(Belated) Commentary on the Election

"The America of my time line is a laboratory example of what can happen to democracies, what has eventually happened to all perfect democracies throughout all histories. A perfect democracy, a "warm body" democracy in which every adult may vote and all votes count equally, has no internal feedback for self-correction.... [O]nce a state extends the franchise to every warm body, be he producer or parasite, that day marks the beginning of the end of the state. For when the plebs discover that they can vote themselves bread and circuses without limit and that the productive members of the body politic cannot stop them, they will do so, until the state bleeds to death, or in its weakened condition the state succumbs to an invader — the barbarians enter Rome."

Robert Heinlein

A pox on both their houses, I say!

That wretched indexer!

"Let me hear no more of him, Sir. That is the fellow who made the Index to my RAMBLERS and set down the name of Milton thus:
Milton, Mr. John

Samuel Johnson

I'm just beginning my journey toward being officially certified as an indexer. I'm told it will take 150 hours of study. I only have 149 hours remaining...

God Save the Semicolon

I love the semicolon; my wife does not. This causes us no marital discord of which I am aware. Nevertheless, wielding this little sword of nuance is still somewhat controversial. That is, if you are a grammar geek.

Kurt Vonnegut called the marks "transvestite hermaphrodites representing absolutely nothing." Hemingway and Chandler and Stephen King, said [Ben] McIntyre, "wouldn't be seen dead in a ditch with a semi-colon (though Truman Capote might). Real men, goes the unwritten rule of American punctuation, don't use semi-colons."

Well, I use and revere the semicolon, and I am certainly a real man, as any of my concubines will attest (the fact that I hold their green cards in no way influences the level of their adulation). I drink real scotch and scar my face with a real razor blade every morning. I avoid manscaping on principle. I will die early of a heart attack. Who could deny my manliness, even if I engage in the punctuation that dare not speak its name?

The article goes on with a lot of blather about semicolons representing nuance, while Americans want things straight up and black and white. The truth is that American fiction writers have always disliked semicolons in fiction. Non-fiction writers are not held to the same standard. European and Latin American fiction writers use various and sundry punctuation schemes that send your average American running for the latest Jackie Collins novel.

Which makes me wonder, can female authors get away with semicolons in their fiction? The semicolon can be very sexy in the hands of a lady writer.

And if you find this debate "exhilarating," then the posts on this blog must leave you positively breathless.

The Perils of Adaptation

There is a new movie version of Evelyn Waugh's classic novel Brideshead Revisited. I am a huge fan of both the book and the 1982 miniseries adaptation. I was dubious about this new Miramax version, first because a two-hour movie seemed inadequate to capture the complexity of the novel as it traverses over the lives of the characters for quite a lengthy period of time. And second because the screenwriter for the new film stated in an interview that he was ditching the religious aspect of the story, which is central to the book regardless of how one falls on theological questions. Take the Waugh out of Waugh and you have, well, according to Slate magazine's review, you have a complete failure.

But do not, when attempting any course of reading aimed at appreciating Waugh's wit, give undue attention to Brideshead Revisited, a misfit of a book, much loved, and often loved in the wrong way, as the vomitous stupidity of Miramax's new film adaptation attests.

My spell check wants to change "vomitous" to "calamitous" in the above paragraph, but I think the reviewer probably chose the correct adjective.

Which Great Book Have You Negected to Read?

Actually, the British Telegraph asks which great book are you ashamed of never having read. That narrows it somewhat. Many have I not read; few are so essential to a cultured life that I would drop my head in shame over not having read them.

The usual suspects are mentioned: War and Peace, Ulysses, Shakespeare (though why one should be embarrassed at not having read Shakespeare is beyond me), and Dante's Divine Comedy.

No one admitted shame over omitting Boswell's Life of Johnson, Nabokov's Lolita, or Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited from their to-read list. Or how about something a little less predictable? Have you read Stoker's Dracula? Chesterton's The Man Who Was Thursday? Kingsley Amis' Lucky Jim?

If not, please make haste to do so! Meanwhile, I'll try to slog through Ulysses. Yes, I know, it's a work of genius.

Bonfire of the Humanities

Yes, I know, that title is already taken by a book critical of the Humanities departments of various and sundry universities, but it is too fitting for the hilarious comic from the website "xkcd: a webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language."

The hobby of the blogger/comic is seeing how long it takes people of various professions to realize, in the course of "shop talk," that the person they are conversing with is NOT actually part of their profession. The Engineer takes 48 seconds to figure it out. The Literary Critic...

"You see, the deconstruction is inextricable from not only the text, but also from the self."

And how long does it take to note the deception?

"Eight papers and two books and they haven't caught on."

This reminds me of the book some years back by the NYU Physicist Alan Sokal, Fashionable Nonsense. Sokal submitted politics-laden gibberish to a post-modern journal called Social Text, and they duly published it with great fanfare. The backlash shook much of academia, or so they say.

Personally, I like the comic better. It's shorter, funnier, and to the point.

But how do I blog with a Selectric?

I recently sent my IBM Selectric out to be repaired. It will cost a considerable sum to transfer me back to the pre-computer age. So why do it? Honestly, I miss the machine terribly. I miss the sounds and the smells of the Selectric. I miss being able to type entire documents using only my index fingers (I have severe carpal tunnel in my right hand, so this is actually the most comfortable position for me). I miss the feel of the 20 pound bond paper as I slide it into the machine. Mostly, I just miss typing.

You miss typing? What do you call what you're doing right now?

Uh...computing? It's just not the same.

It appears that I am not alone.

They're clunky, dirty and can't access the internet, yet every year thousands of people buy typewriters when they could probably afford a computer. Why?

Frankly, it has been more than ten years since I thought I had to make a choice between the two. I currently own the Mac on which I am typing this semi-literate quasi-essay, and a PC laptop. Both are useful to the point of being essential. My Selectric is meant to enhance, not replace.

But according to the linked article from the BBC, typewriters sales are falling at a rate of ten percent per year. Hardly surprising, but this does seem to fly in the face of the purpose of the article: to highlight the ongoing popularity of typewriters among older persons, as well as hint at new life for the low-tech devices. Still, the article is well-worth the read, if only to read about novelist Fredrick Forsyth's bullet-scarred manual typewriter, or the journalist who still writes her news dispatches on a typewriter after her computer "blew up."

I fervently hope for a resurgence in the popularity of typewriters, if only to keep the costs of ribbons and repairs down. The market can be very punitive to those who buck the technological wave, even if their reasons are nostalgic and somewhat fetishistic.

Shakespeare is Dead

Visiting the in laws in Dallas, Texas, USA, I had occasion to shop at the hoity-toity Galleria, Dallas' biggest and most expensive shopping mall. I say "shop," but I really had no intention of buying anything. I was willing to break that prudent rule, however, for SHAKESPEARE AND CO., named after (but presumably not connected with) the famous Paris bookstore. I had been to SHAKESPEARE AND CO. once before and was very impressed with its selections of books and music. The store is literate, eccentric, elitist (in a good way) and iconoclastic.

It is also gone from the premises. There is a big, blank, blue wall where she once hawked her wares.

I later discovered she closed her doors in early 2007:

The new year will begin on a familiar, sad note for Dallas book and music lovers: Another once-thriving, well-known independent store is shutting down.

This time it's Shakespeare, Beethoven & Co., which has served Galleria shoppers for 25 years. General manager Katie Surtees said Friday that the store would close sometime next week.

"The business has been getting worse and worse and worse, and although the Galleria has been very good to us, it's just too high-rent for the amount of business we've been doing," she said. "I thought Christmas would pull us through, but it just didn't happen."

How incredibly sad.

The standard villains in such a tragedy are chain bookstores, Amazon.com, and anyone else who offers a discount on books. This is a reasonable list of suspects. Walking around the Galleria, however, I wondered why this need be so. Yes, any book, CD, DVD, or other item purchased in SHAKESPEARE AND CO. was more expensive than its chain or online equivalent. But is that not true for every item sold in the Galleria? Aren't purses, jeans, watches, and glow-in-the-dark widgets all more expensive when purchased within the solid gold walls of this Mother of All Malls?

If women are prepared to pay $100.00 to $150.00 for a pair of Lucky Jeans (and they are!), then why should these same women make an extra trip to Barnes & Noble to save five bucks on that coffee table book on exotic purses? I saw no less than FOUR luxury watch shops. I saw TWO Louis Vuitton stores, both of which appeared to be selling the same items.

I visited a shop that sold high-end shaving supplies. Since I am one of those who use real shavers and real blades on my face, with shaving soap applied with a badger-hair brush, I was drawn to the attractive, sweet-smelling (but manly) shop. The prices, however, sent me the other direction. Anything in the shaving shop can be purchased online at a considerable discount, yet THE ART OF SHAVING survives and thrives (according the the man working that day).

I would think that people who dress up in their best dresses, suits, and jewelry to go to the mall could keep an eclectic bookstore in business. Evidently I was wrong. Or, I was right for 25 years and things have changed. The General Manager of SHAKESPEARE AND CO. has her view.

"I think after 9/11 people realized it's much easier to buy things off the Net, and they just stopped coming to the Galleria. I've just seen such a decline in traffic here, in my end of the mall."

Mmm...9/11? I've seen the terrorist attacks on New York blamed for many things, but the demise of an independent bookseller is a new victim of radical Islam. I think perhaps the ubiquity and ease of online shopping is certainly a factor, as the GM pointed out, but Americans living in Dallas, Texas do not avoid the mall in fear of Jihad.

We (my wife and I, with two bored children in tow) walked the length and breadth of the mall, hoping that perhaps SHAKESPEARE AND CO. had simply changed locations within the mall. We asked employees in the other stores if they knew the fate of the great independent bookstore that had graced this mall for a quarter of a century. The employees had either never heard of the bookstore, or just assumed that "a bookstore" was somewhere within the mall. One man holding a curling iron and standing in front of a kiosk of wigs said that if we couldn't find our bookstore we should come back and he would curl our hair.

Finally, exhausted, we stopped in that other evil chain, Starbucks, for replenishment. I asked a "barista" with a nose ring if he knew what happened to the SHAKESPEARE AND CO. bookstore. He told me it went out of business, adding, "This is Galleria. We don't read." Much laughter ensued among the baristas.

As we were leaving one of the female baristas made some comment about chain bookstores ruining everything. I thought about asking her if she could recommend a good independent coffee shop, but didn't. Irony is wasted on the youth.

"meditations on his own virtue"

In the previous post I described my initial impressions of Anthony Trollope's The Warden. I'm thoroughly enjoying the novel. Thanks to those who emailed or posted comments sharing your thoughts on "The Chronicles of Barsetshire."

I mentioned some unintended hilarity regarding Louis Auchincloss' introduction to the Modern Library edition of the novel. I don't mean to pick on Mr. Auchincloss, who has written over fifty novels and lives in New York City, where all the really smart people live. Nor do I wish to dilute the great debt we owe to Modern Library, publisher of great literature, reasonably priced (I'll add a link to ML to show my generosity). But Auchincloss seems very much ill-at-ease with one of the obvious themes of the novel: the extent to which the reformer or crusader-for-justice can lose sight of that cavernous gap between the possible and the perfect, often doing more harm than good in the process. Auchincloss writes,

"What it seems to come down to is that Trollope was inclined to believe that any drastic social change will land you in something worse than you have."

Auchincloss seems perplexed that such an astute and perspicacious writer as Trollope could believe such a thing. I had to chuckle, just short of a guffaw. That Trollope could live in the age of attempted reform and recognize the limits and dangers of reform, especially radical reform, makes him more the prophet than the eccentric reactionary. That Auchincloss could have lived through the social and political experiments of the 20th century and find Trollope's view odd is itself, well, odd.

Even leaving aside national socialism and Marxian socialism (a few unintended consequences there), one can range at will through the various and sundry changes imposed by both the right and left wing upon we humble peasants, and never lack for gobsmacking examples of short-sightedness and even criminal stupidity.

Not to sit upon my high perch and criticize those who try; I would not and Trollope did not (at least so far in my reading). But truly, Trollope's observations, made again and again in the novel, are but a restating of the human condition; the nature of the beast.

Not only does Trollope cast doubt upon the good that comes from a zealous crusading for justice at all costs, he also takes many a good-natured swiped at the motives of the reformer. In one of my favorite lines, the sister of reformer John Bold pleads with her brother to see the cliff that awaits his headlong plunge toward social justice. Bold will not hear a word against his mission, and so Trollope describes him thus:

"And the Barchester Brutus went out to fortify his own resolution by meditations on his own virtue."

Ouch.

Descriptions like the above, coupled with Trollope's swipe at Charles Dickens ("Mr. Popular Sentiment") make it clear that Trollope does not "seem" to "be inclined" to skepticism regarding reform, but rather, he screams his views on zealous, righteous interfering from every third page or so.

Were I a writer living in New York City this might rankle a bit, but there's nothing to be gained from downplaying Trollope's view or treating it as an eccentric accoutrement to the novel's theme.

In the end we're enriched by both Dickens' and Trollop's perspective on the plight of the less fortunate. Later we would add the ideas of G. K. Chesterton, John Steinbeck, and Ayn Rand to the mix. I'm sure you can probably think of other examples.

But for now I am guided by the biting wit of that most literate postman. Who he chooses to throw stones at is his business. I won't pretend the stones are confetti.

Trying on Trollope

I'm trying on Trollope. I know, I know: you'll alert the media. But so few people delve into literature these days, I thought it worth mentioning.

I'm reasonably well-read in modern literature (20th century lit) and I've dabbled significantly in 17th and 18th century literature. However, I'm woefully lacking when it comes to the 19th century novel. Ironic, given that many of my favorite works come from that period, including New Grub Street, The Woman in White, A Tale of Two Cities, Dracula (yes, Dracula), Frankenstein, and the entire Sherlock Holmes canon.

The list of great 19th century novels I have not read is quite embarrassing.

So I am wading into Anthony Trollope, beginning with the first novel in the Chronicles of Barsetshire series, The Warden.

Not regarded as one of Trollope's quintessential novels (many people skip the warden and go straight to the second book in the series, Barchester Towers) The Warden starts a bit slow, but I was soon awash in the literary gold mine that is the Trollope novel. In other words, inside of fifty pages I could see what all the fuss was about.

The basic plot is pretty simple: Septimus Harding is the "warden" of a home for twelve men whose care and feeding has been provided for by the generosity of a long-dead benefactor. While the twelve men are sufficiently cared for, the lion's share of the money goes to the warden, about 800 pounds a year. An enthusiastic reformer (is there any other kind?), John Bold, sets out to change the distribution of the bequest, feeling that the twelve men are being cheated. He does this with the vigor of the righteous, despite his being involved romantically with Harding's daughter, Eleneanor.

Many Trollope fans prefer the Palliser novels, or The Way We Live Now, because these novels deal with larger social issues as well as the interpersonal dynamics. But I find The Warden enchanting precisely because the stakes are so low, at least from our vantage point. If such as thing as Harding's dilemma were happening today in New Zealand, it is doubtful that the rest of the world would hear about it. And assuming it made the BBC or The Drudge Report, few would care. And therein lies the charm.

In our time we see Islamic Jihad, global warming, Antisemitism, and child murder dominate our troubled landscape. Trollope's little village, despite the often vicious social and political maneuvering, seems quaint by comparison. If this were a Thomas Hardy novel, the atmosphere would be suffocating, and we would be tempted to cry out to our favorite character, "Run away! Get the hell out of there!" But this is
Trollope, and we are encouraged to stay in the village come what may.

And so I will continue reading The Warden, ignoring the Siren's song of flashier novels, reality TV, and (gag) the nightly news.

One particularly interesting contrast arises from my choosing the Modern Library edition of this book: the introduction by Louis Auchingloss contains some unintended hilarity when contrasted to Trollope's own views, as expressed in the novel.

More on that later.

With apologies to Samuel Johnson

God only knows what the great Samuel Johnson would think of having a blog named after a single ejaculation he made in 1754. Perhaps he would be flattered. Or he might consider blogging a tool of the devil, which of course it is.

Boswell's LIFE OF DOCTOR JOHNSON tells the story:

"As we returned to Oxford in the evening, I out-walked Johnson, and he cried out Sufflamina, a Latin word, which came from his mouth with peculiar grace, and was as much as to say, Put on your drag chain."

The person quoted above is a Mr. Wise, one of the many people from whom Boswell gathered anecdotes to compile his magisterial biography of Samuel Johnson.

Note that the word Sufflamina was uttered by Johnson "with peculiar grace."

My unabridged Oxford English Dictionary has no entry for Sufflamina. Not surprising, as this Latin word is even more obscure today than it was in 1754, and would not have acquired the kind of common usage, even among scholars, to be included in an English dictionary.

And before someone asks the obvious question: no, the word does not appear in my copy of Samuel Johnson's Dictionary, though I suffer, as most do, with a severely abridged version of the great man's lexicographical triumph. It would be interesting to know if the word appears in Johnson's unabridged dictionary. I used to own a copy, from the 18th century, but stupid rare book dealer that I was, I sold it.

The only other published use of the word Sufflamina, as far as I can tell, comes from the 14th chapter of The Antiquary, by Sir Walter Scott, published in 1816.

“Pardon me, young man,” said Oldbuck, laying his hand kindly on his shoulder, and making a full halt—”sufflamina—a little patience, if you please."

It appears that Johnson was the first to attempt to introduce Sufflamina into public discourse. Or should the credit go to Boswell? In any event, I shall make a weary attempt with this blog to reintroduce the word to the 21st century. A modest, but worthy, goal, do you not agree?