Once upon a time, I was going to write an article with that title. Finished a draft and everything. About Zizek (duh!)
But I’ll just leave that as an exercise to the interested reader. (It’s not a hard assignment, honestly.)
Have you read The Napoleon of Notting Hill, by G. K. Chesterton? I just reread it. It’s wonderful, fabulous! It’s so utterly solipsistic, with its two half-heroes completing each other – the jester king with the fairy name, Auberon Quin; and the dead serious Adam Wayne. There is only one woman in the whole book. And it has scores of characters before we’re done. She fits, with room to spare, in a nutshell-sized morality tale:
“In a hollow of the grey-green hills of rainy Ireland, lived an old, old woman, whose uncle was always Cambridge at the Boat Race. But in her grey-green hollows, she knew nothing of this: she didn’t know that there was a Boat Race. Also she did not know that she had an uncle. She had heard of nobody at all, except of George the First, of whom she had heard (I know not why), and in whose historical memory she put her simple trust. And by and by in God’s good time, it was discovered that this uncle of hers was not really her uncle, and they came and told her so. She smiled through her tears, and said only, ‘Virtue is its own reward.'”
I call that spectacular failure of the Bechdel Test – I do. Still, it’s nice to think that about virtue.
I don’t want to give away the ending – it turns out there’s a water-tower! – but I thought about the ending during the shutdown fight. Do you think Ted Cruz is sort of like Adam Wayne? Only the ending turned out differently? Or is he like Auberon Quin? Or is half of his brain one, and half of his brain the other?
Chesterton’s characters are so wonderfully likeable, and Republicans like Ted Cruz are so loathsome, not to put too fine a point on it. It isn’t because no one gets hurt, because Chesterton is fiction; or that no one gets hurt in the fiction – they do! It’s that Chesterton makes sure that the dangerous, ‘Every Day Is Like Thursday’, signature Chesterton protagonist delusionalism is utterly innocent and childlike at the root, even if the branches whack other folks, who are almost as innocent. Imagine thinking Cruz was fundamentally good-hearted, boy howdy. Wouldn’t that be a sight to tell your grand-kids you saw?
This post is sort of a sequel.
{ 39 comments }
Nancy Lebovitz 10.21.13 at 11:53 am
Another charming feature is that you have victory as a result of something very like gaming.
Kresling 10.21.13 at 12:14 pm
I’ve thought of this book many times recently, primarily because in Chesterton’s future England, the King is randomly selected. When watching the behavior of professional politicians, it’s tempting to imagine we might be better off choosing them by lot.
LizardBreath 10.21.13 at 12:52 pm
Chesterton’s very odd to read for me. I find him immensely appealing, and not stupid-seeming at all, and so horrifyingly wrong about so many things that you’d want him locked in a padded room with nothing in it with sharp edges. The reaction is sort of “Someone writing in this tone could talk me into anything… other than any of the things he’s actually trying to talk people into.”
Robert the Red 10.21.13 at 1:48 pm
I’ve only read “The Man Who Was Thursday” and a half-dozen or so Father Brown stories. I found these pretty unpleasant and repulsive, and stopped. In particular, I intensely disliked Father Brown. Different strokes ….
Jeffrey Davis 10.21.13 at 1:50 pm
It sounds like Spike Milligan’s Puckoon.
John Holbo 10.21.13 at 2:09 pm
I myself dislike the Father Brown books, which are his most popular. Father Brown is smug and predictable in an annoying way, I agree. Other books are smug and unpredictable, in a better way. Thursday, Notting Hill, Manalive. I’d start there. Essays are great, too.
phosphorious 10.21.13 at 3:32 pm
There are a few Father Brown stories which are genuinely good, and many more that are contrived and smugly moralistic.
Conservatives are always claiming that they, not liberals, are *really* the nice ones, the generous ones, the open minded and tolerant ones. With Chesterton, I almost believe it.
Not Ted Cruz.
William Timberman 10.21.13 at 3:54 pm
Slagging Zizek is barely a cottage industry these days. Apparently there’s not enough there there to justify an investment in heavy industrial interventions, let alone the latest cloud-based process automation. And yet, and yet….
I was just over at Brad DeLong’s saloon, reading his take on prosperity, structural unemployment, and the future service economy. Personal trainers and dieticians/chefs, he says, financial advisors, lawyers, security guards. Also bodyguards, I suppose, and escape-trained chauffeurs. Dog-walkers and maids — we’ll always have them, right? — along with hedge clippers and grass mowers, au pairs of indeterminate gender, courtesans of both (official) genders, bell hops and barristas…WalMart greeters.
If all this is so, or about to become so, why isn’t Zizek considered the quintessential and pre-eminent Marxist/psychoanalytical theorist of the adolescent new century? Is it because we’re all taking ourselves far more seriously than we need to, or ought to, being as knee-deep in chickens coming home to roost as we are? Yeah, well….
ajay 10.21.13 at 4:04 pm
Do you think Ted Cruz is sort of like Adam Wayne? Only the ending turned out differently? Or is he like Auberon Quin?
They’re both fairly alien to modern eyes, of course – one of them wants war because he thinks it will be glorious, and the other wants it because he thinks it will be funny. Cruz at least thinks that there’s something concrete to be gained from it.
Sidenote:
au pairs of indeterminate gender, courtesans of both (official) genders,
This sort of sniggering leaves a fairly nasty taste in the mouth.
William Timberman 10.21.13 at 4:19 pm
Ajay, matters of taste weren’t uppermost in my mind when I was composing my comment, I admit. As offenses against taste go, though I imagine mine aren’t the most egregious you’ll ever encounter. Still, as a matter of consistency, if you police any of them, you’re no doubt obliged to police them all, and if someone has to, it might as well be you. One more addition to the list of occupations in our new service economy.
John Holbo 10.21.13 at 4:22 pm
” Cruz at least thinks that there’s something concrete to be gained from it.”
I suppose part of me suspects what he gets from it is either that it is funny, or glorious, or a bit of both.
Walt 10.21.13 at 4:27 pm
I like this new “most egregious you’ll ever encounter” standard. If it’s not the most egregious you’ve ever encountered, how could you possibly be offended?
ajay 10.21.13 at 4:38 pm
as a matter of consistency, if you police any of them, you’re no doubt obliged to police them all
Ah, the old “you monster how can you blog about unaffordable university education when INNOCENTS ARE DYING IN CONGO” fallacy. Well-aged but still a classic.
Ben Alpers 10.21.13 at 4:39 pm
As those of us who’ve actually personally known Ted Cruz can attest, he’s one of the least charming people imaginable. And this is not just a matter of his politics. I know plenty of charming people with awful political views. Believe me, Ted Cruz is not one of them.
William Timberman 10.21.13 at 4:59 pm
Okay, ajay, before you get yourself completely wound up, let me speak as clearly as I can: you’re offended, that much is clear. I think you had to reach a bit to be offended; you had to invest in being offended, but that’s a matter of opinion, and yours clearly differs from mine in this instance. In any event I don’t consider that a tragedy. I’m not sure who else here would want to weigh in, but I’m happy to be judged by a consensus, if one develops. Otherwise, this is just a disagreement which may or may not have arisen out of a misunderstanding. Goes with the territory.
Jeffrey Davis 10.21.13 at 5:04 pm
I dislike Chesterton because he uses Christianity not as a perspective but as a perch.
John Holbo 10.21.13 at 5:23 pm
“I dislike Chesterton because he uses Christianity not as a perspective but as a perch.”
I think sometimes he uses it as a herring to keep from having to flounder.
Anderson 10.21.13 at 5:38 pm
16: well, I can quit reading the internet today after that.
Shatterface 10.21.13 at 5:42 pm
I call that spectacular failure of the Bechdel Test – I do. Still, it’s nice to think that about virtue.
The Turn of the Screw and Rebecca would fail the Bechdel Test despite centring entirely on (unamed) female protagonists: it was never meant to be taken seriously.
If all this is so, or about to become so, why isn’t Zizek considered the quintessential and pre-eminent Marxist/psychoanalytical theorist of the adolescent new century?
I’d certainly consider him a pre-eminent Marxist/psychoanalytical theorist in the sense that psychoanalysis is total horseshit.
Hector_St_Clare 10.21.13 at 10:47 pm
Re: I myself dislike the Father Brown books, which are his most popular. Father Brown is smug and predictable in an annoying way, I agree
I couldn’t agree less, John Holbo. I quite like Chesterton, and Father Brown as a literary character. I’d be interested to know what you find smug and predictable about him. (Of course he’s predictable, in a sense: he’s an adherent of an all-encompassing ideology which governs his life, but that makes him no different than most of us.)
Harold 10.21.13 at 10:54 pm
His ideology is that the Catholic Church is above the law.
ChrisB 10.21.13 at 11:26 pm
‘The Flying Inn’, with its climatic Islamic invasion of England, should also appeal to TeaPartiers.
Chesterton wouldn’t have said ‘Catholic church’, mind you – just ‘Church’. You wouldn’t have caught him using the term ‘Judeo-Christian’, either (see the third verse below).
“Why shouldn’t I have a purely vegetarian drink? Why shouldn’t I take vegetables in their highest form, so to speak? The modest vegetarians ought obviously to stick to wine or beer, plain vegetarian drinks, instead of filling their goblets with the blood of bulls and elephants, as all conventional meat-eaters do, I suppose.†— DALROY.
YOU will find me drinking rum,
Like a sailor in a slum,
You will find me drinking beer like a Bavarian.
You will find me drinking gin
In the lowest kind of inn,
Because I am a rigid Vegetarian.
So I cleared the inn of wine,
And I tried to climb the sign,
And I tried to hail the constable as “Marion.â€
But he said I couldn’t speak,
And he bowled me to the Beak
Because I was a Happy Vegetarian.
Oh, I knew a Doctor Gluck,
And his nose it had a hook,
And his attitudes were anything but Aryan;
So I gave him all the pork
That I had, upon a fork;
Because I am myself a Vegetarian.
I am silent in the Club,
I am silent in the pub,
I am silent on a bally peak in Darien;
For I stuff away for life
Shoving peas in with a knife,
Because I am at heart a Vegetarian.
No more the milk of cows
Shall pollute my private house
Than the milk of the wild mares of the Barbarian;
I will stick to port and sherry,
For they are so very, very
So very, very, very Vegetarian.
Saurs 10.22.13 at 1:20 am
What? The governess and Mrs. Grose speak at length about things other than men, as do Rebecca‘s narrator and Mrs. Danvers.
Saurs 10.22.13 at 1:22 am
In fact, the plots of both hinge on what the housekeepers reveal–and don’t reveal–in these dialogues.
Hector_St_Clare 10.22.13 at 3:58 am
Sigh. well, yes, Harold. You see, Chesterton happens to be a Christian, who owes more loyalty of the law of God than to the laws of man, and more loyalty to the moral order than to the whims of the mob.
Hector_St_Clare 10.22.13 at 4:00 am
‘Judeo Christian’ is indeed an absurd phrase.
John Holbo 10.22.13 at 7:31 am
“more loyalty to the moral order than to the whims of the mob”
Not when the mob in question is, as it were, the sum total of the whims of the various parts of Chesterton’s oversized personality. Then whim trumps moral order and the result is: The Napoleon of Notting Hill. An excellent novel that I recommend you all read.
John Holbo 10.22.13 at 7:34 am
But I agree that Chesterton morally disapproves of all mobs that aren’t himself.
ajay 10.22.13 at 9:03 am
The one moral message of “The Napoleon of Notting Hill” that I do sort of agree with is Wayne’s speech about Pump Street: “That which is large enough for the rich to covet is large enough for the poor to defend”. Pump Street is a hopeless dump (Notting Hill is pretty nice now but wasn’t in 1904) but he’s kicking back at the sort of person who would say “well, the islands are just a few barren rocks and the inhabitants are just a few poor farmers, they should welcome the chance to be annexed, more fool them if they don’t!” Very possibly they are fools, Chesterton is saying, but it’s not up to you to force them to stop them being foolish.
Carl 10.22.13 at 3:08 pm
Is Cruz loathsome and not good-hearted because we disagree with his politics or do we disagree with his politics because he is loathsome and not good-hearted?
I would like clarification on this.
Bloix 10.22.13 at 6:17 pm
And I would like clarification on this:
“whose uncle was always Cambridge at the Boat Race.”
Anyone know what it means?
phosphorious 10.22.13 at 7:05 pm
“Is Cruz loathsome and not good-hearted because we disagree with his politics or do we disagree with his politics because he is loathsome and not good-hearted?”
His politics are loathsome. And he is loathsome for having such politics. But there is no ad hominem here. It is not a question of personal animosity coloring my judgment of what are in fact decent political views.
LizardBreath 10.22.13 at 7:30 pm
31: It means that he always supported Cambridge rather than Oxford in the annual regatta (rowing, not sailing) between them. If it has any other implications, they’re a mystery to me.
ajay 10.22.13 at 7:33 pm
31: the Boat Race is the Oxford-Cambridge rowing race, held every year on the Thames in west London. (It’s not from Oxford to Cambridge; it’s between teams from Oxford and Cambridge Universities.) Her uncle was always Cambridge, i.e. always supported Cambridge.
If you want clarification on the rest of the story I can’t help you, because it doesn’t make any sense, because it isn’t supposed to.
LizardBreath 10.22.13 at 7:50 pm
because it doesn’t make any sense, because it isn’t supposed to
You didn’t get it? I suppose some people just don’t have a sense of humor.
Harold 10.22.13 at 8:00 pm
Hector @25 “Sigh. well, yes, Harold. You see, Chesterton happens to be a Christian, who owes more loyalty of the law of God than to the laws of man, and more loyalty to the moral order than to the whims of the mob.”
I thought the laws of God are supposed to transcend but not conflict with the laws of men. Thus, stealing is against the law even if you are going to give the gold to the a worthy cause, such as the Catholic Church. Also applies to letting repented war criminals escape to Argentina.
Ben A/baa 10.22.13 at 9:13 pm
I thought the laws of God are supposed to transcend but not conflict with the laws of men.
I don’t think that captures how the relationship between divine and earthy law is supposed to work. Men can come up with all kinds of crazy/unjust laws — and indeed they have! Divine law (or you could just read “the moral law”) has priority, and can often be expected to conflict with human law.
(hi LB!)
garymar 10.23.13 at 2:36 am
I thought that “Cambridge at the boat races” would be the equivalent of “three sheets to the wind”, to explain one obscure term by another.
John Holbo 10.23.13 at 1:49 pm
I’m completely Cambridge at the boat races does sound as though it ought to mean drunk.
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