Damn spiders. Why they gotta build their webs right across the jogging trails? Every time I run, I tear down spider webs the way a wrecking ball demolishes houses. Makes me feel a little guilty, in fact. God knows how many innocent spiders now have to live on the streets, homeless, after investing so much time and effort spinning their web.
But let's bring the subject back to me, shall we? I'm tired of finishing my morning run wearing a mask made from spider webs. To solve this problem, I plan to create a "spider plow," a large and heavy stick that can be worn on the head. The plow will smash through webs before they hit your face. Genius, right?
I plan to start manufacturing spider plows next week. For a mere $50, you can get in on the ground floor of this invention. Think about it...it'd be like investing in Apple right before the iPod. Or investing in McDonald's right before the Happy Meal.
Friday, October 8, 2010
Mini-Review: The Anticommunist Manifestos
For a faith born out of books—the books of Marx, to be precise—communism was never very keen on literature. Fiction, or at least fiction not devoted to the glories of the Five Year Plan, was bourgeois. So were biographies and memoirs. Political texts were subversive. In short, everything not bearing the name Marx, Lenin, or Stalin, or praising one of those three, was verboten. Small wonder, then, that books proved such a powerful counterargument to communism. In “The Anticommunist Manifestos,” John Fleming treats on four books that battled the Bolshies.
Two of the titles, “Witness” and “Darkness at Noon,” might be familiar to history-minded readers. The other two—“Out of the Night” and “I Chose Freedom”—are more obscure than the post-Wham career of Andrew Ridgely. Yet in their day, all four were widely read, widely discussed, and widely condemned by communists and fellow travelers in America and across the world.
People often assume anti-communism was an American phenomenon. The archetypal anticommunist, Joseph McCarthy, was as jingoistic as jingoes come, and the whole idea of anti-communism seems to float in a red, white, and blue haze. In reality, it was as much a global phenomenon as the ideology it fought against. “Darkness at Noon,” the chilling story of a Soviet political commissar sacrificed on the bloody altar of communism, was written by Hungarian journalist Arthur Koestler and first published in France; it dealt a near-fatal blow to the fortunes of the French Communist Party.
“Out of the Night” by Richard Krebs (published under the pseudonym Jan Valtin) and “I Chose Freedom” by Victor Kravchenko were both exposes written by Soviet defectors. Both were published in America thanks to the work of dedicated anti-communists like Isaac Don Levine and Eugene Lyons (himself an ex-communist). “I Chose Freedom” made perhaps the bigger splash. When the French communist paper Les Lettres Francaises accused Kravchenko of fabricating tales about gulags, political executions, and mass starvation, he sued them for libel—and won, after a chaotic trial brilliantly retold by Fleming.
Whittaker Chambers’s “Witness” marked the end of an era for American anti-communism. Not that Americans no longer opposed communism. But the Communist Party, which had once been so vibrant, was by that time a moldering corpse. The Alger Hiss case and
“Witness” simply interred the body. From then on, the serious battles against communism would be fought on foreign fronts. “Witness” served as a rallying cry for this coming battle. Chambers, a communist-turned conservative and an atheist-turned Quaker, warned Americans that beating the Soviets would require more than topping them in the annual production of dishwashers. Victory in this battle would require faith, faith in God and in democracy. The perpetually gloomy Chambers feared that neither would take root.
In his book—actually more a series of essays, joined under the spacious anti-communist umbrella—Fleming retells these stories with elegance, intelligence, and a slight smidgen of humor. You feel drawn back to the 1940s, the age of the Popular Front, the age when it sometimes seemed that the only thing standing between America and communism was a few hundred bound pages.
Two of the titles, “Witness” and “Darkness at Noon,” might be familiar to history-minded readers. The other two—“Out of the Night” and “I Chose Freedom”—are more obscure than the post-Wham career of Andrew Ridgely. Yet in their day, all four were widely read, widely discussed, and widely condemned by communists and fellow travelers in America and across the world.
People often assume anti-communism was an American phenomenon. The archetypal anticommunist, Joseph McCarthy, was as jingoistic as jingoes come, and the whole idea of anti-communism seems to float in a red, white, and blue haze. In reality, it was as much a global phenomenon as the ideology it fought against. “Darkness at Noon,” the chilling story of a Soviet political commissar sacrificed on the bloody altar of communism, was written by Hungarian journalist Arthur Koestler and first published in France; it dealt a near-fatal blow to the fortunes of the French Communist Party.
“Out of the Night” by Richard Krebs (published under the pseudonym Jan Valtin) and “I Chose Freedom” by Victor Kravchenko were both exposes written by Soviet defectors. Both were published in America thanks to the work of dedicated anti-communists like Isaac Don Levine and Eugene Lyons (himself an ex-communist). “I Chose Freedom” made perhaps the bigger splash. When the French communist paper Les Lettres Francaises accused Kravchenko of fabricating tales about gulags, political executions, and mass starvation, he sued them for libel—and won, after a chaotic trial brilliantly retold by Fleming.
Whittaker Chambers’s “Witness” marked the end of an era for American anti-communism. Not that Americans no longer opposed communism. But the Communist Party, which had once been so vibrant, was by that time a moldering corpse. The Alger Hiss case and
“Witness” simply interred the body. From then on, the serious battles against communism would be fought on foreign fronts. “Witness” served as a rallying cry for this coming battle. Chambers, a communist-turned conservative and an atheist-turned Quaker, warned Americans that beating the Soviets would require more than topping them in the annual production of dishwashers. Victory in this battle would require faith, faith in God and in democracy. The perpetually gloomy Chambers feared that neither would take root.
In his book—actually more a series of essays, joined under the spacious anti-communist umbrella—Fleming retells these stories with elegance, intelligence, and a slight smidgen of humor. You feel drawn back to the 1940s, the age of the Popular Front, the age when it sometimes seemed that the only thing standing between America and communism was a few hundred bound pages.
Thursday, October 7, 2010
Procra
I was going to write a witty introduction for this article, but then I decided to do it tomorrow.
Out in the Cold
Tomorrow they turn the heat on in our dorm. At long last...no more waking up with that slab-of-beef-in-a-freezer feeling. No more thawing out my socks over a bare light bulb. No more kindling a fire with pages ripped from Benedict Anderson's "Imagined Communities."
This being New Jersey, of course, the weather will probably take a turn for the scorching sometime in the next few days. We'll go from freezing to broiling in no time at all. I guess the heat could have its advantages. For instance, I'll be able to cook cheese steak hot pockets without a microwave...
This being New Jersey, of course, the weather will probably take a turn for the scorching sometime in the next few days. We'll go from freezing to broiling in no time at all. I guess the heat could have its advantages. For instance, I'll be able to cook cheese steak hot pockets without a microwave...
Wednesday, October 6, 2010
The Wheel of Time
I remember my first time reading Robert Jordan. The book was "The Wheel of Time," a chunky, compact novel whose eye-catching cover featured a man on horseback wearing what looked like samurai armor. I read it in one sitting. Then I read the next. And the next. And so on and on, until I had read enough pages of Robert Jordan to fill two good-sized Bibles and small Koran besides.
Did I like the stuff? I think I did. Though I recognized the derivative elements--might as well calls Trollocs orcs and be done with it--I liked the sweep and complexity of Jordan's world. Most of all, I liked putting myself in the story, imagining what my character would have done in this or that situation. Inevitably, I used my super powers to smash the bad guys, often in very bloody ways. My altar-ego never wound up with a girl, but that was OK. Girls were gross.
My flirtation--no, my affair--with Robert Jordan ended in the seventh book. This, as dedicated Jordainaires may recall, was when characters started traveling through the dimensional portals that inexplicably popped up everywhere. It was getting a little too weird. Plus, it was impossible to keep track of the dozens of characters without a guide. I realized this when I tried to explain the plot of the fourth book to my parents. It took me fifteen minutes alone to introduce the characters.
Now, years later, this article brought me back to those days. Though the author is right to describe the later books as "a study in inertia," it's good to relive my career slaughtering Draghkars and battling Gray Men.
Did I like the stuff? I think I did. Though I recognized the derivative elements--might as well calls Trollocs orcs and be done with it--I liked the sweep and complexity of Jordan's world. Most of all, I liked putting myself in the story, imagining what my character would have done in this or that situation. Inevitably, I used my super powers to smash the bad guys, often in very bloody ways. My altar-ego never wound up with a girl, but that was OK. Girls were gross.
My flirtation--no, my affair--with Robert Jordan ended in the seventh book. This, as dedicated Jordainaires may recall, was when characters started traveling through the dimensional portals that inexplicably popped up everywhere. It was getting a little too weird. Plus, it was impossible to keep track of the dozens of characters without a guide. I realized this when I tried to explain the plot of the fourth book to my parents. It took me fifteen minutes alone to introduce the characters.
Now, years later, this article brought me back to those days. Though the author is right to describe the later books as "a study in inertia," it's good to relive my career slaughtering Draghkars and battling Gray Men.
Mini-Review: The Politics of Rage
Artie Bremer wanted to kill Richard Nixon, only to find himself stymied by the layers of security surrounding the president. What’s a psychopath to do? Bremer was forced to set his sights lower; he picked as his target Governor George Wallace of Alabama. Upset by this turn of events, Bremer complained that shooting a governor would hardly win him the notoriety he craved. George Wallace was not just any governor. In “The Politics of Rage: George Wallace, the Origins of the New Conservatism, and the Transformation of American Politics,” Dan Carter explores how a gawky country boy became America’s most polarizing politician.
Wallace was born to campaign. Blessed with a nose for power, he made the right allies early in his career, chief among them the colorful populist James “Big Jim” Folsom. Yet their relationship eventually buckled beneath the weight of the race question. As a circuit judge, Wallace was known for his courtesy toward black lawyers and clients, but things changed when he entered the arena. After losing a gubernatorial contest to a race-baiting opponent, Wallace famously swore “I will never be outniggered again.” He was true to his word. Four years later he swept into the governor’s mansion, defeating his former mentor Folsom in a campaign flavored by the sour tang of racism.
Race meant everything to Wallace. Unlike some southern politicians, who seemed to be putting on their racism in an attempt to smuggle economic populism through the back door, Wallace could talk of nothing but “Negro inferiority.” His attitude—a combination of condescending paternalism and ugly bigotry—seems a throwback to the old days of the pre-Civil War south. But, in a classic case of being the right person at the right time, Wallace’s rhetoric found a sympathetic hearing in the 1960s, as middle-class Americans began to fear their society was breaking apart under their feet.
His first presidential campaign, a quixotic run against Lyndon Johnson in 1964, introduced him to voters outside the south—and they liked what they saw. Wallace captured a quarter of the votes in Wisconsin, another quarter in Indiana, and nearly half in Maryland. Running as the American Independence candidate in 1968, the governor won most of the Deep South but failed to achieve his goal of throwing the election into the House of Representatives. Would he have been nominated by the Democrats in 1972? An interesting question, but Bremer’s bullet paralyzed Wallace and made the question moot.
In the long, dark twilight of his career, Wallace changed his segregationist ways and begged for forgiveness. Carter does not speculate as to the sincerity of this conversion. Nor does he spend much time on it—Wallace the civil rights activist is banished to the book’s epilogue.
Though I enjoyed Carter’s book, I found plenty quibbling material. His description of “the southernization of America” in the 1960s seems more a case of “the nationalization of the south.” The South was not exporting its poisonous brand of racism; indeed, racial tolerance was rising, albeit slowly, painfully, and with a good deal of bloodshed. Which leads to my second complaint. Carter depicts Wallace voters and conservatives in general as being infected by the southern virus of racism. Yet there was a degree of social disintegration in the 1960s; there really was a rise in national crime rates. Backlash politics was fed by more than racism. Acknowledging that fact would have made this a much stronger book.
Wallace was born to campaign. Blessed with a nose for power, he made the right allies early in his career, chief among them the colorful populist James “Big Jim” Folsom. Yet their relationship eventually buckled beneath the weight of the race question. As a circuit judge, Wallace was known for his courtesy toward black lawyers and clients, but things changed when he entered the arena. After losing a gubernatorial contest to a race-baiting opponent, Wallace famously swore “I will never be outniggered again.” He was true to his word. Four years later he swept into the governor’s mansion, defeating his former mentor Folsom in a campaign flavored by the sour tang of racism.
Race meant everything to Wallace. Unlike some southern politicians, who seemed to be putting on their racism in an attempt to smuggle economic populism through the back door, Wallace could talk of nothing but “Negro inferiority.” His attitude—a combination of condescending paternalism and ugly bigotry—seems a throwback to the old days of the pre-Civil War south. But, in a classic case of being the right person at the right time, Wallace’s rhetoric found a sympathetic hearing in the 1960s, as middle-class Americans began to fear their society was breaking apart under their feet.
His first presidential campaign, a quixotic run against Lyndon Johnson in 1964, introduced him to voters outside the south—and they liked what they saw. Wallace captured a quarter of the votes in Wisconsin, another quarter in Indiana, and nearly half in Maryland. Running as the American Independence candidate in 1968, the governor won most of the Deep South but failed to achieve his goal of throwing the election into the House of Representatives. Would he have been nominated by the Democrats in 1972? An interesting question, but Bremer’s bullet paralyzed Wallace and made the question moot.
In the long, dark twilight of his career, Wallace changed his segregationist ways and begged for forgiveness. Carter does not speculate as to the sincerity of this conversion. Nor does he spend much time on it—Wallace the civil rights activist is banished to the book’s epilogue.
Though I enjoyed Carter’s book, I found plenty quibbling material. His description of “the southernization of America” in the 1960s seems more a case of “the nationalization of the south.” The South was not exporting its poisonous brand of racism; indeed, racial tolerance was rising, albeit slowly, painfully, and with a good deal of bloodshed. Which leads to my second complaint. Carter depicts Wallace voters and conservatives in general as being infected by the southern virus of racism. Yet there was a degree of social disintegration in the 1960s; there really was a rise in national crime rates. Backlash politics was fed by more than racism. Acknowledging that fact would have made this a much stronger book.
The Soul of the Game
Don't have time to watch the baseball playoffs? This handy guide has all you need in a nutshell.
Monday, October 4, 2010
The Bish
Yesterday, the mass at Princeton chapel was graced by a visit from a diocesan bishop. After mass, he stood at the front of the church, shaking hands with parishioners as they left. As I approached the bishop, I realized I had no idea how to address him. Can't call him "father"--he's been promoted beyond that title. Is "your excellency" right? What about "your grace"? "Your majesty"?
Unable to choose, I compromised. As I shook the bishop's hand, I gave him a vacant smile and grunted in a pleasant, polite way, the way you might greet a complete stranger at a wedding. The bishop looked a little of puzzled. But he probably gets stuff like that all the time. What can you expect when you wear a hat shaped like a fancy napkin?
Unable to choose, I compromised. As I shook the bishop's hand, I gave him a vacant smile and grunted in a pleasant, polite way, the way you might greet a complete stranger at a wedding. The bishop looked a little of puzzled. But he probably gets stuff like that all the time. What can you expect when you wear a hat shaped like a fancy napkin?
Mini-Reviews: Books About History
History is the neurotic science. It constantly questions itself, asking whether it has a meaning, purpose, or method. Historians write long, scholarly books arguing that long, scholarly books are useless. History also suffers an inferiority complex; it longs to have the respect given to “hard” sciences like physics, mathematics, even economics. Sometimes it all becomes too much. You want to shout “Enough! Stop the bellyaching! Get back to the archives!”
Two books—one short and casual, the other long and densely-argued—offer historians a way out of their mental bind. The first, Marc Bloch’s “The Historian’s Craft,” is as notable for its own history as for its argument. Bloch was a prominent French historian who served in the Resistance during World War II. Captured, tortured, and executed by the Nazis, Bloch made “The Historian’s Craft” his last testament. At the outset, he apologizes for his unscholarly style—his books and notes were lost during the invasion.
Bloch dismisses the notion of “history as science.” Nothing could be more ridiculous, he scoffs. His definition of history is simple: “It is the appearance of the human element.” Having defined history, he then seeks to explain its method. The historian might be compared to a big game hunter. His quarry is “the human element.” Its tracks are the documents left behind by past generations: government records, bills of sale, diaries, the junk of human existence. The historian follows these tracks and, with a bit of imagination, tries to summon up the humans who left them behind.
There are dangers in this hunt. Bloch warns that “a historical phenomenon can never be understood apart from its moment in time.” Context is everything. The historian should also take care not to explain a thing by that which came immediately before it. History, according to Bloch, is less a chain than a web, every event connected to every other event. The firing on Fort Sumter might have triggered the Civil War, for instance, but it is absurd to think the war might have been averted if the guns of Charleston had stayed silent. Most of all, Bloch believes that the historian should be accepting of ignorance. There are some thing that can never be known.
Written in a spare and elegant style, “The Hstorian’s Craft” clocks in at 197 pages. Compare that to Hayden White’s “Metahistory.” Open it and random and you stumble across a sentence like “A history might have an explanatory component, like the ‘legend’ of a map, but this component had to be relegated to a place on the periphery of the narrative itself, in the same way that the legend of the map was.” And so on for 400+ pages.
You might expect me to hate “Metahistory.” But I don’t. It core idea is so radical that it earns my respect in spite of the wordy prose that surrounds it. To summarize, White erases the line between fiction and nonfiction. We do not come by our “historical consciousness” through the careful collection of evidence. Instead, our vision of history is a “moral and aesthetic” choice. There is no “right” way to see history. There are only different ways of describing it.
Specifically, there are four ways to see history, each corresponding to a type of fiction. You can regard history as a Romance, in which mankind struggles against—but finally overcomes—its challenges. Or you can see it as a Comedy. In the Comic mode of history, everything happens for the best, and everything has a happy ending. Then there is Tragedy—the notion that man is doomed by the very forces and institutions he creates in order to survive in this world. Lastly, the Satirical view of history holds that “the more things change, the more they stay the same.” Why bother with anything? No matter what we do, in the end it comes to nothing.
Each mode has an associated ideology: Anarchist, Conservative, Radical, Liberal. And each ideology has a trope: Metonym, Synecdoche, Metaphor, and Irony. And each trope has a…you get the idea. If it seems overdeveloped, that’s because it is. White is too eager to cram everything into his four-by-four box. Still, if you can overlook references to Satirical Comedies and Ironic Tragedies, you still have a fascinating study of four great European historians (Michelet, Ranke, Tocqueville, Burckhardt) and four great philosophers of history (Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche, Croce).
I think White comes to the same conclusion as Bloch. Choose your style. Write your history. Let the philosophers worry about the meaning of it all.
Two books—one short and casual, the other long and densely-argued—offer historians a way out of their mental bind. The first, Marc Bloch’s “The Historian’s Craft,” is as notable for its own history as for its argument. Bloch was a prominent French historian who served in the Resistance during World War II. Captured, tortured, and executed by the Nazis, Bloch made “The Historian’s Craft” his last testament. At the outset, he apologizes for his unscholarly style—his books and notes were lost during the invasion.
Bloch dismisses the notion of “history as science.” Nothing could be more ridiculous, he scoffs. His definition of history is simple: “It is the appearance of the human element.” Having defined history, he then seeks to explain its method. The historian might be compared to a big game hunter. His quarry is “the human element.” Its tracks are the documents left behind by past generations: government records, bills of sale, diaries, the junk of human existence. The historian follows these tracks and, with a bit of imagination, tries to summon up the humans who left them behind.
There are dangers in this hunt. Bloch warns that “a historical phenomenon can never be understood apart from its moment in time.” Context is everything. The historian should also take care not to explain a thing by that which came immediately before it. History, according to Bloch, is less a chain than a web, every event connected to every other event. The firing on Fort Sumter might have triggered the Civil War, for instance, but it is absurd to think the war might have been averted if the guns of Charleston had stayed silent. Most of all, Bloch believes that the historian should be accepting of ignorance. There are some thing that can never be known.
Written in a spare and elegant style, “The Hstorian’s Craft” clocks in at 197 pages. Compare that to Hayden White’s “Metahistory.” Open it and random and you stumble across a sentence like “A history might have an explanatory component, like the ‘legend’ of a map, but this component had to be relegated to a place on the periphery of the narrative itself, in the same way that the legend of the map was.” And so on for 400+ pages.
You might expect me to hate “Metahistory.” But I don’t. It core idea is so radical that it earns my respect in spite of the wordy prose that surrounds it. To summarize, White erases the line between fiction and nonfiction. We do not come by our “historical consciousness” through the careful collection of evidence. Instead, our vision of history is a “moral and aesthetic” choice. There is no “right” way to see history. There are only different ways of describing it.
Specifically, there are four ways to see history, each corresponding to a type of fiction. You can regard history as a Romance, in which mankind struggles against—but finally overcomes—its challenges. Or you can see it as a Comedy. In the Comic mode of history, everything happens for the best, and everything has a happy ending. Then there is Tragedy—the notion that man is doomed by the very forces and institutions he creates in order to survive in this world. Lastly, the Satirical view of history holds that “the more things change, the more they stay the same.” Why bother with anything? No matter what we do, in the end it comes to nothing.
Each mode has an associated ideology: Anarchist, Conservative, Radical, Liberal. And each ideology has a trope: Metonym, Synecdoche, Metaphor, and Irony. And each trope has a…you get the idea. If it seems overdeveloped, that’s because it is. White is too eager to cram everything into his four-by-four box. Still, if you can overlook references to Satirical Comedies and Ironic Tragedies, you still have a fascinating study of four great European historians (Michelet, Ranke, Tocqueville, Burckhardt) and four great philosophers of history (Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche, Croce).
I think White comes to the same conclusion as Bloch. Choose your style. Write your history. Let the philosophers worry about the meaning of it all.
Sunday, October 3, 2010
Networking
Twitter is death to social activism. Or so says professional dilettante Malcolm Gladwell. He thinks the real key to social change isn't the connectivity provided by Web 2.0. Instead, you need a close-knit circle of friends. Having never inspired a revolution, not even a small and bloodless one, I do not feel qualified to comment.
Pick Vick?
Is it right to root for Michael Vick? Bill Simmons thinks so. Only one thing I would add--for the past two years it looked like the Atlanta Falcons did themselves a favor by cutting ties with their former quarterback. Everyone said Matt Ryan was a big upgrade from Vick. Now, though, "Matty Ice" has taken a step backwards, while Vick is--for the moment--hot property. So who gets the last laugh? Vick or Atlanta?
Artsy-Fartsy
Snobbish but interesting piece on "smart art," AKA "Urban Intellectual Fodder," AKA "the movies, music, and literature that appeal to New Yorker readers."
Saturday, October 2, 2010
October: A Pre-Retrospective
Ah, October! Month of Halloween, and…uh…other things, most of them Halloween-related. Month of pumpkins, candy corn, and, if you live in Detroit, arson on a scale not seen since the Dresden firebombing. We
October has a special place in my heart. My long-term project—very long-term, set for completion in the year 2159—is to create a qualitative ranking of the twelve months. For the curious, May and December are at the top, January and August at the bottom. October ranks very high on this list. Allow me to explain my method.
When I judge a month, the first thing I account for is holidays. Months with good holidays get more points. For instance, December gets more credit for Christmas than September does for Talk Like a Pirate Day. Holidays with either food or presents get extra-super bonus points, allowing November to rise in the rankings despite its weak profile.
October can boast one of the “Big Three” holidays. Granted, in my mind Halloween trails far behind Christmas and Thanksgiving. Trick-or-treating lost its appeal the year I dressed as a Star Trek redshirt. I was chased by a dog, fell into a creek, and was nearly run over five or six times. And though I concede the deliciousness of Halloween candy, can you really choose Smarties and Snickers over turkey and Christmas cookies? No. You cannot. Still…it’s a holiday where people give you free candy. That counts for a lot in my rankings.
Weather plays a big factor. Temperature extremes are a big no-no. Thus, July is dragged down the list by its sweaty, buggy nights and sauna-humid days. February has too many days that make you feel like a human popsicle. October offers a nice compromise. It might get a little nippy, but remember that this cold weather comes after the oppressive mugginess of August and the neither-hot-nor-cold wishy-washiness of September. To me, October means clear blue skies, a crisp breeze, and leaves swirling underfoot. Plus points for that.
Don’t forget sports! August really takes it in the shorts, sports-wise. All it has is Major League Baseball. Does anyone even watch baseball anymore? Aside from a couple Cubs fans, of course, hoping that this might be the year the Cubs flame out in the National League Championship Series rather than the Divisional Series. Compare this with October. The month is stuffed with sports. You have college football, the NFL, and—the one baseball event people watch—the World Series. The NBA might start in October, but I feel too lazy to check that online. So take my word for it.
Also note that October has better music than any other month except December: “Monster Mash” and the soundtrack from “The Nightmare Before Christmas.” Those beat “Alice’s Restaurant” in my book. Speaking of which, where is my book? I talk about “in my book” so often, but I’ve never even read it. Perhaps I can find it on Amazon.
In conclusion, all in all, to sum it up: October is a top-four month. For the moment. Who knows? If I walk outside tomorrow and get hit in the eye with a leaf, it might drop a few notches. We won’t know the final answer until 2159. Stay tuned!
October has a special place in my heart. My long-term project—very long-term, set for completion in the year 2159—is to create a qualitative ranking of the twelve months. For the curious, May and December are at the top, January and August at the bottom. October ranks very high on this list. Allow me to explain my method.
When I judge a month, the first thing I account for is holidays. Months with good holidays get more points. For instance, December gets more credit for Christmas than September does for Talk Like a Pirate Day. Holidays with either food or presents get extra-super bonus points, allowing November to rise in the rankings despite its weak profile.
October can boast one of the “Big Three” holidays. Granted, in my mind Halloween trails far behind Christmas and Thanksgiving. Trick-or-treating lost its appeal the year I dressed as a Star Trek redshirt. I was chased by a dog, fell into a creek, and was nearly run over five or six times. And though I concede the deliciousness of Halloween candy, can you really choose Smarties and Snickers over turkey and Christmas cookies? No. You cannot. Still…it’s a holiday where people give you free candy. That counts for a lot in my rankings.
Weather plays a big factor. Temperature extremes are a big no-no. Thus, July is dragged down the list by its sweaty, buggy nights and sauna-humid days. February has too many days that make you feel like a human popsicle. October offers a nice compromise. It might get a little nippy, but remember that this cold weather comes after the oppressive mugginess of August and the neither-hot-nor-cold wishy-washiness of September. To me, October means clear blue skies, a crisp breeze, and leaves swirling underfoot. Plus points for that.
Don’t forget sports! August really takes it in the shorts, sports-wise. All it has is Major League Baseball. Does anyone even watch baseball anymore? Aside from a couple Cubs fans, of course, hoping that this might be the year the Cubs flame out in the National League Championship Series rather than the Divisional Series. Compare this with October. The month is stuffed with sports. You have college football, the NFL, and—the one baseball event people watch—the World Series. The NBA might start in October, but I feel too lazy to check that online. So take my word for it.
Also note that October has better music than any other month except December: “Monster Mash” and the soundtrack from “The Nightmare Before Christmas.” Those beat “Alice’s Restaurant” in my book. Speaking of which, where is my book? I talk about “in my book” so often, but I’ve never even read it. Perhaps I can find it on Amazon.
In conclusion, all in all, to sum it up: October is a top-four month. For the moment. Who knows? If I walk outside tomorrow and get hit in the eye with a leaf, it might drop a few notches. We won’t know the final answer until 2159. Stay tuned!
Friday, October 1, 2010
Mini-Review: Up From Communism
No one is loved—or hated—like a convert. The receiving side hails him as a hero; the losing side hisses him as a traitor. The higher the stakes, the greater the praise and damnation, a truth born out in John P. Diggins’s “Up From Communism: Conservative Odysseys in American Intellectual History.” Diggins follows four intellectuals on their path from the Communist Party to the National Review masthead, and a very twisting path it is.
Many historians have noted the ironic fact that the brightest lights of American anti-communism began their political lives reading the Daily Worker and singing the Internationale. Norman Podhoretz, Irving Kristol, Daniel Bell, Frank Meyer, and Whittaker Chambers were all among “Stalin’s gift to anti-communism,” as such defectors were popularly known.
Four other gifts—particularly rich ones—are the subject of this book. Max Eastman was a ladykiller who, in his spare time, published highbrow titles like Marx and Lenin: The Science of Revolution. John Dos Passos authored the U.S.A. trilogy, which dripped bitter radicalism in lines like “all right we are two nations.” Will Herberg was nicknamed “the Rabbi” for his encyclopedic knowledge of Marxist texts and his mastery of debate. And James Burnham was prominent enough in the Communist Party to receive a rebuke from Trotsky himself.
What drove these men from Joe Stalin to Joe McCarthy? Stalin takes much of the blame. All four men were repulsed by his brutality; the stunning venality of the Nazi-Soviet Pact was another heavy weight in the anti-communist scale. But their conversion was more than a gut reaction. For each man, the road to the right passed through his own soul. And each found shelter in a different room within the newly built conservative household.
The journey might have been easiest for Burnham. A student of realpolitik, he had embraced hard-headed realism in books like The Machiavellians. To Burnham, power was the only thing that mattered in world affairs; not surprising, then, that he became an ardent Cold Warrior and advocate for “liberating” Eastern Europe. Max Eastman was drawn by economics. Disillusioned by communism, he became a spokesman—his enemies would say shill—for free enterprise.
Dos Passos and Herberg took more convoluted paths to the right, each traveling down many byways before reaching their destination. Dos Passos had always harbored a faint blue streak of conservatism. It was an older kind of conservatism, the kind that regarded modernity as a wasteland smelling of gasoline. The man who once declared “organization is death” found a kindred spirit not in Stalin but in Washington, Madison, and Jefferson; Dos Passos became an avid historian of the Founding Fathers. As to Herberg, he concluded that religion was all that mattered. “The Rabbi” converted to Judaism and enlisted his debating skills in God’s cause.
Diggins seems a little bemused by all this. He wonders how four men, so evidently brilliant, could wind up in thrall to a “pompous young man” named Bill Buckley. Diggins also argues that the four men suffered a sort of mental arteriosclerosis in their later years, their conservatism becoming hard and dogmatic—as if communism was a flexible faith. Still, he tells their stories well, explaining Marxian dialectics and the Niebuhrian irony with equal ease. Consider this book a gateway drug to harder varieties of conservative intellectual history.
Many historians have noted the ironic fact that the brightest lights of American anti-communism began their political lives reading the Daily Worker and singing the Internationale. Norman Podhoretz, Irving Kristol, Daniel Bell, Frank Meyer, and Whittaker Chambers were all among “Stalin’s gift to anti-communism,” as such defectors were popularly known.
Four other gifts—particularly rich ones—are the subject of this book. Max Eastman was a ladykiller who, in his spare time, published highbrow titles like Marx and Lenin: The Science of Revolution. John Dos Passos authored the U.S.A. trilogy, which dripped bitter radicalism in lines like “all right we are two nations.” Will Herberg was nicknamed “the Rabbi” for his encyclopedic knowledge of Marxist texts and his mastery of debate. And James Burnham was prominent enough in the Communist Party to receive a rebuke from Trotsky himself.
What drove these men from Joe Stalin to Joe McCarthy? Stalin takes much of the blame. All four men were repulsed by his brutality; the stunning venality of the Nazi-Soviet Pact was another heavy weight in the anti-communist scale. But their conversion was more than a gut reaction. For each man, the road to the right passed through his own soul. And each found shelter in a different room within the newly built conservative household.
The journey might have been easiest for Burnham. A student of realpolitik, he had embraced hard-headed realism in books like The Machiavellians. To Burnham, power was the only thing that mattered in world affairs; not surprising, then, that he became an ardent Cold Warrior and advocate for “liberating” Eastern Europe. Max Eastman was drawn by economics. Disillusioned by communism, he became a spokesman—his enemies would say shill—for free enterprise.
Dos Passos and Herberg took more convoluted paths to the right, each traveling down many byways before reaching their destination. Dos Passos had always harbored a faint blue streak of conservatism. It was an older kind of conservatism, the kind that regarded modernity as a wasteland smelling of gasoline. The man who once declared “organization is death” found a kindred spirit not in Stalin but in Washington, Madison, and Jefferson; Dos Passos became an avid historian of the Founding Fathers. As to Herberg, he concluded that religion was all that mattered. “The Rabbi” converted to Judaism and enlisted his debating skills in God’s cause.
Diggins seems a little bemused by all this. He wonders how four men, so evidently brilliant, could wind up in thrall to a “pompous young man” named Bill Buckley. Diggins also argues that the four men suffered a sort of mental arteriosclerosis in their later years, their conservatism becoming hard and dogmatic—as if communism was a flexible faith. Still, he tells their stories well, explaining Marxian dialectics and the Niebuhrian irony with equal ease. Consider this book a gateway drug to harder varieties of conservative intellectual history.
O, Chocinco!
This story gives new meaning to the phrase "sexy cereal." Not that the phrase had a meaning in the first place.
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