books

Obiter Scripta, no. 56

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As it happened, publishers and booksellers were the shock troops in exploiting — and developing — a Christmas trade. And books were on the cutting edge of a commercial Christmas, making up more than half of the earliest items advertised as Christmas gifts…In fact, even before books were actually labeled as Christmas presents in the newspapers, they were being marketed for that purpose.

—Stephen Nissenbaum, The Battle for Christmas: A Social and Cultural History of Our Most Cherished Holiday

That tone of strongly-implied disapproval runs throughout the book, a tedious Marxish archeological dig below the foundations of the holiday to unearth the telltale potsherds of paternalism, classism, nativism, and, worst of all, rapacious commercialism and inauthentic consumerism. What the materialist cynics never understand is that even amid humble, degraded origins, something noble and timeless can still shine through. Here, as with the ancient Icelandic tradition of jólabókaflóð, is a reminder of the sort of old-fashioned Christmas values we would all do well to resurrect.

At Sixes and Sevens

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As the author of a recent book on snobbery, one of Fleming’s new deadly sins, and as of the moment the country’s, perhaps the world’s, leading snobographer, I cannot resist listing the seven deadly sins of snobbery. These are — trumpets please — serving veal and/or iceberg lettuce to company; sending one’s children to land-grant colleges; admitting to having voted for George Bush, the father or the son; owning a Cadillac SUV; mocking denim in public; and openly acknowledging one’s pleasure in slightly overweight women, sweet wine, and Tchaikovsky.

— Joseph Epstein, Envy: The Seven Deadly Sins

Obiter Scripta, no. 55

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Cosima had committed herself to marriage with von Bülow when she was still in her teens and had been swept away by a concert in Berlin conducted by him. The concert program had included the first Berlin performance of Wagner’s Venusberg music from Tannhaüser. Von Bülow had proposed to her on the same night. Both of them were in love with Wagner and completely transported by his glorious music; one wonders who he was wooing and who she was accepting.

— Sue Prideaux, I Am Dynamite!: A Life of Nietzsche

In Proust’s In Search of Lost Time, Albertine’s professed undying love for the Narrator and his intellect is explained as a result of those mornings when he had just shaved; it was his smooth skin she really loved, though she instinctively rationalized it as something more profound. How many times do these mischievous ghosts hover over our shoulders, redirecting our thoughts, diverting our feelings? How often do we focus on the figure rather than the background as the source of our happiness, only to feel disappointed or betrayed when that surrounding context changes? And yet, how many great things are nonetheless born of those humble parents Inattention and Error?

The Red and the Black

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I remember it well: mid-December 2003. After 3 ½ years of increasing decrepitude, I was a couple of weeks away from finally being diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis (and treated, thank God). I also had the flu that weekend. But at 3:15 a.m. on Sunday morning, I got the call saying that one of the new carriers was too scared to do her route in the snowstorm. I was needed. Duty called. Out I went to drive around for six or so hours in great physical pain, in a medicated state, in hazardous conditions, making deliveries. My friend Arthur commiserated with my suffering later. I replied that seeing as how the book I was then reading was Anne Applebaum’s Gulag, I didn’t feel like I had it so bad. “I swear, you’ve got to stop wasting your time on these bodice-busters,” he said.

I picked these up last month. A volunteer was restocking the history section, and I saw the Black Book near the top of the banker box when she removed the lid. My face was an impassive mask, but anyone who looked closely might have seen the blaze of avarice behind my eyes lighting up my skull like a jack-o’-lantern. I’d never seen a copy at a sale before, and even used copies typically sell for around fifty bucks online. The rules are that no one can touch any of the new books coming out until the volunteer is completely done and has moved away; we don’t want elbows and books landing on anyone’s head during the scrum. A few fellow vultures had gathered around, attracted by the scent of fresh arrivals. We subtly angled for position, watching each other out of the corners of our eyes, trying not to betray our intentions while planning what to grab first. Finally, she finished and left. Quicker than a striking cobra, my hand flashed out and grabbed the Black Book. Kenny, who had been reaching for it as well, but from a less advantageous position, with a grunt and an index finger gesture signaled his grudging admiration for my having bested him in battle. However, he countered by grabbing the nearby Red Flag before I could. Curses! Am I too proud to beg? Of course not. As the proverb says, all is fair in book-buying. “Aw, c’mon, man, I’ve gotta have the whole set!” I relied on my chutzpah to carry the day; he could have easily noted that the exact same logic applied in his case. Thankfully, he decided that the sales rank/profit ratio wasn’t compelling enough, and he handed it over to me. Frankly, that was just a bonus; I already had my prize, and it only cost me two dollars.

These sorts of books are one version of “memento mori.” Like Gulag, or Timothy Snyder’s Bloodlands, reading these is a salutary way to be grateful for comfort, grateful for stability, and grateful for abundance. There’s plenty of evil in the world, but there’s something especially horrific about evil utterly convinced of its own rectitude. It’s not that I feel like I need to learn anything more about the theory and practice of communism, but as the resurgent affection for Marxish sentiment among the chattering class shows us, much of life is about remembering things we already know but have dismissed as boring, uncool or outdated.

There Are No Barbarians Any Longer

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I read Jack Weatherford’s book Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World some years ago and learned that, despite popular legend, Genghis was practically an Enlightenment liberal. (Weatherford has since written a couple more books on the same revisionist theme, though I haven’t read either.) Not being a scholar, my impression was that, while certainly interesting, it seemed too neatly counterintuitive — sort of like a book-length exposition of one of those “Everything you thought you knew about X is wrong!” articles you see all the time. But from what little I read of the critical reception, which seemed generally positive, it seemed there might have been substance to the thesis after all. If anyone took ferocious exception to Weatherford’s work, I’m unaware of it.

Anyway, now it appears that modern-day Mongolians, rather than wanting to sack and pillage Europe, just want to rock. I suppose this merging of cultures represents commodification of indigenous music, Coca-Cola colonialism, etc., but I do like the songs:

Amazon Giveth and Amazon Taketh Away

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I had been looking forward all year to the September release of Theodore Dalrymple’s book Nothing But Wickedness: The Origins of the Decline of Our Culture, but it was not to be. My pre-order remained unconsummated. I now see that the book won’t be published until next August. But what to my wondering eyes should appear this morning but a new book, co-authored with Kenneth Francis, due to be released on the tenth of this month! It looks fascinating:

The cultural death of God has created a conundrum for intellectuals. How could a life stripped of ultimate meaning be anything but absurd? How was man to live? How could he find direction in a world of no direction? What would he tell his children that could make their lives worthwhile? What is the ground of morality?

Existentialism is the literary cri de coeur resulting from the realization that without God, everything good, true and beautiful in human life is destined to be destroyed in a pitiless material cosmos. Theodore Dalrymple and Kenneth Francis examine the main existentialist works, from Ecclesiastes to the Theatre of the Absurd, each man coming from a different perspective. Francis is a believer, Dalrymple is not, but both empathize with the struggle to find meaning in a seemingly meaningless universe.

Part literary criticism, part philosophical exploration, this book holds many surprising gems of insight from two of the most interesting minds of our time.

I know what the first item in my shopping cart will be on Christmas Day.

Obiter Scripta, no. 54

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I do not know if this is an emotion universally felt, but I have discovered that I am not alone in feeling what I have come to think of as “Sunday night triste,” a feeling of the blues that comes upon me dependably each Sunday, roughly at dusk. What does this tinge of sadness signify? Expectations disappointed? A yearning for a time now gone and not ever to be recaptured? Regret for the winding down of another week, during the course of which one achieved (yet again!) less than one had hoped? Sorrowful anticipation of still another week ahead? Or is it — simply and more persuasively — sadness at the passing of Sunday itself, one of life’s minor pleasures that is now once again no less than a full six days off?

— Joseph Epstein, “Observing the Sabbath,” Familiar Territory: Observations on American Life

Alone with our thoughts on a day of rest, it sometimes feels as if we’ve paused amid the eternal Heraclitean flow, watching the swirls and eddies rush past without acknowledging us, knowing it’s futile and foolish, but still halfheartedly wishing we could stand athwart the flux and plead, “stop.” Alternatively, perhaps it’s a variation of what John Koenig named “kenopsia.“

Alas, Destiny!

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Hugo Drochon:

In her wonderfully gripping new biography of Nietzsche – the type you stay in bed all Sunday just to finish – Sue Prideaux casts doubt on this story. Indeed, the horse only makes an appearance in the legend 11 years later – in 1900, the year of Nietzsche’s death – when a journalist interviewed Fino, the landlord, about the events of the day. And only in the 1930s – more than 40 years later – do we hear about the horse being beaten and Nietzsche breaking down in tears; this time in an interview with Fino’s son, Ernesto, who would have been about 14 at the time.

…Prideaux casts even more doubt on the cause usually attributed to this insanity: syphilis. Popularised by Thomas Mann’s novel Doctor Faustus, which has a Nietzsche-like character contract syphilis in a brothel, the evidence simply doesn’t stack up. Although diagnosed as such when admitted to the asylum in Basle, Nietzsche showed none of symptoms now associated with it: no tremor, faceless expression or slurred speech. If he was at an advanced stage of dementia caused by syphilis, Nietzsche should have died within the next two years; five max. He lived for another 11. The two infections he told the doctors about were for gonorrhoea, contracted when he was a medical orderly during the Franco-Prussian War.

Instead Prideaux puts forward the – correct – view that Nietzsche probably died of a brain tumour, the same “softening of the brain” that had taken away his father, a rural pastor, when Nietzsche was a boy. Indeed both sides of the family showed signs of neurological problems, or of suffering of “nerves”, as one put it at the time.

You know, it’s getting to the point where I murmur a little traveller’s prayer before getting on the web each day: please let me get where I’m going without encountering any more stray books I feel compelled to pick up and bring home. I have a fair amount of Nietzscheana on my shelves, especially for a non-scholarly amateur, but I don’t recall ever reading a debunking of these legends surrounding his mental collapse before. Could it be that there is still more to learn here? A biography so gripping you want to stay in bed all day to finish it? Sigh. Well, as Zarathustra said sorrowfully, I recognize my lot. Thus my destiny wants it. Well, I am ready.

The King of Illiterature

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Michael Dirda:

Oxford University Press has done an immense disservice to John Zubrzycki’s fascinating “Empire of Enchantment: The Story of Indian Magic.” Apart from some print-on-demand atrocities, I’ve seldom encountered a book in which so many words have been repeated, dropped, misspelled or misused. I can only suppose that this slovenliness — “damming” for “damning,” sentences garbled because of a missing verb or pronoun — indicates over-reliance on a computerized auto-correct function. No competent proofreader would have allowed such an embarrassing farrago to go to press.

Unfortunately, OUP “has previous,” as the Brits like to say. I’m afraid the rot runs deep.

Puts You There Where Things Are Hollow

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If the man who tells you that he writes, paints, sculptures, or sings for his own amusement, gives his work to the public, he lies; he lies if he puts his name to his writing, painting, statue, or song. He wishes, at the least, to leave behind a shadow of his spirit, something that may survive him…The man of letters who shall tell you that he despises fame is a lying rascal.

— Miguel de Unamuno, Tragic Sense of Life

Everyone who writes, I have no doubt, would like to be famous, and not only famous now, while on this earth, but, embarrassing enough to admit given the odds, famous after he has departed the earth. And this, I believe, is true of serious and frivolous writers alike.

— Joseph Epstein, “You Probably Don’t Know Me,” A Line Out for a Walk

Well! I’m not a man of letters, of course; I’m just another vandal tagging the alleyways of the web with my digital graffiti. But as a paid-up member of the Frivolous Writers Local 301, I feel authoritative enough to declare that this is bunk. Unamuno may be talking about the literary equivalent of those ’90s rock stars who, having gone through all the considerable effort of forming a band, gigging regularly, signing to a major label, and heavily promoting their albums, proceeded to gripe incessantly about how stifling and inauthentic it all was. In those cases, yes, it’s hard to take such complaints seriously. If you don’t want fame and fortune, there are plenty of off-ramps to take long before you get to the big time. But why should it be so hard to accept the idea of the devoted amateur who loves his work precisely because it’s not a job with all the trappings and compromises that entails? I could probably adjust to being rich — certainly willing to give it my best effort! — but fame? What on Earth would be the point of that?

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