Matt Zeitlin: Impetuous Young Whippersnapper

I always found it weird that pro-Israel, hawkish neoconservatives were so enthralled with promoting democracy in the Middle East. The only reason Israel has peaceful, or at least not openly hostile, relations with some of its Arab neighbors is because leaders aren’t responsive to their deeply anti-Israel publics.

Turkey is an interesting case here. While it’s technically been a democracy for quite some time, the shots were always called by an insulated group of general, who, being the military technocrats they are, recognized the value of a relationship with a rich neighbor that was friends with the United States. But now as Turkish politics has gotten more populist, democratic and Islamic in character (which, of course, isn’t a coincidence), it makes sense that a popular leader — Edrogan —  who doesn’t have the Kemalist sensibility of the military, would make a large show out of opposing Israel’s war in Gaza.

What’s distressing about Turkey’s very public opposition to the war is how Israel’s taking it. Although the Israeli government surely disagrees with Turkey’s stance, it would be hard to argue that Turkey is a dishonest broker in the region. Why would they have sponsored peace negotiations between Israel and Syria if they really didn’t care about Israel at all? But things aren’t exactly playing out that way. Instead, “according to a senior Israeli official” Erdogan has “burned all the bridges with Jerusalem.” This is regrettable, but also predictable.

But Israel can’t go around alienating its (few) allies. If anything, the estrangment between Turkey and Israel should encourage Obama and his Middle East team to put pressure on Israel to, say, follow longstanding US policy and international law and not expand settlements. Israel needs all the friends it can get, so they won’t exactly be so quick to become estranged from the US if it (ever) criticizes its foreign policy.

Some ancient philosophers argued that since reason was a uniquely human attribute, humans should thereby strive to use it. The highest form of being human – the way to live the good life – was to exercise ones reason. As an approach to living, this is good, yet vague, advice. But as an approach to filmmaking (and all art, for that matter), it’s essential gudiance. What I mean is that the best movies, in my opinion, are those which take advantage of what makes the medium different from all other forms of storytelling. So, great movies ought to pay a whole lot of attention to the visual component of the picture, and not get caught up too much in dialogue, lest it resemble a play. Also, movies allow the viewers to get really close and really far away from the characters in the scene, which is totally unique to film. I could go on, but my point is that for filmmaking to be a great, discrete artform, the filmaker must take advantage of what sets his medium apart.

But this is all just throat clearing for explaining what I loved so much about Shotgun Stories. Sure, it’s a low budget, indie, festival film portraying a deadly family feud in rural Arkansas, but it’s fantastic. Not only does it get the basics right – a good screenplay that allows the viewer to understand everyone’s actions and sympathize with the self-destructive and poor actions of the characters – the combination of acting, filming and writing allows the viewer to get so much information, feeling and sentiment with the actors actually saying very little. Instead of hearing long speeches about why the conflict between the two sets of Hayes brothers is inevitable and regrettable, we instead get glances and clipped declarative sentences.

Aside from the film’s artistic merits, there are also its sociological ones. It teeters onto rednecksploitation – with the dilapidated trucks, mechanically challenged tractors, buffets and the easy availability of firearms – but because of the director’s sympathy with rural Arkansas and its inhabitants, we instead take all these trops extreme rednecknedess seriously, and, for example, understand why Kid -  the youngest, prettiest of the three Hayes brothers – wants to take his girlfriend to the buffet (because its “special”).

Another interesting bit was how issues of race were totally absent. The weird thing about the American South is that while much of its history can be explained by the white power structure systematically screwing over black people, there is also the long internecine war between poor whites and the more wealthy. And so while the only black people we see are in some long shots of cotton fields or on Boy’s high school basketball team, we still understand that the conflict between the struggling Hayes and the more wealthy ones is partially emlematic of a larger conflict that has played out in places like Arkansas over centuries.

So let me try to understand. Caroline Kennedy has made it known to David Paterson that she would like to be appointed senator. She also knows that there are several other New York politicians who would also like to be appointed. Because Kennedy is making her case so doggedly (in private, at least), surely she thinks that she is the best candidate. So, isn’t it weird that she’s foreswearing actually running for the seat in 2010?

Usually, just because a candidate thinks she would be better for the office doesn’t mean that they necessarily should or would take on the incumbent (which is why, say, Hillary won’t run in 2012). But the NY senate election in 2010 will be different. New York Senators, in most cases, have the stamp of approval from various powerful interest groups, fundraisers, and most importantly, the voters. And since senators from NY can raise so much money and get so much media attention, they usually have some sort of record of accomplishment after their first term. That’s why Schumer and Clinton, had she not accepted Secretary of State, would have been senators indefinitely and also why any NY democrat would be foolish to challenge them.

Whoever gets picked by Paterson, however, will not have sought and gained the approval of any interest group, raised money or actually won a statewide Senate election. And, after two years, he or she won’t have much of a profile, little legislative accomplishment, nonunanimous backing of interest groups or the experience of having won a statewide election. If Caroline Kennedy really thinks she’s the best person to represent New York, then she should probably run in 2010 – or at least not make it appear that she’s scared of facing the voters as anything less than a well-monied, establishment supported pseudo-incumbent.

Based on the tone of stories I’ve been reading recently, I’m becoming a bit more optimistic that Patterson won’t give her the seat.

I doubt that Quentin Tarantino could think of something so horrific:

A man dressed as Santa who had been having marital problems opened fire at a Christmas party, leaving more than three people dead in a home that then caught fire, authorities said.

Certainly dampens the spirit of the season…

One of the best genres of movie is Eurasian national epic. Hero is pretty sweet, despite being a full-length apologia for the unification and centralization of China. Mongol, the first part of a three part Genghis Khan biopic/Mongolian national epic, is similarly awe inspiring, despite providing a justification for the eventual horrors of  Hulagu.

Of course, the large scale epic is hardly a new genre, and neither movies really bring anything original to the basic format. I think that they benefit from two things. One of them is a total lack of irony about celebrating the essential goodness of Mongolia or China, and of their controversial foundings. They also are quite expensive productions done in countries where labor is cheap, meaning they can use a lot of extras instead of the CGI warriors that spill most of the blood in Western epics like Lord of the Rings.

The more abstract reason why I appreciate these movies is because I don’t approach them skeptically or ironically. Maybe because they use subtitles or because I have very little familiarity with the actual history of Mongolia or early China, but it’s much easier to approach these movies with which we have a certain distance on their own terms. Instead of constantly questioning what the directors are trying to do or how they’re representing their country’s history, I can just sit back and appreciate what they’re trying to do and accept their vision of these events for two or so hours. What would be interesting is to see how Mongolians or Chinese of my temperament – skeptical, ironic with a strong cynical streak (but still willing to be convinced by displays of cinematic awesomeness) – respond to these two films.

How come this auslander can explain the joys of Thanksgiving better than any American? Or at least better than I can. Seriously though, read Massie’s piece.

I should add, however, that he merely states what so many of us feel about Thanksgiving. The beauty of the holiday is the lack of artifice associated with it. There’s no long forgotten historical events, no wars, no Saviors, no miracles or any extra ornamentation to force people to feel some sort of holiday spirit. Instead, the feeling of thanksgiving – that of being thankful for spending time with your friends and family – is a natural one for which we only need a slight nudge to express.

I think one could very easily make an ontological argument for Thanksgiving being the holiday of which no greater holiday can be perceived. My criteria* for holiday greatness are rather arbitrary, but Thanksgiving is off the charts on all of them. I hope everyone has a relaxing and enjoyable Thanksgiving. I know I will. 

*They involve food, football/sports, seeing my family and a lack of religious content. 

**I should note, however, that the NFL should schedule their Thanksigiving football games a week or two before they happen. What could be better than getting the best games of the week on Thanksgiving Thursday? That, or just stop giving the Lions such a marquee game.

The Daily Northwestern reports:

After a controversial last-minute decision, the Muslim-cultural Student Association plans to bring former Weather Underground member William Ayers as its 2008 fall speaker Thursday at Cahn Auditorium, said Weinberg junior Dana Shabeeb, McSA co-president.

The selection continues the recent trend of student groups bringing figures to campus who have been lightning rods for criticism, including a For Members Only speech by the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Jr. that Ayers attended as a VIP.

Ayers will be speaking with his wife, Bernardine Dohrn, a professor in the School of Law; and Imam Zaid Shakir, a black Muslim scholar. A&O Productions, Alianza, Asian Pacific American Coalition, South Asian Student Alliance and FMO have co-endorsed the event, called “Peaceful Progress: A Discourse on Affecting Change,” Shabeeb said. 

Good thing that this was announced after David Horowtz spoke at Northwestern, because had he been around for it, he very well could have spontaneously combusted.

For gays and lesbians of California, there certainly was change. For six months, they had enjoyed the rights of full citizenship. For six months, society had recognized that their relationships are just as meaningful, serious and valuable as those same-sex couples. And today, fueled by ignorance and fear, gays no longer enjoy that most basic right. How could California, a state that prides itself on its openness, tolerance and social farsightedness do this?

To say that I’m disillusioned with California is a understatement. I was filled with such pride when my state, the state that is deployed as an avatar of social liberalism by the GOP, a state whose repersentatives are portrayed as dangerous radicals and whose great cities (San Francisco and LA) are shorthand for everything social conservatives fear, put Obama over the top. I’m still proud of my state for supporting Obama, but that pride has certainly been tarnished.

Mark Schmitt thinks that the notion that any Obama supporters will riot or anything like that in the extremely unlikely event that Obama loses is absurd:

On the other side, the “talk that if Mr. Obama loses there will be riots” is, as far as I’ve ever seen, talk on the right, originating with Jonah Goldberg. Sure, if Obama loses now, there will be some real questions about how that happened, but if Obama had stumbled, and McCain had kept the lead he held in early September and gone smoothly to victory, “Blue Americans” would accept that result just as they accepted the 2000 and 2004 results.

Remember Ashwin Madia, the congressional candidate from Minnesota who Dylan Matthews advocated so passionately for?

Well, when he was running in the Democratic primary, he was all sorts of awesome. Back when Iraq was a major concern, who could not be enthusiastic about an ex-Marine Iraq vet who served as a military defense lawyer? Oh, and did I mention that he was down-the-line on all the other important issues. Opposed DADT, Wants to pullout of Iraq, supports cap-and-trade, supports gay marriage, universal health care and the closure of Guantanamo Bay. Of course, he still believes all these things, and having a military veteran who’s a committed opponent of the Iraq war – and a true social liberal – would be awesome. But Eve Fairbanks has followed up on his campaign and found that he has moved sharply to the lame, defecit hawk, balanced budget fetishizing center. 

But this time around, even before the bailout, he found that the voters in his district — who’ve eagerly supported Ramstad, a social moderate and fiscal conservative — were nearly singlemindedly obsessed with the economy. So the emphasis got tweaked. Madia’s bio on his website begins with a description of his cash-strapped immigrant parents’ pursuit of the American dream; he concentrates on the economy on the stump; and when I asked him what, if he were elected, he’d like to be remembered for, he didn’t even mention Iraq. “Balancing the budget and paying down the debt,” he answered immediately. “I want them [the epitaph-writers] to say I was a fiscal conservative.”

Considering the economic crisis we’re in, getting the entire Democratic caucus on board with the idea that demand-side stimulus spending (not to mention increased infrastructure and health care spending) is the right thing to do is the most important issue facing the coming Democratic governing majority. And having a smart, charismatic, highly appealing guy like Madia clinging to this Concord Coalition-cum-Hooveristic approach to the economy – even if its mostly a rhetorical affect to win over Republicans in his district – is highly distressing.

Yeah, that was basically the greatest interception in the history of the world. Northwestern 24 Minnesota 17. Nice homecoming, Gophers.

A term-paper writer for hire explains his craft.

Is the fact that the subtitle of TNR’s endorsement of Obama is a less-than-super-well-known Pulp Fiction reference mean that Chris Orr wrote it?

Also, this would be a good time to talk about Habermas. What he said wasn’t really that interesting, and really, no one was there for the content of his lecture. He talked about what seemingly all political theorists have talked about since Political Liberalism - namely, how we can include people with comprehensive religious worldviews in the public sphere (with a little of Charles Taylor-esque talk about Secularization and Secularism thrown in). Habermas’ main point, as much as I could understand it through his heavily accented English, was that it’s incumbent on secular folks to communicate with religious and to figure out some sort of discourse or method-of-translation that allows us to do that.  That’s because, despite the public sphere and culture becoming thoroughly secularized, there has been a resurgence of religious – and fundamentalist – participation in the public sphere (Islamists, fundamentalist Christians in America, Hindus in India etc). Therefore, we secular types are going to have to cope, instead of simply fulminating about the irrationality of secular worldviews.

Of course, there’s nothing that revolutionary about what he said. This is pretty stock political theory stuff, and it’s the kind of thing that’s going to be hashed out in a repetitive way until someone like Rawls comes along and redefines the terms of the debate.

The interesting part of the lecture was the reception to Habermas himself. Habermas has been a “permanent visiting professor” at NU for about six years or so, which basically means that he would teach for one quarter a year and then NU could claim him as a faculty member. Due to his visibly declining health, he was giving up the teaching, and was going to give what is likely his last lecture in Evanston. “I just wanted to see him before he dies” was a common refrain among the attendees.

Not surprisingly, the original room they scheduled for the talk was absolutely packed with grad students and faculty members who wanted to catch a last glimpse of the man – that and be able to brag to their friends that they had seen Habermas lecture. So they moved to a bigger room, and after an incredibly kind introduction, he began to speak.

I’ll be indulging in pointless cliché if I were to point out just how unimpressive most academics – even the celebrity ones – appear in person. As opposed to becoming any other type of celebrity, academics can attain the status without having the personal magnetism or drive for self-promotion that is a prerequisite for most other types of sustained fame. Sure, there are some academics who strive to become popular celebrities (Richard Dawkins is a good example), but Habermas certainly isn’t that. Outside of the academic and highly-educated world, hardly anyone knows who this unassuming, elderly German is. And unassuming and German is exactly what he is. He moved slowly with difficulty, managed to make a perfectly respectable coat and tie look schlumpy, and of course, spoke with an accent.

The hypothetical alien visiting earth – or a student who walked into the wrong classroom – would probably wonder why so many people were held in such rapt attention, hanging on this old man’s every movement, let alone word. And the visitor would have reason to be confused. Not only is English not his first tongue, but his old age was clearly taking a toll on his ability to communicate. He was just hard to understand. I’d say for the first ten minutes, all but the most committed grad students who could speak German were at a loss for what was going on. Sure, you could hear “secular” “modernity” “transformation” “religion” “sociology” “rationality” “dialectic,” but actually following a real argument was difficult. But still, everyone was doing their best to hang on to every word he uttered.

But once he started talking and got into the flow of his lecture, even the ignorant observer could realize exactly why so many were there to see him. His extreme intelligence was able to break through his accented speech and halting enunciation. This is a man who’s forgotten more social theory and philosophy than most could ever hope to learn; who has made substantial, paradigm shifting contributions to several fields and has been doing so since the early 1960s – and it showed. The best moments were those when he diverged from his prepared text and stepped away from the lectern slightly. He would then start excitedly using his hands to further his point. He would inevitably toss off insightful points and anticipate all the major objections to what he just said.  The performative aspect of his talk- as opposed to the content – is probably what most of us will remember. Did I learn anything substantial about what he was talking about? No. But will I be able to tell my friends and, one day, kids, that I saw Habermas talk? Yes. 

Here, at the Nation’s Greatest Online College Publication.

A West Virginian writes in Culture 11 about racism and distrust of outsiders in his home state. I could excerpt my favorite parts and give some commentary, but you should really just read the whole thing.

Before you read this post, you should be aware that I’m a college freshmen in a dorm room, so if you want to write off my ruminations as “dormroom philosophizing” you would not be wrong to do so. I should also note, as a precaution, that I’m writing this at around 1am. So not only is it “dormroom philosophizing,” it’s late-night dormroom philosophizing. Now, let the philosophizing being.

What if you had the power to change events, ever so slightly? Let’s say that you could alter the water flow in a certain part of North America 100,000 years ago by a few extra cubic inches per second. Of course, no one would notice this alteration, and people would then accept that a lake in, say, Corpus Christi, was 50 feet deep instead of 10 feet deep (1). The result of the lake being deeper is that, on March 12, 1960, a certain young, reckless naval aviator will crash his plane into the lake and will drown while trying to swim up to the surface. But there’s more to the story. This naval aviator would, 48 years after his plane crash, ascend to the leadership of the largest, most powerful country in the world. As leader, you have good reason to believe that he would pursue policies that would increase the risk of nuclear war due to a reckless policy towards Russia and that he would encourage proliferation by invading countries as part of his counter-proliferation strategy. He would promote health care policies that would lead to 18,000 excess deaths per year (2) due to a large number of people not having coverage. He would possibly invade several countries, causing large numbers of civilian casualties. He would not take the threat of catastrophic climate change seriously, and thus ensure the “lock-in” of a series of positive-feedback loops which would ensure disastrous impacts due to out of control climate meltdown and warming. With that foreknowledge, do you alter the water flow in that Texas basin by a few cubic inches per second?

Before you answer that, let’s ask another, far simpler question. There’s a trolley uncontrollably going down the tracks. The brakes have been cut, and there’s no way it will be stopped on its own. And ten people are tied down to the tracks, and they will all surely die if the trolley continues down its course. However, there is a rather large man standing next to you, by the tracks. He is so large, in fact, that he could singlehandedly stop the trolley if he were placed over the tracks. So, do you push the fat man onto the tracks to save the other ten people? Or do you condemn these totally blameless people to death, not wanting to murder the equally blameless man?  

It’s obvious I’m not really talking about fat men and trolleys, or about some hypothetical naval aviator-turned-politician. I’m of course talking about the prospect of electing John McCain. It was, of course, Senator McCain who crashed into that lake and was able to swim up from ten feet and live (3). I should also note that the list of horrible things he could do as president is widely held as probable by a number of respectable liberal commentators (including this one). So, why don’t we countenance rather extreme measures to prevent a McCain presidency?

So the Secret Service is already after me. Let me put this in a different way. What do we liberals, who really believe that McCain’s election would be an epic disaster, think is an acceptable way to stop him? Let’s say that Obama could guarantee that he wins the election by saying that Meghan McCain whores herself out to swarthy Pakistani men (this is just a random suggestion). If that action could lift Obama’s probability of winning the election from .6 to .98, would we think it was acceptable? (let’s imagine that we have perfect foreknowledge of the effect of Obama’s rumor-mongering)

Or what if it could be arranged that a 10,000 votes in Florida and Ohio go mysteriously uncounted? Once again, no one would know, and 10,000 people would be disenfranchised and Obama would win fraudulently, would you object? Or perhaps more realistically, what if there was a drawn out fight over vote counts, in which we, the Democrats, consistently held that we should be counting as few votes as possible, so as to preserve Obama’s margin (just think of the mirror image of Florida 2000). Once again, would people who think that the McCain would constitute the death of tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of innocent people (with an outside chance of planetary extinction), be willing to consider playing outside the rules a bit?

Now, the most obvious extreme example here is assassination. If McCain were to be killed in dramatic, Kennedy-style fashion, it’s very possible that Palin could win in a sympathy vote. Really, it’s impossible to imagine what would happen in that case. Let’s instead consider something more innocuous, like poisoning. Would Ezra Klein or Dylan Matthews or Matt Yglesias (or me) be willing to personally poison John McCain so that he would die of apparent natural causes, thus basically ensuring Obama’s victory? (let’s imagine, for a moment, that Obama wasn’t in such a commanding position in the polls). I think they probably wouldn’t, and if they heard of a plot to do so, they would try to prevent it. (4) Would this course of action be consistent with their expressed belief that if McCain were to be elected, a whole lot of innocent people would die? It seems not.

My point is not to advocate for the killing of John McCain (Let me be very clear about this) but instead to explore how many commentators (including this one) express these beliefs about the outcomes of elections, and yet don’t seem to act (or think) in accordance with them. For example, I would bet that nearly every Obama supporter would say that they haven’t done everything they possibly can to ensure his victory; despite the fact that they believe his losing would be absolutely catastrophic for the entire world. Why is that? Do we actually believe what we say about McCain being so horrible, are we all hypocrites. Or, even worse, are we all totally lame in our belief of procedural and cultural nicety over saving the lives of innocent people?

Addendum: The obvious rejoinder to this armchair (actually deskchair) theorizing is that if Matt Yglesias or Ezra Klein were to actually openly advocate or engage in  these “extreme” measures to ensure Obama’s victory, it would probably backfire. There’s also the question of “real world institutional design.”(5) If it were considered acceptable for everyone who had strong views about the desirability of certain presidential candidates to violate our cultural norms, break the law or even murder, our political system would cease to function. But I should note that the last objection doesn’t properly explain why most Obama supporters wouldn’t want to secretly murder John McCain. After all, we hold the possibility that McCain’s presidency will be worse than Obama’s (once again, meaning that more innocent people will die) at about p=.99. And we hold the probability of that laundry list of horrible scenarios I mentioned earlier at around, say, p=.35, so these objections that we may marginally damage the cultural and political fabric of the country don’t appear to be all that strong. Or, they probably don’t seem very strong to the blameless Iranians that would die if McCain attacked the country or to the innocent Bangladeshis who would die if he didn’t really do anything about climate change.

I’ve often taken the line that the GOP is primarily in the service of enriching already rich people and for jigging the rules so that corproations make as much money as possible. Well, the epic stupidity that was the House rejecting the bailout bill (with the help of inane House Democrats) should prove that even if all the richest people and corporations in the world support a piece of legislation, it’s still within the powers of the GOP congressman to say stupid things like that the bailout would be “a coffin on top ofRonald Reagan’s coffin.” or that it would lead us down “the slippery slope to socialism.”

It’s not like the stupidity was limited to Republicans. Looking for short-term political advantage, the know-nothing Democrats were out in full force. Here’s my favorite, ““Financial crimes have been committed,” said Representative Marcy Kaptur, Democrat of Ohio. “Now Congress is being asked to bail out the culprits.’” Because ranting about “financial crimes” is so much more important than shoring up confidence in the financial system, right?

If Congress remains stupidly relacitrant, I guess we’ll see Paulson and Bernanke doing a bunch of piecemeal moves with individual failing banks and insurers. They’ve shown a fair degree of confidence with handling the AIG mess, as well as WaMu going under. Everyone should probably read Daniel Gross’ column, where he argues that government buerecrats have shown much more ability in dealing with the crisis than has the Congress. But these piecemeal solutions won’t get close to addressing the problem of the entire financial system, and Paulson really does need the power and resources to do something big. Whether or not the House realizes this…well that remains to be seen.

Enjoy the ride, everyone!

To dwell on James Wood for a second, another big problem with his White Teeth review (and according to the reviews of How Fiction Works, that too) is his rather narrow, almost arbitrary conception of the purpose of fiction. He seems to either ignore or just dismiss out of hand, any “meta” aspect to these works. For a better idea of what I’m saying, read this passage:

What are these stories evading? One of the awkwardnesses evaded is precisely an awkwardness about the possibility of novelistic storytelling. This in turn has to do with an awkwardness about character and the representation of character. Stories, after all, are generated by human beings, and it might be said that these recent novels are full of inhuman stories, whereby that phrase is precisely an oxymoron, an impossibility, a wanting it both ways. By and large, these are not stories that could never happen (as, say, a thriller is often something that could never happen); rather, they clothe real people who could never actually endure the stories that happen to them. They are not stories in which people defy the laws of physics (obviously, one could be born in an earthquake); they are stories which defy the laws of persuasion. This is what Aristotle means when he says that in storytelling “a convincing impossibility” (say, a man levitating) is always preferable to “an unconvincing possibility” (say, the possibility that a fundamentalist group in London would continue to call itself kevin). And what above all makes these stories unconvincing is precisely their very profusion, their relatedness. One cult is convincing; three cults are not.

 Novels, after all, turn out to be delicate structures, in which one story judges the viability, the actuality, of another. Yet it is the relatedness of these stories that their writers seem most to cherish, and to propose as an absolute value. An endless web is all they need for meaning. Each of these novels is excessively centripetal. The different stories all intertwine, and double and triple on themselves. Characters are forever seeing connections and links and plots, and paranoid parallels. (There is something essentially paranoid about the belief that everything is connected to everything else.)

 So James Wood thinks that novels should avoid the wild plot contraptions that are an “unconvincing possibility.” If your of the opinion that sympathetic storytelling is the raison d’être of fiction writing, than of course non linear plots involving talking dogs, the mystical properties of Icelandic spar, time-travel or maybe even a major character that happens to be a mechanical duck aren’t going to be all that appealing. But maybe Pynchon (and Delillo, Smith, Wallace etc) are trying to do something else than tell stories populated by lifelike, sympathetic characters. I can’t imagine that Wood doesn’t understand this, but his criticism of the “relatedness” and “connections and links and plots, and paranoid parallels” misses the point of, say, The Crying of Lot 49. 

 I think that there’s critical consensus that the absurd relatedness that marks Lot 49 is actually a comment on the “essentially paranoid” belief that there is an intelligble way to interpret the bewildering events we’re both a part of and witness too. Oedipa, of course, never figures out exactly what’s going on. And there’s no way she could. Pynchon gets our hope up that the auction of Lot 49 will provide some vital clue to unravel the mystery of WASTE, trystero and everything else. Of course, we never figure out what’s actually going on…and that’s kind of the point.

 But I don’t want to quibble with deep plot analysis of Pynchon or anyone else. I merely want to propose that meta-fictional devices, like ridiculous names, talking ducks, complex and oftentimes abtruse plotting and silly coincidences have a serious purpose, and that the authors who use these devices are trying to make some sort of statement besides investigating the “representation of consciousness.” There is a serious argument behind self conscious, meta-fiction that Wood seemingly abhors. It’s not Wood’s argument for fiction, but it’s an argument that has some pretty smart and respected people behind, and yet Wood barely lets us know why anyone would want to write that. And when he does give Smith an extended chance to justify her (and others) work, he really doesn’t engage with the argument very deeply, and only praises Smith where she writes as he would like her too. For a decent justification of meta-fiction, specifically Pynchon’s, take Eric Rauchway’s review of Against the Day.

 Early in Against the Day Pynchon reminds us of this idea and expresses it graphically: “Many people believe that there is a mathematical correlation between sin, penance, and redemption. More sin, more penance, and so forth… [But t]here is no connection…. You are redeemed not through doing penance but because it happens. Or doesn’t happen.” The salvation story we might like — we do good and we get rewarded — implies a line whose equation we could plot. But the arbitrary Puritan God robs us of plottable lines. Grace comes when He pleases and at no predictable moment.

 

And if the story of salvation resists such plotting, so do Pynchon’s own stories, which often seek to escape plottable trajectories. V and its sequel, V2 – er, Gravity’s Rainbow – borrowed the idea of a mathematically predictable arc of history from Henry Adams. The plottable curves do murder: the V2’s fly from Germany up to the stratosphere and down to bomb London, just as humanity races up from barbarism to civilization and then, all force (vis) spent, hurtles down at increasing speed to decadence and destruction. If the imposition of order, the reduction of experience to Cartesian coordinates and determined paths, leads to this certain Hell, wouldn’t you prefer uncertainty — even at the cost of forsaking the conventional plot curve of Freitag’s triangle? Pynchon’s characters do, yo-yo-ing back and forth or even apparently dissolving, they avoid any ending.

 So there, that’s an argument for why, say, characterization should get less emphasis and, instead, why authors should focus on dense, interconnected storytelling. But if you read Wood’s much appreciation denunication of the genre, you’d have no idea that there was any such support for hysterical realism. You would think that it was just a way for intelligent, energetic authors to show off…or something.  

 From Mr. Scott (my history teacher junior year) to Professor Smith (my english/history teacher this year), most teachers tell their students to read texts sympathetically, and not necessarily try to argue with them, but instead figure out what the author is trying to say and why they are trying to say it. Maybe because James Wood is such an eminent figure in literary criticism, he can just say that novels have to be his way…or else, but for everyone who isn’t James Wood (who, presumably, his book reviews are written for), we would be interested in what an exciting, talented young author like Zadie Smith is trying to do and why she’s trying to do it.

Hey guys, sorry for the radio silence for the past little bit. At first I thought it would merely be the wilds of Northern Minnesota that kept me away from his rather addictive little hobby we call blogging, but then it turned out that the wonders of Wildcat Welcome Week could keep me away from the computer just as much as the backwoods of the Upper Midwest.

I guess some stuff happened in the financial markets while I was gone, which led to my freshmen dean, Layne Fenrick, make a surprisingly well received joke about AIG – I guess all those kids majoring in econ who want to work for investment banks have a sense of humor.

I don’t really have any commentary to add, except to say that I think the fact that the financial sector is going into an embarrassing tailspin hasn’t really seemed to have much effect on the “real economy,” but any effects will probably be  I’d also like to sound a note of caution for those that think Lehman’s collapse spells the end of college students who see their elite educations as a four year training course for IBing. Investment banking still offers incredibly high first year pay for kids who didn’t have to pursue a particularly technical or difficult college career. And, in four years (when I graduate), we could once again have a booming financial sector; hell, Bank of America and JP Morgan are making a killing now taking on these distressed assets. Suffice to say, we should all wait a few months, and probably a few years, before we indentify some confusing balance sheets as a sign of world-historical change.

Oh yeah, and the Wildcats are 3-0. (Ohio State isn’t)