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30 September
I haven't yet seen the new issue of The Philosophers' Magazine, which is published in England and takes a while
to get across "the pond," as I think we are supposed to call it, even though it's actually an ocean.
Irony always confuses me. At the very least, it causes needless digressions.
Anyway, some of the new issue is now online, including the debut of my column for TPM, called "Omnivore."
Meanwhile, I've fallen behind on listing topics covered in my other column, Intellectual Affairs (a.k.a. "the
day job"). But the backlog is always available here. On Monday, I'll write the sixtieth IA column in eight months.....
29 September
Now, more than ever, "Tanz Mit Laibach":
We all are possessed
we all are damned
we all are crucified
we all are broken
by
attractive technology
by economics of time
by quality of life
and the philosophy of war....
we dance and we jump
we hop and we sing
we fall and rise
we give or take
American
friend and
German comrade
we dance well together
we dance to Baghdad
28 September
My appreciation to Maud Newton not just for the link but for showing what the Enquirer splash for "Bush's Booze Crisis" actually looks like.
Thanks as well to the mighty Romenesko site for this quick-hit item:
Oh yes! Exactly what a columnist wants to see -- his last name treated as somehow
at least vaguely recognizable. Key word here is "vaguely" but still....
27 September
It's common to refer to certain parts of the world as "underdeveloped." But I often think of the complimentary term created
by my homeboy C. Wright Mills, who called the United States and some other countries "overdeveloped."
And if you had to cite any single example of what overdevelopment looks like, it would have to be the
Miles Kimball (tm) combination Pizza Fork and Cutter. Holy moley! This is the sort of thing that did the Roman Empire no good, long-term.
We are all going to hell.
26 September
Lately I've had the pleasure of picking up the new paperback editions of books I wrote about roughly a year
ago, examining the blurbs....and finding that I'm not quoted.
Seeing that they've managed to wrench one line out of a negative review and are now using it to help sell
the book makes you want to take a shower. (Of course it's not objectionable when it's a favorable review --
as with the prominent blurb on the cover of Ron Aronson's book about Sartre and Camus -- but even that can still feel kind of strange.)
Right now I'm in the middle of reading quite a few new books, each of which seems to be at least five hundred pages long.
Managed to write four pieces (of very different kinds and lengths) last week. All of this in spite of having "floaters," as
they are called -- basically, thickened strands or blobs of vitreous fluid in the eyeball that cause ghostly
shadows to cross the optical field.
This is usually a sign of middle age, though in fact I've had them since my mid-twenties. (Not continuously,
that is: They dissolve after a while.)
The point of this ramble -- and yes, I do have one -- is that it's by no means certain that updating this site will be
that high a priority in coming weeks.
Between dead trees, eyeball ghosts, and legal pads, I'm probably going to be that much more reclusive. Not
to discourage you from coming back. Just don't be surprised if this site is not the festival of garrulity
it once was.
23 September
To Jim McNeill, who headed off to organize the toilers of Houston on behalf of SEIU:
When you get a minute, please drop a line (or a dime) and let us know how you are doing.
To whoever persuaded Bush to withdraw from the Kyoto Protocol:
You should rot in hell. We're trying to have a planet here. So now I have to spend the rest of my life worrying about
the weather?
21 September
Too...much...writing...Can't think of a thing to say at the moment.
For now, please check out the Recent Work page. It is woefully incomplete, but I'm too beat to do anything about that now. See also the Archive page. Lots of stuff there.
20 September
Today's column...No sooner filed than it's time to write something else.
Meanwhile, we're keeping an eye out for news about Tropical Storm Rita. (I hope nobody gets hurt, but do enjoy saying
"Tropical Storm Rita.")
18 September
Some recommended items, passed along or otherwise suggested by readers:
For more on Neue Slowenische
Kunst, check out this interview. (Thanks to the art-historical, not to say world-historical, Graham Larkin, for the link.)
The page on his edition of The Jungle contains links to my interview with him about it, which generated some interesting discussion.
There's also a listing for the behind-the-subscriber-wall version of the article about
literary realism that I did for the Chronicle last year. If you are a humble peon without the "special privileges"
the paper says it makes available to subscribers, you can access the article for free here.
Man, wish I had me some of them "special privileges"....
As it is now, it's impossible actually to get online access to a fair bit of what I wrote for the Chronicle.
For that matter, I've never actually seen the print version of my last article for them, the profile of Helen Vendler.
The text is available here, though. (A shout out to Brian at Second Story, who asked about this article.)
No special privileges at Inside Higher Ed. We're Jacobins like that. Long live the digital Republic of Letters! Celebrate the glory of Year One.
16 September
To follow up some recent references, here's something from a discussion of Laibach -- and the Neue Slowenische Kunst
movement of the early 1980s more generally -- from Ian Parker's book Slavoj Zizek: A Critical Introduction
(Pluto, 2004).
The Laibach manifesto "pitted itself against the rest of the Slovenian 'alternative culture' scene, and against the realm
of 'dissidence' as a personal free space in which individuals imagine that they are able to be distant from the party apparatus
and so free of its effects. The manifesto called for 'the principle of conscious rejection of personal tastes, judgements,
convictions,' and for 'free depersonalization, voluntary acceptance of the role of ideology.' A key strategy introduced by
Laibach -- and one taken up by the different arts projects as part of the 'retro-avant-garde' deconstruction of the claims
of the state to be socialist, progressive, and unassailable' -- was that of 'overidentification.'....
"Activists from the NSK did attend Zizek's lectures, but later insisted it was Laibach that first used the 'method' of
overidentification, and that Zizek then theorized what they did."
15 September
Thanks to Matt Christie at pas au-delà and John Holbo at The Valve (and to anyone else who might have linked) for getting out the word regarding my column on Astra Taylor's Zizek!
This is now overdue, but I would also like to express my gratitude to Ivan Tribble. You are quite a piece of work. And while we have never met, I can't help feeling as if I owe you a favor.
13 September
I'm really impressed with Astra Taylor's documentary Zizek! and hope my column about it today does the film some good.
Who knows? It probably can't hurt. I haven't seen any other press, but wouldn't be surprised if the film wins
a prize somewhere along the line.
Having written a number of profiles over the past few years, I was particularly interested in how she
put the film together. The process of listening to people, of noticing how they behave and present themselves, then
trying to sort out how those elements are related to what you know of their work and history, is not something that
gets written about nearly enough.
Of course there is a certain amount of social-science work about questions of methodology apropos interviewing. But
there's just not that much about how you go to the next phase, assembling the elements into a structure.
11 September
This just in....My review of Dancing in the Dark, the new novel by Caryl Phillips.
9 September
When a friend insisted that there is a video that cats enjoy watching, we were dubious. At no point in the
past had they shown the slightest interest in anything happening on screen, although the sound of a doorbell coming from the
TV speakers has always induced a certain degree of alarm.
Well, we borrowed said recording -- also available on DVD -- and it was a huge hit. Actually there are two films. One has spiders and insects crawling across the screen; the
other shows birds. There are sounds and, it seems, special visual frequencies incorporated into the mix that really appeal
to cats. They sit there, spellbound, watching the action.
Last week, I wrote a review, a column, and a conference paper. This week, two columns and the draft of an article. Endorsing
cat videos is all I'm up to at the moment.
8 September
As previously announced, the Thursday slot of the column will henceforth be devoted to a new book.
With any luck, this'll get some attention. Then again I always I hope that, and it pretty much never happens. No
holding of the breath this time.
Okay, back to the grind.
7 September
Really monster traffic this week, following Henry Farrell's link at Crooked Timber on Monday.
Which really drives home -- if only by negation -- something that all of us only realized following our
panel ("Can There Be a Decent Right? Critical Reflections on the Coherence of Conservatism") at the American Political Science
Association on Friday morning: Namely, that we might have gotten a large turnout had any of us made a point
of using the blogosphere actively to promote the damned thing.
As it was, we had at most 20 people. A show of hands suggested that almost none of them had heard about the panel from
our occasional "gee I'm behind on my paper"-type blog entries. Had any of us manifested the self-promotional instincts possessed
by Paris Hilton's dog, it seems possible that more seats might have been filled through a coordinated effort to do so.
What the hell.....it was a really good panel anyway. Here's the lineup. The response by Damon Linker was outstanding. I'm hoping to turn my paper into something publishable, in due course
-- with footnotes where the hand gestures towards bodies of uncited sources had been.
Had Mexican food for lunch with John Holbo afterwards. (He was still on Singapore time, so it probably wasn't lunch for him.) It was good to meet Russell Arben Fox, too.
I'm feeling a lot less like a hermit this week -- even though I'm back to my cell, now, with the skull and
the candle and whatnot.
5 September
Opening sentence of Bulletin No. 4, a statement of great importance issued by the Communist League, a recently formed American revolutionary organization:
"The Central Committee of the
Communist League, on behalf of its membership, extends its heartfelt condolences to the families of the victims of Hurricane
Katrina and its aftermath."
What it really means:
"The two other members were out of town."
4 September
"Well, motherfuckers, and that means you, fat ass Goldberg and your master, Rich Lowry, PNAC Bitch
Beinart, the racist wannabe white Malkin and the little fucktards at LGF, Bareback Andy and "Diversity" Instacracker, all
you backstabbing, fag hating uncle tom ministers, you can see Dear Leader in action. America's largest port is gone, maybe
forever, gas is $5+ a gallon and FEMA is coming. Whores come faster with old men than FEMA is getting to NOLA.
"How
did your wartime President react? Like Chiang Kai-Shek when the Yellow River flooded in 1944, with corrupt indifference.
"Bush,
the man your fever dreams built into the next Winston Churchill when he is really the live action Chauncey Gardiner, has failed
to everyone, in plain sight, without question. Rick Perry is trying to save his ass, but it ain't working. NOLA looks like
ANGOLA and that ain't flying.
"Say 9/11 changed everything now, motherfuckers. Ooops, 9/11, 9/11. 9/11. Doesn't work
anymore? Gee, maybe the sea of alligator MRE's once known as the citizens of New Orleans has something to do with that. Now
you can shut the fuck up about 9/11. Bush just proved what would happen with another 9/11. Dead Americans as far as the nose
can smell."
"In a parliamentary democracy, George W. Bush would almost certainly either have resigned by now or be on the point of
resigning. Bush and his friends and supporters tell us that they’re conservatives. Conservatism, if it has any moral
content at all, is supposed to be a political philosophy of values, of taking responsibility for one’s actions and inactions.
Not press conference spin, blame shifting and Potemkin relief efforts. This is depravity, pure and simple."
Lyrics from the Clash now coming, unbidden, to mind:
Kick over the wall 'cause government's to fall
How can you refuse
it?
Let fury have the hour, anger can be power
Don't you know that you can use it?
2 September
My review of the new book by Barbara Ehrenreich.
1 September
After a long hiatus, the column is back. Next week it really kicks into gear. I've got some good stuff lined up.
It helps to have spent a fair bit of time recently destroying paper and whatnot. For the first time in recent
memory, my desktop is actually clear of gigantic piles of notes and printouts.
And it's even possible to sit there and gaze out the (newly installed) window without having to look at a large
crack in the glass held together with masking tape.
31 August
I'm trying to work out an account of how one element of neoconservatism grew out of -- but cannot be reduced to -- a
certain debate in the early history of the Fourth International during Leon Trotsky's day.
This is hard. For one thing, people have been slinging bullshit in that vicinity for so long that it's hard to make the
point without giving off some of that odor. Secondly, I am by no means confident of hitting the right balance between stating
the obvious and being esoteric.
At the end of one round of work -- with the paper itself to be delivered on Friday, at APSA -- I find that someone has
alerted me to a bit of politics from beyond the stratosphere:
This might seem like a joke if I didn't know better. But in England some years ago, I bought the magazine and the
manifesto (one each) published by their precursor organization.
30 August
Finally got to meet Andrew Ackerman, who Ralph Luker occasionally lauds to the skies. At his Blogger profile, Andrew says: "I used to work at The Nation. Now I'm a hobo."
In fact he is no longer a hobo, having since moved on to another position in the world of ink-stained journalistic
wretchery.
I felt as if I ought to give him some guidance, but soon realized that, unfortunately, do not actually know anything. My
list of professional contacts would make a cat laugh.
In discussing music, however, I was able to give one piece of advice, which is worth repeating: If
you haven't ever heard of (let alone listened to) the Thirteenth Floor Elevators or Roky Erickson, by all means do
so. Here is a basic introduction.
29 August
August is a cruel month; glad it's almost over. (Thanks to the erudite Scott Eric "Headless" Kaufman,
though, for comments that lifted my spirits during the worst of it.)
Over the past week or so, I've sorted out a few hundred books to sell -- a process of painful decision, but necessary,
and now a done deal in any event.
Once the frenzy was already underway, I threw out about a quarter of the stuff in my filing cabinets,
and purged about three trashbags-full of notes and whatnot from my desk area.
Then I put the research materials for my book into decent order for the first time since May.
Line from Bakunin that kept me going last week: "The urge to destroy can be a creative urge."
26 August
25 August
Here at McLemee.com, we do not condone the behavior documented at StuffOnMyCat.com.
We do, however, indulge in it. Particularly with TV remote controls.
Download the image now, if, for whatever reason, you must.
24 August
I see that the Revolutionary Communist Party -- in this way, and presumably in this way only, resembling the drugstore
in our neighborhood -- is having a kind of back-to-school special.
Once again, I find myself adding the words "As Your Personal Savior" beneath my breath for some reason.
23 August
Here's a link to my piece from the Chronicle, three years ago, about a book on the early history of the synthesizer.
I just put Switched-On Bach into the CD player -- more from the feeling that this would be appropriate, somehow,
than from any desire to listen to it in particular.
Actually, this meant taking off a Hendrix album, so my nervous system was already well into a very different musical
configuration.
But it's striking how good a record this really is. First hearing it 25 years ago, I was conscious of the contrast
between the age of the music and the newness of the modality. It was always in the foreground. Now, with most of
the tracks, it has faded, and I'm less inclined to think that Glenn Gould was just being eccentric in praising the
record so much.
21 August
I've been trying to come to some understanding of what the average rank-and-file Socialist Party member would
have meant by the word "evolution," one hundred years ago. Such a person might never have read Darwin. But
the evidence strongly suggests that he or she would have read Herbert Spencer, or gotten Spencer's ideas at second. That
is, from the originator of the phrase "survival of the fittest," and of what we now think of as free-market
libertarianism.
How could I square that with the socialism of my friends from a century ago? Well, long story short,
they were also reading Ernst Haeckel (or hearing about him anyway), and mixing that in, along with other notions of what the concept implied. In other
words, "evolution" meant a patchwork of information and speculation, with politics determining how it
was articulated rather than vice versa.
The Riddle of the Universe by Haeckel was an international sensation of a bestseller one hundred
years ago. Its translator was Joseph McCabe, whose work I mentioned in this piece for IHE not long ago. McCabe is also the subject of my first Omnivore column for The Philosopher's Magazine.
Filed this a week ago, and it is going to press soon. But presumably it will take at least a few
weeks before the issue is available.
Meanwhile, Rita recently pointed out something on the cover of my copy of a pocket-sized catalog of works by Joseph
McCabe from around 1930. The words words "incest" and "brothel" are written in pencil, in handwriting that
looks very old.
There must be some explanation for this, but I'm not sure I want to know what it is.
19 August
It was a productive week, by any standard, but in all other respects a shitty one. By the time this goes up
on Friday morning, I'll have gotten four (quite different) pieces to the stage of ready-for-publication. All of
that in a period of seven days. And over the weekend, it should be possible to get one more project out of
the way.
It's been a sort of train wreck otherwise. We now have new windows -- energy efficient, soundproof, and without the cracks
in the glass of the old ones (which were probably put in during the 1940s). Our tier is the
last one in the building to get them installed, so the guys doing it are very streamlined in their method. But it's meant
days of noise, exile, having stuff in big piles, strange chemical fumes, etc. The cats had to stay elsewhere, which
pissed them off. For a couple of days, I had very little computer access at times when firm deadlines were looming.
Meanwhile, the guy next door to us is having some work done on his bathroom that has evidently required the use
of a sledgehammer, for several hours a day, for about two months. So even when things haven't been intolerable,
they've still been kind of awful. Did I mention the insomnia?
Maybe no single part of it would be that big a deal. It was the cumulative effect. Plus I've been waiting
for an important piece of news...and waiting, and waiting.
(This is by way of public apology to a couple of people for certain moments of testiness of late.)
18 August
Alfredo Perez indicates that he's had quite a large surge of traffic at Political Theory since the Tuesday column appeared. Very good to hear.
I have no idea whether the interview is getting much play on the blogs. Haven't really sent it around (too busy with
household chaos and the rush of deadlines flying past) and I don't use Technorati very often at all nowadays -- just
once or twice a month.
Among other things, it's overdue for a round of brainstorming about ways to get the column out there, to
a larger audience. In principle that is a goal, but in actuality I have a real dread at trying to
promote it -- combined with, or maybe in consequence of, a lack of ideas about how to go about doing so. (Suggestions
are welcome.)
Anyway, need to get over this aversion. It's of no benefit, which is putting it mildly.
17 August
In the column yesterday, I indulged a bit of imitation Wm. F. Buckley-ishness by using the word "alembicate."
A friend wrote to ask what it meant, and later mentioned that it wasn't in any dictionary he had at hand.
It left me halfway wondering if I'd made it up -- based on the word "alembic," which the alchemists used to use. No
doubt the same piece of equipment is still in use, but I'm not sure if it's called that nowadays.
P.S. Thanks to Adam and Ralph for linking. I'd be glad if that column -- and Political Theory Daily Review itself -- got a lot more attention. If you are in a position to link to the interview or otherwise circulate
it (there is a button to e-mail it to people) that would be much appreciated.
15 August
For the next week or so, this site may be, if not silent, at least in a state of suspended animation. (And just as the number
of visitors started climbing again....)
I'm pretty busy with work. Plus, the window-replacement project in our building has at long last, reached our place --
so things may be rather chaotic here. The cats are staying at a neighbor's place for a couple of days. I'll probably have
to take them to a psychoanalyst after that. Disruption of routine is a bad thing.
But before entering suspended animation, let me at least register my support for Belle Waring's campaign. It is time for the Republicans to deal with the puppy-blood drinkers who ( many say) are in their ranks.
It is not the time to debate the accuracy of these charges -- an evasive manuever that, after all, only distracts us
from the puppy-blood drinking, if any.
The fact that so few have stepped forward to distance themselves from this repulsive practice is a telling reminder
of what, for many of us, the Republicans will always be: a party of bizarre extremism in the defense of the
most grotesque of liberties.
12 August
I'm way behind on updating the archives of this site -- basically, its coverage ends at the close of 2003 -- and haven't
been very good lately about putting up my work from Newsday and so on.
Will try to do better, ASAP. For now, here's my recent review of A Woman in Berlin, which was also the topic of a subsequent column.
11 August
" We live in a culture where intelligence, exceptional or not, is reviled. There’s
always been this vivid streak of anti-intellectualism in America. The country’s kind of founded on it. But to the extent
that it is now? No—that’s new. It’s new even in my lifetime and, although I’m not a young person,
I’m not a hundred years old. It is lethal; there’s nothing more dangerous.
"I think television is at its root. Almost all the things that the 1950s intellectuals said about television were true.
They said it was going to end conversation, that it was going to make people stupid—all those things turned out to be
true. The thing the 1950s intellectuals could not see, however—the truest and worst thing about television—is
that the world would go inside the television set, and that TV would end reality. Television is not a form of entertainment
the way movies are, or music is. It’s not a form of entertainment at all. It is what has replaced real life."
-- Fran Lebowitz, from an interview.
Of course, she also talks about her small but regular role on Law and Order, and reveals that Toni Morrison
is a fan of the show.
10 August
I joined the Socialist Party USA during its convention in early 1982, held in a building across the street from
my dorm at the University of Texas at Austin. Actually, strictly speaking, I joined the SP-TX, which was altogether more
syndicalist than the national party, and known within it as "the guerrillas." At some point, we left the national -- not
that it made much difference either way, really.
After a couple of years, an SP friend and I became Trots and became, de facto, the "youth" in a group called
Socialist Unity (later one of the founding groups of Solidarity). We never launched a faction fight or anything. We figured
that the SP was moribund.
In fact, it's actually still around (long after my own Bolshevism has evaporated), And it seems to be doing, maybe not
brilliantly, but at about as well as can be expected.
I've just discovered this blog, run by an SP faction called the Fist and Rose Tendency, which has, arguably, the most unfortunate acronym in the history
of the American left.
9 August
No column this week....I was able to go to a movie with Rita this weekend and actually, you know, pay attention to the
screen. Right now, I'm getting various things underway for the fall. So the week is not exactly downtime. But there
is something undeniably pleasurable about knowing that no deadline is looming this week.
Except for the one at Newsday. And the one at The Philosopher's Magazine. And -- wait -- one
at Bookforum. Plus I have a paper to write for the American Political Science Association.
Oh, crap. And to think I was starting to unwind, there, for a minute.
On a more soothing note...contemplate the bookshelf spectrum via Bourgeois Nerd (who in turn got the link from somewhere else).
Kind of like that old song from the Dr. Demento show, "The Ballad of Irving (The 142nd Fastest Gun in the West)":
One hundred forty one could draw faster than he
But Irving was looking for one forty three...
7 August
It's like Christmas in July! Or August, I guess. Whatever.
Of course, the RCP line is that the Khmer Rouge were no kind of Maoists at all, really. But their audience with Mao after taking power and their patronage by at least one member of the Gang of Four
makes me think of this as kind of a distinction without a difference.
5 August
To Max Mitchell, who wrote to ask if I'm still into punk, let me reply that, yes, in the teeth of this steady advance
into middle age, I am -- though it's not all that I listen to, unlike once upon a time.
My column from yesterday was about Undeclared, the sequel (sort of) to Freaks and Geeks.
3 August
Note the link, at the end, to the FBI file on the MC5.
2 August
While working on my review of A Woman in Berlin, which ran in Newsday this weekend, I ended up reading stuff that didn't actually
go into the piece. Hence my nickname, "Mr. Efficiency."
Anyway, I decided to use some of the leftovers, after all.
Threw in some stuff from Milovan Djilas (whose The New Class bears another look for my APSA paper) -- and voila,
here's the column for today.
Maximum feasible cerebral thriftiness. That's the goal.....
Learn to use every part of the notebook, just like the Indians did the buffalo.
1 August
Two things noted over the weekend:
(1) According to an AP report, the guy picked up in Italy in connection with the most recent subway bombing in London told an investigator: "We
didn't want to kill, just sow terror."
Oh, well, in that case...Back about your business, then! Sorry for the inconvenience.
Later on the report says that they guy also denies he is a terrorist. This might fall under the heading
"unclear on the concept."
(2) It's been a long, long time since I listened to the Camper Van Beethoven album Our Beloved Revolutionary Sweetheart.
But in keeping with the recent flashback to current events from my own elementary-school era, I've noticed that
the title refers to the SLA's Tania:
Oh, my beloved revolutionary
sweetheart
I can see your newsprint face turn yellow in the gutter
It makes me sad
How I long for the days when you
came to liberate us from boredom
From driving around from five to seven in the evening
My beloved Tania,
We carry
your gun deep within our hearts
For no better reason than our lives have no meaning
And we want to be on television
The CVB album came out around the same time, coincidentally,
as the Paul Schrader film Patty Hearst, the first half of which does an extraordinary job of evoking
the claustrophobic fantasyland of SLA headquarters.
As a piece of wisdom attributed to James P.
Cannon has it: "A group of comrades sitting in a room can talk themselves into just about anything."
29 July
Counting down the days until I take the first of two (non-consecutive) weeks off from the column. It's been running for
six months now, which they say is the equivalent of two to three "internet years." I don't know about that, but it might explain
the increasing number of grey hairs.
Here's the latest column, on Rene Girard -- very much an introductory piece, but maybe there's value in doing that sort of thing. Will try to write about
him again at some point.
Also, got an early link to my review in Newsday this weekend, which will be the lead item in the books section. My sense is that A
Woman in Berlin might not get the attention that it deserves. With hindsight I regret not having done
the sort of piece that grabs the reader by the lapels and says, "Please read this. Seriously....I mean it, and am not letting
go until you agree."
27 July
Late capitalism requires the abolition of history as an undepreciated warehouse expense.
Okay, try this one instead: Late capitalism is a black box that isn't even trying to pass the Turing test anymore.
(Man, do I miss the days when I could talk about "late capitalism" without tongue in cheek.)
26 July
My wife occasionally has this dream in which she discovers that we actually have a room that we've never noticed,
which is, not surprisingly, empty.
It is not too difficult to figure out what this dream means. She tends to have it when I have enormous piles of photcopies,
magazines, musical equipment, notebooks, CDs, etc. piled up in on the kitchen table near our living room. By
the time this comes to pass, there is usually a similar pile on the coffee table.
Well, I spent a big part of the weekend clearing it up. When all else fails, there is my technique of final
resort: the one called "throw it into a box, then find a place for the box." Shoring up fragments against my
ruin....
Also, this weekend, went with her to see You and Me and Everyone We Know, which she liked, sort of, and
I found irritating, albeit in some innocuous way.
An interesting recent essay about it at N+1 suggests that it has been a big hit among people in their late twenties because its twee-ness (as it
seemed to me) somehow resolves the desire for romance with a fear of intimate relationship as mere comfort
zone.
Maybe that explains why it got such a tepid response from one couple from a somewhat older demographic. After a dozen
years of marriage, you don't worry or dream about the same things you once did. You worry about having enough boxes. You dream
about finding an empty room to stash them in.
25 July
Not long ago, I mentioned reading some books on cultural history -- in particular, on the history of social theory --
by Harry Elmer Barnes. It started as a tangent to a project now underway. But I found the books themselves interesting enough
to make reading this body of work from the 1920s-30s into part of my personal syllabus.
Anyway, I mentioned that Barnes later became a hero to parts of the extreme right for his criticism of U.S
involvement in both World Wars. Basically, he became the patron saint of the Holocaust denial crowd. The entry here
referred to him as a more or less left-wing isolationist. That characterization seemed compatible with the long account of
Barnes's arguments with others in the historical profession during the 1930s given in Peter Novick's major study of "the objectivity question" in American historiography.
I still think the books on the social sciences that Barnes published in the early part of his career are interesting
and rewarding. But it looks as if it were not quite a matter of his reputation being hijacked, after all. See, for example,
this chapter from a book by Deborah Lipstadt. Which is, in turn, posted at a Holocaust denial site from France. It is the
only version of the text available online, unfortunately.
Okay, I'm gonna go throw up now.
22 July
Word on the grapevine is that certain longtime members of this website's audience are concerned by some recent developments.
Or rather, some recent stasis.
"Why no new pictures of the cats?" they cry. "Why the neglect of Chairman Bob?"
Perhaps this is why the number of visitors is falling? I thought it had something to do with a summer lull. On the other
hand, if I've alienated the Maoist and/or cat-fancier public, that, too, would tend to explain it.
Okay now, let's see those referal stats go up, people.
21 July
The idea for today's column (or rather, the decision that I'd better go ahead with it, because it wouldn't "keep") only fell into place around
7 o'clock on Tuesday evening.
That meant writing it, marathon style, yesterday -- without a trip to the library, and with only two books by Stanley
Fish on hand.
I read a bunch of his work a while back, and the summary is accurate enough. But it would have been nice to
have time to think about how well it holds together to suggest that the literary theory is sort of counter-Enlightenment
and the constitutional ideas are vaguely legal-positivist. Can those things coexist? I dunno. Looks to
me like they do....But writing a column imposes its own rhythm and limitations, which are not those of the seminar.
Anyway, now it's urgently necessary to finish a review for Newsday. Once upon a time, I
worried about who was reading my work, and whether my so-called career would advance, and all that sort of
thing. Now there's just not that kind of leisure. It's just a constant struggle to keep from having my head explode.
20 July
Had a sort of "Patriot Act" moment at the library yesterday upon noticing that around half of the books in the pile I
was about to check out concerned the Symbionese Liberation Army.
Most of the others had to do with French literary
theory in the mid-1960s. I don't think that would have helped very much.
Thanks to the efforts of heroic librarians,
however, I have nothing to fear but fear itself.......
19 July
Over at Minor Tweaks, my erstwhile colleague Tom Bartlett (not to be confused with the prominent Elvis impersonator of
the same name) talks about how easy it is to become the kind of person who, on a weekend afternoon, finds himself creating
an army of Scott McClellan stick-figures on the computer.
Why? Because you can. We are, perhaps, what our technology makes of us.
In a note to Tom, I mentioned that it was amusing to notice the (probably accidental) stick-figure
genitalia. To this, he responded that in art there are no accidents.
For some reason, this calls to mind the bit where Martin Mull plays an excruciatingly atonal guitar solo, then
looks up at the audience and says, "That's okay.....in jazz, you can make mistakes."
17 July
Not that long ago, I read Bob Woodward's book about Deep Throat, and even wrote a review of it -- after doing a column based on some backround work done while waiting for the review copy to arrive.
Application of electrical current to some spot in my brain would probably allow me to relive the whole experience of
reading the book. But I'll be damned if I can do it otherwise. Whereas it's actually surprisingly easy to recall what Joan
Didion wrote about Woodward in an essay that I read -- what, four years ago? She said that Woodward wrote books
in which (quoting from memory, caveats apply) "measurable cerebral activity is virtually absent."
Well, that's pretty mean. At the same time, it seems like an exact description of those "Nexis-rewrite" essays
that Didion herself has been publishing in the New York Review lately. Could anybody not named "Joan Didion" publish
them anyplace so prominent?
As for my own inability to remember much about The Secret Man .... that might have something to do with trying
to juggle too many things at once. (Trying to work out a grand strategy for my column for the next few months, for example,
while also researching a book.) But it's also possible that the gray matter is just flatlining a bit.
Then again, it really wasn't that memorable a book. The guy had 30 years to write it, and this is what
he leaves to posterity? Sheesh.
15 July
I have recently acquired several books from the 1920s-'40s by Harry Elmer Barnes, such as Social Thought From
Lore to Science and Contemporary Social Theory. Not so contemporary now, of course. Yet worth reading anyway.
Barnes is peripheral to a research project I have underway. But his work is interesting in its own
right -- a series of grand synoptic efforts to create a historical overview of all of the
social sciences of the day.
Also, the cats think his books smell interesting.
Barnes later regarded World War Two as a bad thing for the United States, which pretty much ruined his
academic reputation -- or rather gave him a new one, among people not especially interested in historiography as such.
(He was a sort of left-wing isolationist, while the folks who latched onto him after his death in 1968 were not that
keen on the left-wing part, otherwise.)
Anyway, that phase is much subsequent to the period I'm studying. The problem right now is finding a place for the
new books. The "B" shelves are packed so tight that it's just not feasible. Either that or Baudrillard ends up in
exile, which, frankly, is tempting.
14 July
Today's column is about F. M. Cornford's Microcosmographia Academica, a book I've meant to write something about for a long time,
at least since Chronicle days. (Some of the material quoted near the end of the piece gave me a real flashback while
writing it, by the way.)
Well, anyway, now it's done. At this rate, I will eventually have written up every single idea that has ever crossed
my mind.
This is probably going to happen sometime around Labor Day.
There is one passage in the Micro, not quoted in the piece, that made a strong impression upon rereading
it a few days ago:
"If you find that I was right, remember that other world, within the microcosm, the silent, reasonable world, where the
only action is thought, and thought is free from fear. If you go back to it now, keeping just enough bitterness to put a pleasant
edge on your conversation, and just enough worldly wisdom to save other people's toes, you will find yourself in the best
of all company -- the company of clean, humorous intellect; and if you have a spark of imagination and try very hard to remember
what it was like to be young, there is no reason why your brains should ever get woolly or anyone should wish you out of the
way."
That's a whole big bunch of "ifs" you've got there, F.M.C. But be that as it may, I'm going to try.
13 July
At the risk of sounding like a broken record .... a risk run very frequently, in fact, for such is my nature ... please
remember that there is now the one-stop, all-you-can-read Intellectual Affairs dedicated page.
12 July
About Are You Ready to Testify (the three-disk "official bootleg" set of MC5 recordings from 1968-70) there
has been a certain amount of online whinging, particularly in regard to the sound quality. To go by the complaints,
you'd almost think it consisted of audience recordings, whereas the tapes were actually taken from the soundboard
during live shows in Detroit.
Just be grateful they are available, folks. It's got the James Brown medley, for heaven's sake. I could've stood for a
bonus disk of White Panther Party speeches, but won't belabor the point. (If that sort of thing interests you, definitely check out the Music
is Revolution CD, described here. Not something I listen to often, but interesting.
You want something to gripe about, I'll give you something to gripe about. Try this: I'm so taken with Fred Sonic Smith's
lead in "Lookin' At You" that (hoping against hope) it seems worth trying to find the tab online. And yes, Google indicates
that there is a tab -- what luck! So clicking the link, this is what I find:
e -7---7-----5---5---------
B-9---9-----7---7---------
G-9---9-----7---7---------
D-9---9-----7---7---------
A-7---7-----7---7---------
E-7---7-----5---5---------
Gee, thanks! Who'd have thought....I never could have picked out those two chords. (The second one is transcribed
wrong, of course.)
As for the lead, it looks like I'm flailing around in the key of A for a while.
9 July
A few years ago, when I finally got around to seeing All the President's Men, there was one scene in the film
that really hit home -- quite literally so.
It's the famous bit of spycraft in which Woodward signals to Deep Throat by moving a flower pot (with a red flag
on it) on his balcony of his apartment.
The scenery was more than familiar. As a matter of fact, it was visible right outside the window, as I was
watching the movie on tape. It turns out Woodward had lived in the apartment building across the courtyard from
our place (he gives the address in his new book) and that the scene in the movie was also filmed there.
Well, I had another flash of recognition last week, while working on this column and getting ready to review Woodward's book for Newsday. An article online showed the garage where
the Deep Throat meetings took place -- and it was in Rosslyn, the neighborhood where I lived upon first moving to DC.
Like most cases of synchronicity, it's a "meaningful coincidence" that isn't particularly meaningful. But for what it's
worth, there is another scene in a movie that was shot in Rosslyn at about the time Woodward was going there for his
meetings: It's one of the early scenes in The Exorcist, a long shot of Georgetown, which is right across the river.
6 July
Last week, as an experiment, I tried to launch a meme. Unfortunately this happened on Thursday, just as everybody was preparing to head off for the long weekend. So the initial
response was not that encouraging.
Now it's starting to get responses. Here is the tally so far:
More on "the McLememe" as it develops. (On reflection, that nickname does seem inevitable.)
5 July
No column today. There is no particularly interesting reason why not. I just have a bunch of stuff going on, and asked for the
day off, and got it. Kind of like a vacation, except for the "not working" part.
As reported some weeks back, the number of page views for IHE in May was huge.
Well, in June, it went up (if the math has not defeated me in this calculation) about 25 percent. And the number
of people signing up to get the daily e-mail bulletin grew slightly faster than that, even.
Encouraging news, all around. I won't give exact figures on any of this, for obvious reasons. But if,
by late summer or early fall, the site got well over a million page views per month, that wouldn't be at all surprising.
1 July
Layers of response to watching I Dream of Jeannie episodes from 1965, in 2005 (partial list):
-- Memories of show running in syndication, ca. 1975. Thought of having eagerly pliable girl
in bottle quite intriguing at age 12. This falls under the heading of "lasting appeal." Can't say "girl" now, but
still.
-- Cultural cross-reference #1: Some sense in which program gives thumbs up to as much of "the Playboy
philosophy" as broadcast television would allow, at the time. (Cf. Marcuse, "repressive desublimation.")
-- Obvious symbolic point #1: The censorious Dr. Bellow character is the supergo.
-- Obvious (snicker-making) symbolic point #2: Standards and Practices Department have anything to say about
"rubbing the bottle"?
-- Cultural cross-reference #2: In very first appearance of Jeannie, she is speaking what I guess is supposed
to be either Persian or Arabic. A few hundred years of Orientalist fantasy going on. Try (while fast forwarding through
commercials) to imagine Edward Said watching this program. Mind boggles at effort. I give up, return to vegetative
state.
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