene by Ross Douthat:

It depends, I suppose, on what one means by pro-war. There have been plenty of novels that could be considered pro-war in the sense of being “in favor of going to war to defeat a given enemy.” (War and Peace is an obvious example — there’s no doubt that Tolstoy, in spite of all his pacifist tendencies, is very much in favor of the Russians defending their country from Napoleon by force of arms.) But if by “pro-war” you mean “in favor of combat as a good in and of itself,” then it’s hard to think of any major post-Christian work of literature that compares seriously to the Iliad in its celebration of martial glory.

I am going to pretend people read this blog and comment (rather than surf over from Google and quickly leave) and ask the audience what they think. Any “pro-war” novels spring to mind?