Collected Miscellany

I am really tired and lack the energy to post content tonight so I thought I would be lazy and post some old material from my other blog. Just think of these reviews as bonus material, after all they are new to you (unless you are a dedicated reader and read them at the old site). Without further justification here is a brief review of Graham Green’s the Human Factor.

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As a follow up to the post below allow me to quote from an interesting book review. In a review of The President of Good and Evil by Peter Singer, Douglas Kern offers some ideas worth pondering.

His introduction mirrors my gut feelings:

I’m closed-minded. I’ve made up my mind on most major issues, and I foresee no likelihood that my most cherished principles and beliefs will ever change. I do not worry that my closed-mindedness presents any handicap to me in the free marketplace of ideas, because my life experience indicates that most genuinely new ideas are stupid. I have little time or mental energy to spend refuting the clever arguments of idiots who contend that black is white, night is day, Communism is misunderstood. As I don’t want to die as big a fool as I am now, I search for truth where it is, not where it is not. So I am closed-minded, and proud.

I am often open to new ideas or new ways of communicating ideas but my foundational beliefs are not often subject to change. Everything is not an open question. Nice to have this perspective made clear up front.

Kern is not impressed with Singer’s book:

Briefly: The President of Good and Evil is tedious, regurgitated left-wing cant. Occasionally it pretends to be a critique of George W. Bush’s ethical philosophy, as expressed in his speeches, his appointments, the magazines he probably reads, the thoughts he may sometimes think, and the fevered whispers of his guru, “Melvin” Olasky (who may be Marvin Olasky, as misidentified by one of Singer’s lazier research interns). It is a higher-I.Q. version of the many dreary left-wing pamphlets now in circulation, with titles like Tell Robert Bork to Eat Hot Death! or Rick Santorum is a Big Smelly Creep and I Hate Him or something equally classy.

Despite this harsh assessment, Kern recognizes the book for what it is and notes that the right is not innocent of this type of polemic:

It’s no different for conservatives. Several recent bestsellers could be fairly described as tedious, regurgitated right-wing cant. And, somewhere in America, a precocious, put-upon tenth-grade conservative is reading those books, and learning. I know. That was me, once.

But despite this Kern concludes with a thought provoking idea:

Forgive a cynic his moment of sentiment, but this closed mind of mine is not closed to truth spoken in love. The books that have changed my mind — yes, there have been a few — were not political, or even ideological. They were prophetic, often in small intimate ways, about small intimate things like human lives. Some authors have the gift of telling stories about characters with such love that we see the world through them with different eyes. In great books we live lives of different faiths, and in the fullness of those lives we can find truth anew. When our hearts are captured by words, our minds follow.

Is this more humanist boilerplate or is this an accurate description of the power of literature and art? I would suggest the latter.

BTW, If you want a different take on Singer’s book see the Complete Review.

I have been busy with soccer and work so the posts have not been particularly substantive lately. I have some interviews and book reviews coming soon I promise. In the meantime let me pose another question on this politics and literature thing. How to individual authors relate to partisan politics?

The Orson Scott Card issue made a splash because some who enjoyed his books were appalled by his politics. But what if it was not on such an emotional issue. What if an author was simply a supporter of another party or more conservative or liberal than your tastes? The reason I bring this up is that in many ways I wanted to write about books and literature to put a little distance between me and the daily ranting of the political blogosphere. Obviously when I review non-fiction books on political and historical subject politics can come up, but I assumed I would avoid any flame wars. And I really have to this point. But what is interesting is how often I come across rather vehement opposition to President Bush in literary blogs. I enjoy Robert Birnbaum’s interviews. They are free flowing and often thought provoking. But they also tend to make a regular habit of bashing Bush. An interview with Stephen Elliot included this exchange:

RB: So if we elect Joe Schmoe or Joe Blow, we are not going to get to that fundamental solution. I do agree with you that one group vying for power is really scary and at least the Kerry camp is not scary.
SE: You have Kerry, who wants to be president and will do anything to be president, and that’s a huge improvement over someone who actively hates trees and poor people [laughs]. There’s bad, and then there’s significantly worse. Nobody could have known that in 2000; [or] nobody could have known that then.
RB: Right, no real footprints. George Bush is a creation as Ronald Reagan was a creation despite all this revisionism of insiders glorifying Reagan’s image, saying he was really smart and so forth. George Bush appears to have been a vacuum—

Am I to assume that since there is a [laughs] after it that Mr. Elliot doesn’t really believe that George Bush hates trees and poor people? Granted, Elliot is a political writer as well, but that seems a tad over the top to me.

In an interview with Edwidge Danticat he again goes down the Bush as the fount of all evil road:

RB: I am getting a growing sense that there is a greater anxiety that American voters have about their leadership than I have seen before. There is some impending evil that seems linked with the Bush regime that maybe catalytic for real change, but also there is a fearful anxiety, a dread about what the administration is doing.
ED: People would understand it or would almost accept it more if there was this very different agenda than what we would see, if there was pure ideology behind it. But it is so mired in money and oil – in a non-conspiratorial way – in documented ways with Dick Cheney’s connection to the oil industry and the Bush family’s connection with the Kuwaitis. On some levels, you can also have this feeling that we are being duped, somehow. And that the world is at play for something you would understand more if it were pure ideology. It is a very strange time and also basic things are being taken away. Social Security –

It’s Birnbaum’s interview and he can take it wherever he wants – and I don’t mean to single him out but these were recent examples – but what is someone to make of the regular Bush bashing that infuses his interviews? Should I ignore the politics and focus on the writing? Is it fair to be turned off by the remarks that run counter to your thinking? Maud Newton’s initial reaction to Orson Scott Card was “Orson Scott Card: another sci-fi author I won’t be reading.” She subsequently clarified her thoughts and others weighed in on the subject.

What I am wondering is how tolerant are most bloggers for this sort of thing? In the political blogosphere both side often read each other if only to do battle. Is it fair to say that lit bloggers lean left or are at least anti-Bush? Do lit bloggers read widely against their political leanings or do they get turned off by too much politics? Only politics they don’t agree with?

It seems to me that it is easier to avoid politics, or transcend it, when talking about the past. I can appreciate great novels even though I might not agree with the authors politics. But what about the current day? If someone is a bitter opponent of the President and you are a big fan, or vice-a-versa, are you likely to keep reading?

I am just thinking out loud here so no real deep insights. I just find it interesting that keeping literature and politics separate in a heated election season seems more difficult than one might think.

I think this means I am a geek. I downloaded the Penguin Classics screen saver.

In my defense it really is quite cool. It displays artwork from classic novels along with blurbs and short summations of the books. Hey, at least it wasn’t Buffy or something . . .

I don’t mean to come off as a right wing crank but this statement baffles me:

Orson is a powerful and accomplished writer who deeply believes everything he says. He has even thought it through, I am sure, though this does not excuse him. But he is working with preconceived notions, emotional ideas rooted deeply in his upbringing and his religious beliefs, and letting these rule his writing. It’s sad, and it’s painful.

So wisdom involves throwing out preconceived notions, deeply rooted ideas, and religious beliefs? Writing from this perspective is sad and painful? This is a textbook example of the limits of tolerance in our PC world. One can posit almost any loony idea or lifestyle and we are expected to be tolerant. The libertine view is pushed on everyone, if you don’t like something don’t watch, read, or pay attention to it. Very little is left to be taboo or out of bounds these days, but if your deeply rooted ideas and religious beliefs cause you to oppose gay marriage than you are sad and painful like a crazy uncle.

In this world we are all to be free of preconceived notions, stereotypes, prejudices, tradition, habits, etc. Only what is defensible through pure logic and science is to be valued. Seems rather intolerant if you ask me . . .

Okay, maybe I am a right wing crank . . .

The weather here has simply been too nice to motivate me to post much. On top of that I had to have the starter replaced in our car and we have been cajoling a contractor to finish installing a privacy fence (currently there are just some posts and a few holes) for our backyard. In propitiation for my absence I offer this Rick Moody quote from the introduction to the Oxford World’s Classics volume of Thomas Hardy’s The Mayor of Casterbridge (which I finished this weekend):

The canonical value of The Mayor of Casterbridge inheres in this very point, in the fact that this text is a capacious one for interpreters and historians. Yet I undertake to read Hardy now with my viscera, and I would urge you to do the same. Read Hardy with your entrails, with your humors, read him with the parts that you soak up the human frailties, not the parts of you that look for page turners or morals or affirmations. This book, I mean to say, drags the novel out its handsomely decorated birdcage and into the light, and in the process realizes a profound yield, the tenebrosities and melancholies that are beyond the light of our daily lives. As the author says: the doubtful honor of a brief transit through a sorry world hardly calls for effusiveness.