The Old Assyrian Stuff

By in beards, macho macho men No Comments

The fact remains that all the great literary rows you read about were between bearded men, whiskered men, critics who looked like bursting horsehair sofas, and novelists who had forgotten to shave for years. The Edinburgh reviewers were beavers to a man. The connection between whiskers and caustic criticism is not hard to see.

There is probably nothing which so soothes a man and puts him in a frame of mind to see only good in everything as a nice, clean shave. He feels his smooth, pink cheeks, and the milk of human kindness begins to gurgle within him. What a day! he says, as he looks out of the window. What a kipper! he says as he starts his breakfast. And, if he is a literary critic, What a book! he feels as he takes up the latest ghastly effort of some author who ought to be selling coals instead of writing novels.

But let a man omit to shave, even for a single day, and mark the result. He feels hot and scrubby. Within twelve hours his outlook has become jaundiced and captious. If his interests lie in the direction of politics, he goes out and throws a bomb at someone. If he is an employer of labour, he starts a lockout. If he is a critic, he sits down to write his criticism with the determination that by the time he has finished reading it the author will know he has been in a fight.

You have only to look about you to appreciate the truth of this. All whiskered things are testy and short-tempered—pumas, wild cats, Bernard Shaw, and—in the mating season—shrimps. Would Ben Jonson have knifed a man on account of some literary disagreement if he had not been bearded to the eyebrows? Can you imagine a nation of spruce, clean-shaven Bolsheviks, smelling of bay rum?

There is only one thing to be done. We must go back to whiskers. And there must be no half-measures.

It is not enough for a critic to have a beard like Frank Swinnerton’s, which, though technically a beard, is not bushy enough to sour the natural kindliness of his disposition. We must have the old Assyrian stuff, the sort of beards Hebrew prophets wore—great, cascading, spade-shaped things such as the great Victorians grew—whether under glass or not has never been ascertained.

— P.G. Wodehouse, “Back to Whiskers,”  Week-end Wodehouse

The clean-shaven Patrick Kurp can attest to the truth of this, given his boundless indulgence of potboilers, bodice-rippers, and emotive poetry. On the other hand, though, consider the prevalence of beards among today’s young hipsters, a demographic typically unacquainted with either combative ferocity or literary taste. Has cultural evolution decoupled the beard from its traditional representation of masculinity? Did facial hair serve to camouflage, as it were, the real marker of manliness to which we should have been paying attention? Grip strength has been in alarming decline in recent decades. You can bet the old critics of whom Wodehouse spoke all had, in addition to their majestic plumage, a firm, bone-splintering handshake. Today’s bearded youths prefer fist bumps and half-hearted lean-hugs; their feeble hands need only enough strength to keep their omnipresent phones from clattering to the floor. Is it any wonder most of the online literary sites wallow in touchy-feely solipsism? What is best in life? To crush your rival’s metacarpals, to savage his self-published memoir, and to hear the lamentations of his Twitter feed. We’ve fallen far from the old ways.

Contentless Progressive Ideas Meme Furiously

By in gender, ohferfucksake, the geist of the zeit, world football No Comments

A.G. Hamilton:

Almost everyone who read about this topic from mainstream press sources came away with the impression that the women’s teams were being treated unfairly in the World Cup despite the numbers clearly telling a different story. That’s a problem with the press, not discriminatory pay.

I shouldn’t be amazed, but somehow, as I see article after article repeating trendy nonsense about a gender pay gap in professional soccer, I manage to find a little bit of untarnished innocence deep down inside and say, “How can these hacks be so ignorant and/or dishonest?” Likewise, while watching the final yesterday, I heard the Nike “Dream with Us” commercial at halftime and was actually taken aback at the social-justice propagandizing. “Can you be the generation that ends gender inequality?” “Or will you show that champions in your sport can also look like you?” “What other maudlin, progressive, hashtag platitudes can we stick in here to make you gullible leftists forget all your reflexive, anti-corporate posturing and buy our athletic wear?” Aren’t they supposed to be at least a little subtle about it? Don’t people feel insulted by such blatant pandering? Will I ever become cynical enough to stop asking such rhetorical questions?

We Had a Close Call. Then Another One.

By in collectanea, foolosophy 3 Comments

We had a close call
I didn’t even see it, then another one
I hardly believed it at all
— Band of Horses, “The General Specific”

♫ Doo, doo, doo, lookin’ out my back ♫—WHOA!

So, yes, I was working in the garage yesterday morning when I heard such a clatter, as if a garbage truck had picked up a dumpster and dashed it against the ground in a fit of rage. Running back into the house, I met the Lady of the House coming from the opposite direction. We converged at the door to the back porch, where we saw that one of our oaken neighbors had dropped in for a visit.

We had just had solar panels installed earlier this week, and for a confused second, I thought that somehow they had come loose and gone sliding off the roof. But no, the crash I heard was the tree destroying our above-ground swimming pool. The people who built the house had installed it; it was a really nice one, with a deck custom-built around it (pretty similar to this one.) Incredibly, the deck itself was unscathed. A section of the gutter was torn off (you can see it pinned to the screen in the picture), but it just so happened to be the section that we were going to repair soon anyway. The branches fell inches short of the roof; not a single shingle was damaged. The solar panels were safe, thank goodness. It missed the propane tank by a few feet, thank goodness once more (with feeling this time!). And the pool needed some minor repairs to the plumbing, so we hadn’t even opened it this season anyway. Insurance should cover replacement value, though honestly, we probably won’t bother to replace it. A check for several thousand dollars can be far more useful in other ways than replacing a luxury item that only gets used three or four months a year anyway. All in all, we couldn’t have possibly planned it any better had we tried.

Last year, our car got totaled when a high-school girl, late for her prom pictures, tried to dart across the highway in front of us from a side road and didn’t time it well enough. We clipped her rear end and sent her into a spin, where the truck coming up in the left lane got her on the opposite front end and pushed her into the grassy median. She was shaken up, but no one was hurt. As it happened, we were looking at the possibility of some expensive engine work on that car, but the insurance payout covered everything we owed plus another thousand or so toward a new vehicle (which we bought outright). Now, as someone who has logged over a million miles in nearly thirty years of various driving/delivery careers, I despise stupid, inattentive drivers. I’ve seen countless accidents and damn-near accidents, especially on interstates, and have probably spent a week of my life, if you total up the hours, being stuck in traffic behind an accident or detouring around it. As I’ve said before, bring on the driverless cars. People are too unforgivably stupid to be trusted with them. So, as you can imagine, I was furious at the time. We could easily have been killed by some hormone-addled, airhead teenager, the avatar of all the dangerous morons I’d seen over the years tailgating people at eighty miles per hour while fiddlydicking with their stupid phones. But once I’d calmed down, I had to admit: this was clearly the best possible outcome, all things considered. We couldn’t have possibly planned it any better had we tried.

It’s a strange feeling to be grateful for disasters. It feels a bit like making cutesy noises at a wild animal that could easily decide to maul you. These near-misses turned out to be quite beneficial, but intellectually assenting to that fact calls one’s attention to the uncomfortable reminder that very little of one’s life is actually under one’s control. I’m not a religious believer, but I’m still sensitive to when a situation calls for the humble recognition of how lucky we are to have as much good fortune as we do. No amount of human brilliance or technological mastery will ever completely remove fate’s teeth and claws. For every person who happily burbles about what a blessing in disguise a disaster turned out to be, there are countless more in silent graves who couldn’t be reached for comment. Maybe one day we won’t be so fortunate anymore ourselves. All we can do is be aware, feel small, and move on — perhaps a bit more tentatively at first, but eventually, as we always do, slipping back into complacency and self-centeredness.

Thursday Throwback

By in thursday throwback No Comments

[Originally published Apr. 11, 2012.]

James W. Hall:

At this point in my life and career, I simply can’t understand or abide literary snobbery. How can anyone who loves books not take heart in seeing so many new readers huddled up with a novel? Whether it’s “Harry Potter,” “The Hunger Games” or “Infinite Jest”—does it really matter? These days, when reading fiction seems like an endangered activity, why should we begrudge the success of any book, especially one that stirs such passion with younger readers?

Sure, Katniss Everdeen might be a bit less nuanced and compelling than, say, Scout Finch, another adolescent caught in a hostile and alien world. And when it comes to a story about a character fighting for survival in the war-torn wilderness, it doesn’t quite match the haunting beauty of Charles Frazier’s “Cold Mountain.” But maybe when the millions reading “The Hunger Games” have finished the trilogy and are searching the shelves for their next foray into a dystopian universe, they will discover another great bestseller of the past, perhaps Cormac McCarthy’s “The Road” or Orwell’s “Nineteen-Eighty-Four.” You never know – it could happen.

That’s the beauty of reading for pleasure. When you turn the final page and shut the book, that heady blend of sadness and joy you feel can quickly ripen into a hunger for more. I like to think of bestsellers as a gateway drug. Once you’ve found one you love, books will forever hold a special allure. All comers welcome. No special education required.

I inherited my love of reading from my mom, who as far back as I can remember always had thousands of books, mostly new age stuff and pop fiction. The easy access to books and the regular trips to bookstores probably had more of a lasting, formative effect on my character than the particular deficiencies of the countless hack authors I read, so yeah, I tend to be one of those who are just glad when people perform a solitary, contemplative activity like reading.

But that’s about as far as I take it. Defenders of popular taste like Hall and the kitschfinder generals who take haughty exception to his argument both seem to agree on the desirability of a progressivist ideology in literature; the critics sound like martinets in their insistence that reading is a self-improvement chore, an exercise in moral instruction and empathy, an intellectual eating of vegetables, and the apologists largely agree, hesitantly raising a finger to add only that popular novels can serve as a booster seat for those whose intellectual development doesn’t yet allow them to see out into the full horizon of human potential, and as such shouldn’t be completely dismissed.

One of the commenters on the article made me laugh with his purse-lipped insistence that escapist books are not harmless, because they isolate readers from having an “authentic” human experience. I would humbly suggest to the gentleman that he is the one living in a fantasy world if he thinks superficiality, falsity and escapist desires are not omnipresent, authentic aspects of everyday life among the ham-and-eggers; perhaps he should put down the classic literature and go hang out in a shopping mall for a while if he really wants to peer into the heart of the human condition.

I’d just like to see someone point out that the majority of human beings are unreflective and dull, always have been and always will be; that even professors of literature can be inept messes in their personal lives; and that maybe just maybe we should rethink our habit of yoking together morals and aesthetics. Be sincerely glad for the presence of those whose taste completely differs from yours; they provide you with more opportunity to differentiate yourself.

Fash-Bashing

By in the cult of multi, the geist of the zeit, the great awokening 2 Comments

Brendan O’Neill:

A mob of middle-class white people beating up an Asian man in the name of challenging white supremacy – you couldn’t make it up.

And a gay Asian man at that! Homophobes will surely take note: should circumstances ever require that you pummel a homosexual with fists or weapons, make sure to yell “Fascist!” instead of “Faggot!” during the act. Not only will it not count as a hate crime, you won’t even get arrested. What a world of difference there is in two little syllables.

In the Mountains the Shortest Way Is From Peak to Peak, But For That One Must Have Long Legs

By in books, nietzsche No Comments

Emrys Westacott:

First, Nietzsche is a dazzlingly brilliant writer. In the canon of Western philosophy, only Plato is in the same league. Searing clarity, beautiful metaphors, humour, intimacy, passion: he has at his command an astonishing range of voices and tropes through which to express his ideas. Second, these ideas are unfailingly interesting. Some, no doubt, are familiar notions repackaged. Some are undoubtedly wrongheaded. But Nietzsche plies his trade self-consciously after the fashion of the Greek and Roman philosophers he knew so well. He isn’t concerned with making modest contributions to scholarly debates among academics. Rather, he goes for long walks in the mountains, thinks very hard about things, and then writes down his thoughts. Hence his remarkable originality. Third, what he thinks about, more than anything else, is life itself–how human beings live, how we think, feel, and interact, what we do with our lives, and what gives our lives value. Consequently, his works engage a much wider audience than anything likely to be produced by academics, as he writes about topics of universal interest.

Over the years, I’ve become increasingly critical of Nietzsche. His extreme elitism, which I suspect is especially appealing to arrogant young men, now seems callous. His obsession with “rank” as he analyses, compares, and evaluates the moral, spiritual, and aesthetic quality of individuals and cultures–now seems unhealthy. His political opinions are essentially pre-modern. His individualism is extreme. I’ve even grown impatient with his over-reliance on metaphor. His gift for communicating ideas with literary panache is remarkable; but quite often one is left holding an entertaining thought that defies conversion into something that can be evaluated. What is one to make, for instance, of the claim that the notion of free will was invented in order to make the spectacle of human lives more interesting to the gods?

For all that, Nietzsche remains my “desert island philosopher”–the one whose works I would choose to take with me, ahead of all others, if exiled to a desert island. Why? Because he is just so damn interesting and such a pleasure to read!

This is close to my own view on Nietzsche, though I’m not so bothered by his “pre-modern” opinions, and I appreciate his poetic flights precisely because they can’t be converted into the sorts of logical propositions that academic philosophers prefer. I have to say, though, as I get older, I’m increasingly impatient with the “for or against?” attitude one is expected to express toward “controversial” writers and thinkers, as if anyone should care how you, I, and Joe Hot Take feel about them. For every truly interesting voice, there are ten thousand others providing nothing but irrelevant commentary. Lesser minds crowd into the nimbus of illumination thrown off by a rare thinker and seek to turn it into a personal spotlight. Last week I read John Kaag’s Hiking with Nietzsche: On Becoming Who You Are — writing about hiking? Writing about Nietzsche? Writing about both together? Like peanut butter and chocolate, how can this wonderful combination disappoint? Somehow, though, it did. Thank goodness it was only a library book and I didn’t have to pay for it.

The First Thing We Do, Let’s Kill All the Cetacean Lawyers

By in animals, books, editorial vigilantism, jests japes jokes jollies No Comments

Theodore Dalrymple:

Pedants delight in error, not in truth, and fall upon it like scavengers on a carcass. I have books, pre-owned—or even pre-loved, as dealers in secondhand objects are now inclined to call them—in which pedants have underlined or scored out words containing misprints, as if the search for such misprints had been their main reason for reading them in the first place. A missing apostrophe may drive a pedant into a paroxysm of pleasurable fury. With what righteous indignation may he (I imagine pedants to be mainly male) mark the page to alert future readers to this disgraceful error!

I could probably maintain a separate blog devoted entirely to documenting the tiny errors I discover in my reading. Thankfully, this has only ever been an idle thought. Most errors are neither egregious nor entertaining enough to call attention to them. One recent exception presented itself in Wallace Kaufman’s Coming Out Of The Woods: The Solitary Life Of A Maverick Naturalist, where Kaufman refers to the “plaintiff sounds of whales” in a section about animal communication. The Onion once joked about the apocalyptic consequences for humanity of dolphins developing opposable thumbs. I don’t want to think about the sort of reparations we’ll be looking at should whales discover the legal process.

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