Hrm. Missed that update.

For the record, I am not intentionally systematically obscuring the contribution of Tyler Cowen in establishing that Charles Rawley does indeed blog at that wordpress account, in order to enhance my own reputation or damage his intellectual property, and my failure to mention Cowen in the post above should not lead you to overlook his work. But if Rawley wants to excoriate me in Public Choice over it, I resignedly accept my fate.

You can’t have a decent comment thread about a net.kook without a dozen people calling ‘Poe’, no matter how clearly genuine the kook is.

Besides, I already conclusively verified the indubitable veracity with rigorous investigative research.

“I am the real Charles Rowley.”

Thus Fish: the truth the genre promises is the truth about themselves — the kind of persons they are — and even when they are being mendacious or self-serving (and I don’t mean to imply that Palin is either), they are, necessarily, fleshing out that truth.

Apart from the fact that ‘being mendacious’ sounds very much like ‘lying’ to my fusty old ear, the idea that in autobiography you can’t lie because in attempting to do so you are always revealing something about yourself is, shall we say, defective.

First, it assumes that the reader takes a forensic rather than a communicative attitude to the text (something Fish evidently doesn’t do); second, it entails that the fact-checkers poring over every sentence are an essential part of gathering the evidence required to identify lies and thus to understand the text properly – and are therefore very much “to the point”, contrary to the conclusion of Fish’s argument; and in any case, third, it very obviously confuses intention (communication of some falsehood) with effect (revelation of some different truth), AFAICS relying on sheer chutzpah to get away with it.

I find ‘Poe’ to be vastly overused. I rather rue the day it was introduced. You can’t have a decent comment thread about a net.kook without a dozen people calling ‘Poe’, no matter how clearly genuine the kook is. I find it tiresome.

Just Say No To Kneejerk Poe-calling.

He hasn’t changed.

while newly-emergent, vibrant market economies demonstrate to a former master the awesome power of laissez-faire capitalism

Like, oh … China? “Socialist” Europe? Antarctica?

He may pay about a bulldog’s worth of lip service to the fact that the book is a (lucrative) positioning exercise, but the obvious fallacy in autobiographers cannot lie because anything they say will truthfully serve their project, which, again, is not to portray the facts, but to portray themselves (viz., redefining the subject matter doesn’t remove the possibility of lying – in this case by misportraying oneself) causes or enables him nonetheless to endorse the book’s message uncritically:

Do I believe any of this? It doesn’t matter. OK so far so disingenuous. But then: What matters is that she does.. Oh she does, does she? And if : …and that her readers feel they are hearing an authentic voice sounds archly knowing, it’s again followed by I find the voice undeniably authentic, and even the really insulting (yes, I know the book was written “with the help” of Lynn Vincent, but many books, including my most recent one, are put together by an editor).

As he continues, the blurry remnants of ambiguity resolve into unequivocal endorsement: there is still a hint of dispassionate reporting in it is the voice [as] of small-town America, with its folk wisdom, regional pride, common sense, distrust of rhetoric, but when he slips in (itself a rhetorical trope), it already sounds jarring amidst such enthusiasm for the message.

And that’s the last real sign of scepticism. By the time he gets to it is the voice of a politician, of the little girl who thought she could fly, tried it, scraped her knees, dusted herself off and “kept walking.” we’re being told it really is the voice of an actual (if metaphorically so-called) little girl, just as it is of an actual politician.

The rest has lost any sense (if the idiotic argument suprissima left any room for such sense) that the intended message and the good old actualité might diverge at all. From the ability to absorb defeat without falling into defeatism, is the key to Palin’s character. It’s what makes her run in both senses of the word, all the way through to as she runs, she achieves equilibrium and hope: “We’ve been through amazing days… [enthuse enthuse, madly]…nothing is hopeless.”, not only is the message clear, but it’s God’s honest truth:

America can’t be stopped. I can’t be stopped. I’ve stumbled and fallen, but I always get up and run again. Her political opponents…should take note. And not just through an interest in expressionistic autobiography, but because ‘America’ Palin really is so sympathetic and so wonderful, and just so…unstoppable.

I don’t know anything about his previous persona, but from what I’ve come across, he sure talks a load of crap these days.

Fish:

“When I walked into the Strand Bookstore in Manhattan last week, I headed straight for the bright young thing who wore an “Ask Me” button, and asked her to point me to the section of the store where I might find Sarah Palin’s memoir, “Going Rogue: An American Life.” She looked at me as if I had requested a copy of “Mein Kampf” signed in blood by the author, and directed me to the nearest Barnes and Noble, where, presumably, readers of dubious taste and sensibility could find what they wanted.”

Yup, he’s not tweaking the pointy-heads at all there. The Strand is mostly a vendor of used books and specializes in rare books, and it’s in Manhattan. The tenor is right up there with his summary:

“It is the voice of small-town America, with its folk wisdom, regional pride, common sense, distrust of rhetoric (itself a rhetorical trope), love of country and instinctive (not doctrinal) piety.”

The bit where he claims that autobiographers can’t lie about themselves (even when they don’t actually write the book) nails something for sure; I think the target is Fish. The review to me is like reading a deadly serious textual analysis of a Hardy Boys book. I found it hilarous, by accident. Your mileage may vary, but reading this as anything but an enthusiastic endorsement of Palin is tough to justify.

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/12/07/sarah-palin-is-coming-to-town/

“Do I believe any of this? It doesn’t matter. What matters is that she does, and that her readers feel they are hearing an authentic voice.”

It seems to me, apart from the occasional infelicity of his style, that he has pretty much nailed it there.