Collected Miscellany

Salon has a review of the Maternal Desire: On Children Love and the Inner Life by psychologist Daphne de Marneffe. Here is a quote that is part of the tease to read the whole thing (for which you must either subscribe or watch an ad):

De Marneffe’s book is singular in that it isn’t polarizing. While she took about five years off from her therapy practice to raise her three children, and a chunk of her book is devoted to discussing the authentic, oft-ignored pleasures of primary caretaking, she doesn’t order her working-mother readers to go home and enjoy it, like she did. Rather, in a discussion that is part sophisticated self-help and part scholarly analysis of our culture’s attitudes toward mothers, de Marneffe urges each woman to think hard about how much time she wants to spend caring for her children vs. working, about whether she’s struck anything close to the right balance in her life.

Here is Jessa Crispin’s reaction:

F@#k Daphne de Marneffe and her new book Maternal Desire: On Children, Love, and the Inner Life.

Did I miss something here? Given my gender this is dangerous ground I know, but is suggesting that perhaps motherhood is central to womanhood to be met with angry denuciation even if the person raising the isssue is a thoughtful feminist (or at least as described by Salon)?

The poetic consciousness reveals “moral insights which are the sources of human normality, and which make possible order and justice and freedom.” The influence of great literature makes possible the linking of one generation to another.

— From Russell Kirk and the Age of Ideology by W. Wesley McDonald.

Fascinating book review in the Atlantic by Christopher Hitchens. Hitchens is reviewing a new edition of Edmund Burke’s classic work Reflections on the Revolution in France. This volume contains four critical essays exploring Burke. Hitchens essay is much more than a “book review,” however, but rather a thought provoking reflection on Burke, his ideas and writing, and their place in the history of ideas.

In discussing Burke’s reputation he offered this bon mot which is well worth keeping in mind these days:

It is a frequent vice of radical polemic to assert, and even to believe, that once you have found the lowest motive for an antagonist, you have identified the correct one.

Hitchens reproduces a number of Burke’s more famous passages and I wanted to reproduce a section of one as well. I am no expert on Burke by any means but I have always been struck by this passage:

But the age of chivalry is gone. That of sophisters, economists, and calculators, has succeeded; and the glory of Europe is extinguished for ever. Never, never more shall we behold that generous loyalty to rank and sex, that proud submission, that dignified obedience, that subordination of the heart, which kept alive, even in servitude itself, the spirit of an exalted freedom. The unbought grace of life, the cheap defence of nations, the nurse of manly sentiment and heroic enterprise, is gone! It is gone, that sensibility of principle, that chastity of honour, which felt a stain like a wound, which inspired courage whilst it mitigated ferocity, which ennobled whatever it touched, and under which vice itself lost half its evil, by losing all its grossness.

I have always thought that this passage captures something integral to the mood of traditional conservatism.

Some view Burke’s Reflections as the melancholy ranting of a reactionary elitist while others see in it, and in Burke, the founding of modern conservatism or at least the inspiration. (see Russell Kirk’s The Conservative Mind: From Burke to Elliot and Edmund Burke: A Genius Reconsidered) Hitchens seems somewhere in the middle depending on his mood. For Hitchens the true wisdom of Burke is his awareness that all revolutions “eat their young.” But he does recognize the connection between Burke and conservatism, and the wisdom therein:

If modern conservatism can be held to derive from Burke, it is not just because he appealed to property owners in behalf of stability but also because he appealed to an everyday interest in the preservation of the ancestral and the immemorial. And the abolition of memory, as we have come to know in our own time, is an aspect of the totalitarian that spares neither right nor left. In the cult of “now,” just as in the making of Reason into an idol, the writhings of nihilism are to be detected.

To use a cliché: read the whole thing.

In the continuing effort to reveal just how uncool I am in literary circles, let me admit that I have yet to read a Philip Roth novel or short story. Perhaps my prudish nature caused me to avoid an author whose subject or at least subtext is often sexual desire. Or perhaps going to high school and college in Central Indiana I was simply unaware of the importance of a cosmopolitan Jewish author like Roth. After all I didn’t read Bellow either.

The reason I bring this up is that Mr. Roth turns 71 today. For those who like me are seeking more information, The Philip Roth Society has a nice short bio. For those of you who have read Roth or are familiar with his body of work, what book would you start with? Would you start with perhaps his most famous work Portnoy’s Complaint or perhaps the more recent American Pastoral? Or perhaps a lesser know work? Heck, maybe you aren’t a fan and think it would be better to just skip Roth altogether? Anyway, I would be interested to know what people think of Mr. Roth so feel free to weigh in.

One of the things I like to do when I get bogged down or bored is take a trip to Barnes and Noble or Half-Price Books or any bookstore with a discount section. I then look for really discounted fiction; stuff marked down to a couple of bucks. I pick out books that I know nothing about but that look interesting from the dust jacket and blurbs. I call these “random books.” I find it interesting just to pick up these books and see if I can’t find a gem among them.

I picked up some random books the other day and one of them was Three to See the King by Magnus Mills. It seemed interesting and mysterious plus it was short (176 pages). Since I only paid three dollars, I would count this as a gem. It is a sort of minimalist fable but the language and characters are interesting enough to sustain it. It is not life changing or deeply affecting but it is an enjoyable read; a sort of surreal version of Graham Green’s entertainments.

Continue reading →

Benny Morris offers a hopelessly out of date view if history in the latest issue of The New Republic [subscription required]. In his review of A History of Modern Palestine: One Land, Two Peoples By Ilan Pappe, Morris states the following:

[W]e approached history, and the writing of history, from antithetical standpoints. Pappe regarded history through the prism of contemporary politics and consciously wrote history with an eye to serving political ends. My own view was that while historians, as citizens, had political views and aims, their scholarly task was to try to arrive at the truth about a historical event or process, to illuminate the past as objectively and accurately as possible. I believed, and still believe, that there is such a thing as historical truth; that it exists independently of, and can be detached from, the subjectivities of scholars; that it is the historian’s duty to try to reach it by using as many and as varied sources as he can. When writing history, the historian should ignore contemporary politics and struggle against his political inclinations as he tries to penetrate the murk of the past.

How is this guy still writing books?! What a naive and old fashioned concept!

Seriously though (the above was sarcasm in case you missed it), you have no idea how it warms my heart to see someone write that out in a review; to admit it in public proudly and with assurance. Almost makes me want to return to grad school.