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I’m reading David Frum, How We Got Here: The 70’s, the Decade That Brought You Modern Life – For Better Or Worse.

Why am I reading it? Oh, you know me.

But consider this bit (Corey Robin, I expect you to be particularly interested): [click to continue…]

Since CTer Scott McLemee is not exactly what you would describe as an incessant self-promotor, two recent pieces by him that deserve attention.

First, on Colin McGinn, the Mind “review”:http://m.mind.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2013/10/31/mind.fzt073.full?ijkey=JaKp6eczj44oA1I&keytype=ref that’s been doing the rounds, and the tradition of savage book reviews by philosophers:

The new issue of Harper’s magazine reprints, under the title “Out on a Limb,” a blog post by McGinn from June 2013 in which he explains: “I have in fact written a whole book about the hand, Prehension, in which its ubiquity is noted and celebrated… I have given a semester-long seminar discussing the hand and locutions related to it. I now tend to use ‘hand job’ in the capacious sense just outlined, sometimes with humorous intent…. Academics like riddles and word games.”

Some more than others, clearly. McGinn then considers the complexity of the speech-act of one professional glassblower asking another, “Will you do a blow job for me while I eat my sandwich?” The argument here is that nothing he did should be regarded as sexual harassment of a graduate student, and the real victim here is McGinn himself: “One has a duty to take all aspects of the speech situation into account and not indulge in rash paraphrases. And one should also not underestimate the sophistication of the speaker.”

Nor overestimate the usefulness of sophistication as a shovel, once one has dug oneself into a hole and needs to get back out. McGinn subsequently thought the better of this little essay and deleted it from his blog, but the Harper’s “Readings” section preserves it for posterity. Life would be much simpler if good judgment weren’t so tardy at times.

Second, from last week, on “Lou Reed and Delmore Schwartz”:http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2013/10/30/essay-lou-reed

Fifty years ago, Lou Reed himself was a senior at Syracuse University, where he studied with the poet Delmore Schwartz. Reed was 21 – roughly the same age Schwartz had been when he wrote the short story “In Dreams Begin Responsibilities.” In it, the narrator revisits the scene of his parents’ courtship in 1909 as if seeing it in a film of the era.

Simply told and strangely beautiful, it is both haunting and haunted. By its close, any hint of sentimentality dissolves in a moment of painful self-awareness. Its appearance in 1937 in the revived Partisan Review was the stuff of legends. The poetry and criticism Schwartz published after that were more than promising, and he won the Bollingen Prize in 1959 (five years after Auden had received it) for a volume of his selected poems.

Beginning in 1962, Schwartz held an appointment in the English department at Syracuse, despite having become, at some point over the previous decade or so, manifestly insane. The distinction between bohemianism and madness is sometimes a matter of context. With Schwartz the case for nuance was long since past. He had fallen into the habit of threatening friends and ex-wives with litigation for their parts in a conspiracy against him, led by the Rockefellers. While living in Greenwich Village he had smashed all the windows in his rented room and been taken to Bellevue in restraints. He died alone in New York City in 1966.

The following year, Reed dedicated a song on the first Velvet Underground album to Schwartz, and in another song from the early 1980s he imagined being able to communicate with the poet via Ouija board. Last year Reed published a tribute to him that has also appeared as the preface to In Dreams Begin Responsibilities, an edition of Schwartz’s selected short fiction.

Paul Krugman mentions that Keynesian staple, the “paradox of thrift”:http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/11/01/the-harm-germany-does/ in passing on a post on Germany. Which I read as giving me license to quote one of my favorite paragraphs from Albert Hirschman’s work (this from his piece, “How the Keynesian Revoution was Exported from the United States, and Other Comments,” in Peter Hall (ed.) The Political Power of Economic Ideas.

But while rehabilitating common sense, Keynes hardly presented his own theory in commonsensical terms. Rather, his message was delivered in a book whose text was uncommonly difficult. Moreover, he frequently presented his propositions as counterintuitive rather than as confirming common sense: for example, instead of telling his readers that converging individual decisions to cut consumption can set off an economic decline (common sense), he dwelt on the equivalent but counterintuitive proposition that a spurt of individual decisions to save more will fail to increase aggregate savings. In this manner, he managed to present common sense in paradox’s clothing and in fact made his theory doubly attractive: it satisfied at the same time the intellectuals’ craving for populism and their taste for difficulty and paradox.

I’m not sure if it’s entirely fair, but it is surely beautifully put. Unfortunately, this essay doesn’t appear in the new volume of The Essential Hirschman (Powells, Amazon). But there are many other wonderful essays that are there (including my favorite, “Rival Views of Market Society). A wonderful book, and a treat if you haven’t read Hirschman before.

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.

Greetings from the road. I’ve been chivvying little girls around the globe for a few weeks, which interferes with keeping up one’s CT duties. So our text today is taken from one of the few literary works I’ve had a chance to read with real discernment, at leisure. The August issue of the Delta inflight magazine! 

The article in question is a celebration of the 50th anniversery of King’s “I Have A Dream Speech”. A number of prominent Atlantans reflect on its significance, generally and personally. (Hey, you can read it online. Who knew? Who ever links to articles in inflight magazines?)

It’s the sort of feel-good, unlikely-to-offend fare you expect from an inflight magazine. But the fact that MLK, his legacy and most famous speech, are fodder for such fare is noteworthy. In 1963, who would have expected that, a mere 50 years on, MLK would be not just a moral hero to many, but a non-polarizing, nominal hero to nearly all. Democrats love him, of course. And Republicans – although they may vote against MLK day and try to chip away at his pedestal every couple of years – are really more interested in making out, rhetorically, how they, not Democrats, are the true heirs to his legacy and philosophy (which has been so cruelly betrayed by the Democrats). As Orwell said about Dickens: MLK is a figure well worth stealing.  [click to continue…]

Larry Lessig “here”:http://www.lessig.org/2013/07/on-the-emptiness-in-the-concept-of-neutrality/ on MIT’s claim that it was ‘neutral’ with respect to the prosecution of Aaron Swartz.

bq. “Neutrality” is one of those empty words that somehow has achieved sacred and context-free acceptance — like “transparency” … But there are obviously plenty of contexts in which to be “neutral” is simply to be wrong. … For example, this context: The point the report makes in criticizing the prosecutors is that they were at a minimum negligent in not recognizing that under MIT’s open access policies, Aaron’s access was likely not “unauthorized.” … But that criticism goes both ways — if indeed MIT recognized this, and didn’t explicitly say either privately or publicly that Aaron was likely not guilty of the crime charged, then that failure to speak can’t be defended by the concept of “neutrality.” … MIT was more than negligent: The issue was explicitly flagged for it, by a senior member of the MIT administration. As the report indicates, Joi Ito, in the summer of 2011, explicitly raised the point … MIT knew something here that at a minimum could have cut short a prosecution, and which, it turns out, could also have saved someone’s life. “Neutrality” does not justify failing to pick up the phone, and telling the prosecutor, “hey, in fact, his access was authorized.” Maybe it wouldn’t have mattered. Maybe the prosecutor would have stayed the course. But then that would have been (yet another) failure of the prosecution, not MIT’s.

“Patrick Nielsen Hayden”:http://www.tor.com/blogs/2013/06/iain-banks-has-passed-away has an obituary.

Man does not live by long Hayek posts alone!

Take this TLS piece on Frankenstein (via Andrew Sullivan). I love this stuff. I haven’t read the books being reviewed, but differences between the 1818 and 1831 editions of Frankenstein are a hobbyhorse of mine. It started with my interest in the history of sf, and the interesting way in which Shelley invented the genre, then un-invented it by rewriting the book to be less sf. Funny sort of backtrack. But that’s far from being the weirdest thing about the book. [click to continue…]

I’m a bit late, responding to Corey’s ‘Nietzsche’s Marginal Children’ essay (and post). But here goes.

In this post I will say what I think is right about Corey’s basic thesis. We can then – if you like – argue the degree to which I’m agreeing with what Corey actually said, or maybe substituting something that’s more my own, but clearly in the same vicinity, conclusion-wise. (We’ll be pretty tired by then, however. Long post.)

I know Nietzsche well, Hayek well enough – The Constitution of Liberty, in particular – and the rest of the marginalists not well at all. So this is going to be a Hayek-Nietzsche post.

The proper way to put the Nietzsche-Hayek ‘elective affinity’ thesis – that is a good term for it – is going to sound weak and disappointingly loose. But it’s actually interesting. Showing the interest, despite the looseness, is where it gets a bit tricky. [click to continue…]

“Story at the Guardian”:http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2013/apr/03/iain-banks-gall-bladder-cancer?INTCMP=SRCH, thanks to people in comments below. This is very sad news. He has been a wonderful and prolific writer, whose intelligence and considerable grasp of politics were often concealed by the lightness of his touch. I would have loved it had he written more in the experimental vein of some of his earlier fiction – _Walking on Glass_ is just a lovely book – but am grateful for what he has written. He never got the reception in the US that he deserved – some CT readers may not know his work. Readers interested in his literary side should perhaps start with _Walking on Glass_ or _The Wasp Factory_ (“It is a sick, sick world when the confidence and investment of an astute firm of publishers is justified by a work of unparalleled depravity. There is no denying the bizarre fertility of the author’s imagination: his brilliant dialogue, his cruel humour, his repellent inventiveness. The majority of the literate public, however, will be relieved that only reviewers are obliged to look at any of it.” – _The Irish Times_), and those more interested in sf should begin with _Consider Phlebas_ or perhaps _The Use of Weapons._ They’re all wonderful novels, in very different ways.

As Crooked Timber readers will already know, there was a memorial service for Aaron in DC this week. Like “Rick Perlstein”:http://www.thenation.com/blog/172761/aaron-swartzs-dc-memorial-radical-brings-bipartisanship-washington, I wasn’t able to go. Unlike Aaron’s funeral, it was a specifically political event, intended to draw publicity both to Aaron’s causes and the causes of Aaron’s death.

Public deaths are strange. When someone dies, what is left is an imperfect aggregation of different people’s memories, which can never surprise you in the way that the real person could. But when the aggregation of memories is mostly made up of the memories of people who never knew Aaron directly, it is stranger again. The person whom you knew becomes a mythological figure, onto whom others map all sorts of things that may, or may not, have anything to do with the actual individual. It must be much stranger for the people who knew Aaron much better than I did (we were good friends, but not intimate ones).
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For those who can be there:

Members of House, Senate Join Family and Friends of Aaron Swartz for Public Memorial Event at the Cannon House Office Building in Washington, DC

WASHINGTON, DC – On Monday, February 4th, family and friends of Aaron Swartz will join members of Congress at the Cannon House Office Building to honor and celebrate the life, work, and legacy of Aaron Swartz, the accomplished activist and technologist who took his own life on January 11. Aaron’s supporters will also discuss possible reforms and other steps that can be taken to honor his memory

WHAT: Public Memorial Event for Aaron Swartz in Washington, DC, free and open to all

WHO:

Aaron’s father Robert Swartz, his partner Taren Stinebrickner-Kauffman, his friends David Segal and Ben Wikler, and several members of Congress. Likely attendees include Sen. Al Franken (D-MN), Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR), Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA), Rep. David Ellison (D-MN), Rep. Alan Grayson (D-FL) and Rep. Jared Polis (D-CO), as well as others to be announced.

WHERE:

Cannon Office Building, Room TBA,
Independence Avenue SE. Washington, DC 20515

WHEN:

Monday, 4 February 2013. 7:00pm – 9:00pm EST

For details or to RSVP, please visit http://bit.ly/aaronswDC

For more information, or for interviews please contact Trevor FitzGibbon at 202-406-0646 or by email at trevor@fitzgibbonmedia.com.

# # # # #

Remembrances of Aaron, as well as donations in his memory, can be submitted at http://rememberaaronsw.com.

A short memorial note from me, below the fold.
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I don’t want to write about the circumstances of his suicide – it’s too raw. I do want to write about who he was. I suspect that the media will turn this into a story of Aaron as persecuted hacker, which gets at only one part of him. He was one of the kindest, sweetest, and most generous people I ever knew. He made a lot of money at a very young age, which would have ruined most people (including me). It didn’t ruin Aaron. He used it to live an itinerant life, jumping from project to project, all intended to work towards creating a better world. His enthusiasm was boundless, as was his generosity. When Crooked Timber had big server problems a few years ago, he immediately jumped in to offer to host us (we ended up finding hosting elsewhere). He saw that Rick Perlstein didn’t have a website, back before Rick Perlstein was Rick Perlstein, and he built one for him. He gathered together everything he could of the old Lingua Franca, preserving it and making it available. A skilled techie, he helped put together the revived Baffler, a journal noted for its discontent with things technological. Aaron’s life was a struggle against the forces of entropy, decay and political corruption. He never saw a good cause, but he wanted to adopt it, and do everything he could for it (if a criticism could be made of him, it was that he moved on too quickly from project to project). I knew he had been in a dark place the last few months, because of what was happening to him, but I didn’t know how dark. I’ve lost a dear friend, but American politics and intellectual life has lost someone who did many good things for many people, often quietly, but always to good effect. Other CTers may have other memories of him; those are mine.

Update: “Aaron’s family and current partner”:http://rememberaaronsw.com. “Quinn”:http://www.quinnnorton.com/said/?p=644 Also, “Cory Doctorow”:http://boingboing.net/2013/01/12/rip-aaron-swartz.html#more-205376, “Larry Lessig”:http://lessig.tumblr.com/post/40331489608/aaron-rip, “Mark Bernstein”:http://www.markbernstein.org/Jan13/AaronSwartz.html, “James Fallows”:http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/01/aaron-swartz/267110/, “Brewster Kahle”:http://blog.archive.org/2013/01/12/aaron-swartz-hero-of-the-open-world-rip/ , “Carl Malamud”:https://public.resource.org/aaron/, “The Baffler”:http://thebaffler.com/blog/2013/01/aaron_swartz. By request, “Aaron’s guest-posts here at CT”:https://crookedtimber.org/author/aaron_swartz/. Scott McLemee’s “story on Aaron from a few years back”:http://www.insidehighered.com/views/mclemee/mclemee117 is here.

Update 2: “What Larry Lessig Says”:http://lessig.tumblr.com/post/40347463044/prosecutor-as-bully.

bq. For remember, we live in a world where the architects of the financial crisis regularly dine at the White House — and where even those brought to “justice” never even have to admit any wrongdoing, let alone be labeled “felons.” In that world, the question this government needs to answer is why it was so necessary that Aaron Swartz be labeled a “felon.” For in the 18 months of negotiations, that was what he was not willing to accept, and so that was the reason he was facing a million dollar trial in April — his wealth bled dry, yet unable to appeal openly to us for the financial help he needed to fund his defense, at least without risking the ire of a district court judge. And so as wrong and misguided and fucking sad as this is, I get how the prospect of this fight, defenseless, made it make sense to this brilliant but troubled boy to end it.

The last time I saw Aaron, we didn’t talk about the JSTOR incident itself, for all the obvious reasons. We did talk about the Kafkaesque nightmare he had landed in, where literally _anything he said_ could be taken grossly out of context and used against him by a prosecutorial apparatus apparently more driven by vindictiveness, stupidity and politics than by any particular interest in justice or the public interest. He told me how, when the police finally came around to search his apartment, some weeks after the charges had been laid, he jokingly asked them what had taken them so long. Of course, he then found these words being twisted by the prosecutors to suggest that he had effectively admitted he was guilty.