John Holbo

I wished I had lived in the days of real journeys, when it was still possible to see the full splendor of the spectacle that had not yet been blighted, polluted and spoilt … When was the best time to see India? At what period would the study of the Brazilian savage have afforded the purest satisfaction, and revealed them in their least adulterated state? Would it have been better to arrive in Rio in the eighteenth century with Bougainville, or in the sixteenth with Léry and Thevet? – Claude Lévi-Strauss

Speaking of which, I watched Midnight In Paris on the plane, coming home from vacation, which seemed a fine occasion to watch such a film. It seems like a good idea for a film. But I don’t think it ended up being a good film. It’s too self-satisfied with the fact of it being a film with a good idea for what it’s going to be about. It kinda rests on its laurels before it even gets started. Owen Wilson is just walking around, giving a passable dramatic reading of his lines. All the actors playing the famous figures from the 20’s are having fun, but in a light sort of Hey Kathy Bates is pretending to be Gertrude Stein and Adrien Brody is having fun with his Dali accent kind of way. The direction was … fine. Paris looked like … Paris as filmed for a nice American Express ad or something like that. Competent evocation of a beautiful city. Is this what all Woody Allen movies have been like for the last 20 years? I really haven’t checked in for a while. Seems like lots of people really liked this movie. It was ok. Did you like it?

This one goes with the others. (Having posted two, it would be more strange not to post a third.)

In other news, I notice that Erick Erickson has some difficulty with the is/ought distinction. He reasons that, since Republicans in fact will not raise taxes under any circumstances, it follows that one can’t fault Republicans for not raising taxes. That would be like blaming the rain for raining. Or something. A nice illustration of the advantages and disadvantages of extreme intransigence for political life, perhaps.

I’m teaching “Philosophy and Literature” this semester. For one unit – Well Wrought Urns and Stuffed Owls, or somesuch subtitle – we’re going to read the really strong stuff. Like Irene Iddesleigh, Chapter 1 (not the whole book). But also more genuinely enjoyable incompetence: The Young Visiters. And Crippled Detectives. See this Village Voice piece for some – rather sad – background on the latter. Maybe a bit from A Nest of Ninnies. Who knows? Maybe even Ulysses? I’ve always thought of that book as basically The Young Visiters writ old. Bloom is Mr. Salteena, all grown up, but still a child at heart. [click to continue…]

Alex Tabbarok has written an odd post, whose reasoning, were it sound, would seem to license the following inference. Since, as Bastiat says, “Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else,” John Cleese’s fatal mistake in this debate is to admit the existence of Roman aqueducts. (That really puts him on an ontological slippery slope to sanitation and education and all manner of entification.)

But seriously. I guess I can see arguing that tax credits aren’t, per se, social programs – but aren’t they social engineering, hmmm yes? (Wouldn’t it follow that they couldn’t be faulted for being the latter, if they can’t be credited with being the former?) But I find it hard to see how 529 plans could, strictly speaking, fail of bare existence. (If you think otherwise, I’ve got a Pentagon you might like to levitate.) Arguing that if something didn’t exist, the private sector could take up the slack is one thing. But arguing that because you could – oh, say, hire a private protection outfit – that therefore the police actually don’t exist … ?

Finally, I have a feeling that Tabarrok would not, if caught in another mood, express a preference for a tax code pockmarked with various and sundry breaks, giveaways and loopholes over one lacking these features, commonly regarded as unlovely by economists. But since Tabarrok’s stated position is now that such things are rightly regarded as precious islands of civil freedom, in a socialist sea of serfdom … oh I give up.

My performance/recording vs. oral/literary post has gotten lots of comments, so let’s see if I can drive you all off with a follow-up.

Two other books about the evolution of reading culture I read recently: Space Between Words: The Origins of Silent Reading, by Paul Saenger; and Silent Reading and the Birth of the Narrator, by Elspeth Jajdelska.

The Saenger book concerns the Rodney Dangerfield of punctuation marks: the space. (Why do you think that’s the largest key on your keyboard, hmmm?) Let me quote the publisher’s blurb in a way that makes Saenger’s point. Once upon a time, European scribes wrote like this: [click to continue…]

I just read two books back to back to good effect: Walter Ong’s Orality and Literacy and Elijah Wald’s How the Beatles Destroyed Rock n Roll: An Alternative History of American Popular Music [amazon]. (This post is stray book-thoughts, a bit weak in the conclusion department; only so-so in the adequate summary of what the authors are arguing department. Read on at your own risk.) [click to continue…]

Well, if you aren’t reading all the posts and comments about same-sex marriage over at the Corner – but why wouldn’t you be? wow, K. Lo – maybe you would be interested in some YA comics. Mercury, by Hope Larson, and Anya’s Ghost, by Vera Brosgol. I really have only one complaint, and it concerns Hope Larson’s art. When she draws people running … oh, I’ll just show you.

The right arm and the left leg should be forward. Or left arm and right leg. Opposites. She’s a good cartoonist. As Scott McCloud says in his blurb: “The best work to date from a powerful cartoonist.” So there! So I don’t know why she draws people running in this strange, unnatural way that the human body would never move in. The rest of the art is fine.

On we go. I bought both books for my older daughter, who is almost 10 – and for me, who am I kidding! Turns out they’re a bit too much for her. Somewhat mature teen themes – maybe PG-13 – also murder and ghosts. She can read them next year, or the year after. (Your 9-year old daughter might be harder-boiled than mine. I couldn’t say.) Well, I enjoyed them. But they sort of had the same plot. I’ll explain under the fold, thereby semi- but not really spoiling the plot(s). [click to continue…]

I was listening to NPR’s All Song’s Considered, because whenever life seems jittery, the dulcet tones of Bob Boilen make it alright. They played a track by Motopony which quite earwormed me into buying the album. Turns out it contains several excellent tracks, in my humble opinion, and a few duds. Belle, my Facebook wife (that’s sort of like a cross between a common-law wife and Tron, as I understand the legalities), likes them, too. So she checked them out on Facebook and, apparently, they need a ride from L.A. to San Diego. Hope that works out for them. I’ll link to two tracks I particularly liked. First, “Seer”. That’s the one they played on NPR. I can’t quite peg it. Like … Jethro Tull, “Cross-Eyed Mary” meets … something that’s … pleasantly cheesy/grungy/Queens Of The Stone Age in a non-Jethro Tullish way, and no flute? But in a good way. Definitely no flute. You tell me what it sounds like. I also really like “June”. Because my favorite album is Fleetwood Mac, Tusk, and “June” – especially the ‘Hold on’ chorus bit – has a very Lindsey Buckingham Tusk era thing going on. I like the moog-as-bass on a lot of the tracks. Is it moog? Some other vintage electric organ sound? (Oh hey: here’s a live version of “Seer”. And a live version of “June”.)

I got the new Bon Iver album and it, too, has got some solid tracks but also some that make me fear that, in 5 years, Bon Iver is going to sound like Bruce Hornsby and the Range. I hope I’m wrong about that.

I haven’t logged onto Facebook in, like, 5 months. (So if you tried to friend me or poke me or whatever, and I didn’t respond, it’s nothing personal, man.) However, when I got a request to marry Belle Waring, I figured I might as well accept. Sudden and unexpected, to be sure. But what have I got to lose, marrying my own wife? To keep a short story short: reader, I married her!

I woke up this morning, in my own bed, beside my sleeping wife. It’s working out great. I am a devoted husband, with no pending invites to stray. Now I don’t need to log onto Facebook for, like, 5 more months.

Of course, there’s more to life than stuff with big words aimed at early readers. There’s stuff with few words aimed at early viewers! Here’s a good deal on a nice, quite comprehensive collection of the very earliest silent films, Landmarks of Early Film, Vol. 1 [amazon]. I lectured about some of this stuff in my Philosophy and Film class last semester, because I focused on sf – crossroads of speculation and spectacle. It’s a common critical complaint that Lucas/Spielberg-style special effects blockbusters killed a lot that was great about American cinema, in the 1970’s. Then again, film was industrial light and magic from the start, pioneered by the industrious likes of Edison and Georges Méliès (stage magician). No film could be truer to the authentic roots of the medium than whatever Michael Bay is working on right now. Probably that new Transformers movie or something. Maybe that explains why so many of these early films are boring. But in a fascinating way.

What are your favorite early/silent films? What early cinema do you really, honestly, just love to watch. No grading on a curve or so-bad-it’s-good ironizing. I watched quite a bit of Charlie Chaplin, while I was reading Sunnyside. I liked it, but I didn’t love it. I’ve posted before about loving Dreyer’s Passion of Joan of Arc. I’ve never watched any Buster Keaton; never watched The General, for example. Should I? I love Metropolis but I recently watched Fritz Lang’s Woman In The Moon and didn’t really get into it. It veered between dull and draggy self-seriousness and extreme silliness. Although Fritz Rasp (a.k.a. The Thin Man, from Metropolis) was fun.

Who do you think should get the moon gold, should it exist? Defend your answer. (Maybe that inter-title should be an inspirational poster.)

Pursuant of my previous post, the Wikipedia entry for The Big Orange Splot notes that the book uses big words, as books for 4-8 year-olds go. Yes. Words like ‘baobab’ and ‘frangipani’. This is standard Pinkwater operating procedure. Compare a passage from Irving and Muktuk, Two Bad Bears, likewise officially aimed at the 4-8 set. “FWOP! FWOP! FWOP! Oh no! It is the helicopter! FWOP! FWOP! FWOP! Adieu, Irving and Muktuk. Once again, you have failed to obtain muffins by stealth and subterfuge.” My limited acquaintance with the world of children’s book leads me to believe authors are typically editorially compelled to write much less trisyllabically. Pinkwater, being a big fish in this publishing pond, can get away with it. But surely he’s doing it right. Kids are engineered to pick up language from adults, who frequently talk to other adults, so if you write a bit over kids’ heads, they’ll just learn what ‘subterfuge’ means 5-10 years earlier than they might otherwise. Surely there is no harm in that. Kids find it interesting. What do you think? What are your favorite books for very young children that really pour on the vocabulary, apparently on the theory that little pitchers have big ears?

Quick thoughts in response to Yglesias’ ‘against character’ post. Zoning laws are a perfect example of an area in which it is hard to come up with good, principled, liberal answers – classically liberal, that is – that don’t reduce to absurdity. Richard Epstein philosophizes with a hammer about this, with the air of one delicately operating with a scalpel. Pretty much everything the government does should count as a ‘taking’. For a more winning defense of zoning libertarianism, see Daniel Pinkwater, The Big Orange Splot [amazon] – video here. It’s interesting that conservatives have never sought to open a permanent culture war front against zoning regulations. It seems like a perfect opportunity for a toxic mix of dog-whistles, pandering to bad actors, and all-around irritable gestures seeking to resemble ideas, while managing to be wedge issues. All this irritation, around a grain of truth, can produce scholarly pearls, such as Epstein’s classic book, which in a certain sense expresses an all-American conservative dream. Because, after all, Yglesias is quite right that it doesn’t make much sense, either in philosophic principle or economic practice, for zoning regulations to be so conservative a lot of the time (in the etymological sense of ‘conservative’, not the American political sense.) Possibly only the fact that Pinkwater’s Plumbean is obviously a Big Hippy has preserved us from an Epsteinian slippery slope, in polemical, culture war practice. Conservatives could do with astroturf Joe the Plumbeans, if only they could find them. Someone who can dump a big orange splot of pollution, while declaiming, like Walt Whitman, “My backyard is me and I am it! My backyard is where I like to be and it looks like all my dreams!” Take that, ‘neat street’ zombie liberal clones! That would substantially confuse the issue, in ways that are really philosophically unresolvable. (Bonus style points if you can somehow connect Plumbean with Pruneyard without looking like you are trying way too hard, as I clearly am.)

Defenders of Epstein will note, correctly, that his view is very nuanced and he wouldn’t by any means say everyone gets to dump whatever toxic splot they want, so long as it’s their land. Quite right! Epstein’s philosophy would give a much more sensible resolution to the ‘nuisance’ posed by the Plumbean case than probably any existing zoning laws in the land. Granted. My point is different. Epstein combines exquisite theoretical sophistication with crude anti-New Deal contrarianism (in my opinion). Given the bottomless appetite for the latter, among American conservatives, it’s interesting that there isn’t a dumbed-down, popular talk radio talking point version of Epstein’s philosophy, minus the intellectually worthwhile bits, in constant circulation. It seems like a missed opportunity for debasing the discourse. Again, maybe it’s just that Plumbean is a Big Hippy. What do you think?

UPDATE: I suppose I should have linked to the Wikipedia summary of the plot. For the busy, executive reader of CT who needs the bullet point version of Pinkwater’s classic children’s picture book.

Why not? It’s a great Kurt Vile song. You can download it free here. Here’s a video of a great live performance in freezing weather.

When I was but a callow lad, the Gormenghast novels were among my favorites. Now that I am grown into a strapping, callow man, they are still among my favorites. I do so hope that Titus Awakes [amazon] turns out to be good. It was written in the early 1960’s by Maeve Gilmore, Peake’s wife, and only discovered last year in an attic by their grand-daughter. Gilmore based it on notes and an outline by Peake himself. Here’s a Telegraph piece about the rediscovery.

It won’t be released for a few more weeks, but you can listen to the first bit of the audiobook here. Simon Vance is the reader.

Quite a bit of Peake stuff is being reprinted right now, or has come back in print only in the past few years. Just in the next couple months: Peake’s Progress: Selected Writings and Drawings of Mervyn Peake; Mr. Pye; A Book of Nonsense. Poke around if you like Peake. I haven’t checked out Boy in Darkness and Other Stories yet. My daughters have enjoyed Captain Slaughterboard Drops Anchor, and my vintage copy is rather falling apart. So it’s nice to know new ones are available.

Let’s discuss our hopes and fears for Titus Awakes.