"Whatever Happened to Modernism?"

Asks Gabriel Josipovici:

... according to one leading academic, leading contemporary British authors such as Salman Rushdie, Ian McEwan and Julian Barnes are unworthy of the accolades they receive.

In an outspoken attack, Gabriel Josipovici, the former Weidenfeld professor of comparative literature at Oxford University, condemned the work of the giants of the modern English novel as hollow. He said they were like "prep-school boys showing off" and virtually indistinguishable from one another in scope and ambition. * * *

"We are in a very fallow period," Josipovici said, calling the contemporary English novel "profoundly disappointing – a poor relation of its ground-breaking modernist forebears".

He said: "Reading Barnes, like reading so many other English writers of his generation – Martin Amis, McEwan – leaves me feeling that I and the world have been made smaller and meaner. The irony which at first made one smile, the precision of language which was at first so satisfying, the cynicism which at first was used only to puncture pretension, in the end come to seem like a terrible constriction, a fear of opening oneself up to the world.

"I wonder, though, where it came from, this petty-bourgeois uptightness, this terror of not being in control, this schoolboy desire to boast and to shock." Such faults were less generally evident in Irish, American, or continental European writing, he added.

Laurence Sterne's 18th-century novel Tristram Shandy remained more avant-garde than the so-called avant-garde today, Josipovici argued.

"An author like Salman Rushdie takes from Sterne all the tricks without recognising the darkness underneath. You feel Rushdie's just showing off rather than giving a sense of genuine exploration."

Currently a research professor at Sussex University, Josipovici hopes the criticisms – to feature in a forthcoming book, What Ever Happened to Modernism? – will spark a wide-ranging debate on the assessment of modern English literature.

While great novels deal with complex events beyond the full understanding of both the characters and the reader, too many contemporary works follow traditional plots with neat endings, he said.

Referring to graduates, like McEwan, of the University of East Anglia's famous creative writing course, Josipovici said: "They all tell stories in a way that is well crafted, but that is almost the most depressing aspect of it — a careful craft which seems to me to be hollow."

He singled out The Comfort of Strangers, McEwan's story of obsession, as easy to read but lacking "a sense of destiny, of other worlds suggested but lying beyond words", unlike that experienced through Proust or Henry James. McEwan's novel is read "to pass the time", he said.

Such novels had a "lack of vision and limited horizons".

"One finishes them and feels, 'So what?' – so very different from the gut-wrenching experience of reading Herman Melville's Bartleby or William Golding's The Inheritors," said Josipovici. * * *

Josipovici extended his criticism to one of the behemoths of modern US writing, Philip Roth.

"For all Roth's playfulness – a heavy-handed playfulness at the best of times – he never doubts the validity of what he is doing or his ability to find a language adequate to his needs. As a result, his works may be funny, they may be thought-provoking, but only as good journalism can be funny and thought-provoking."

Obviously one would want to see Josipovici's argument in his book, rather than rely on a newspaper account, but his argument seems to be that these novels lack sublimity, which he connects interestingly to literary "control" and mastery of language. The sublime is what appears beyond the ability of our thoughts and language to comprehend or describe.

I would be curious to know what Josipovici thinks of Gaddis, Pynchon, and Wallace ... and what James Wood thinks of Josipovici's criticism.

The bottom line, of course, is that the modernist has never been an award-winner. Proust, Joyce, Woolf, and even Lawrence never won the Nobel.

"Panel hits Rangel with 13 alleged ethics charges"

Rangel, however, insists that they are actually ethics commendations.

Or maybe his side of the story is, they actually tased him?

(Yahoo! News.)

Judge ordered to recuse mid-trial

Something that many attorneys have dreamed of, but just as you have to be Brad Pitt to atract an Angelina Jolie, so likewise you probably have to be Patrick Fitzgerald to have the Seventh Circuit remove your judge sua sponte during a trial:

In an extraordinary maneuver, the federal appeals court in Chicago removed a judge from an ongoing criminal trial that has been marred by disagreements between the prosecutors and the judge.

The 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals provided no explanation in its Tuesday order dismissing U.S. District Judge James Holderman from the jury trial of a man facing drug charges. The court said an opinion would be forthcoming.

The appeals court intervened after U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald took the unusual step of stopping the trial twice to ask the court to review the judge's decision to exclude critical fingerprint evidence against the defendant. * * *

Fitzgerald did not ask the appellate court to remove the judge from the case, only to find that Holderman erred in excluding the evidence.

A three-judge appellate panel ruled in Fitzgerald's favor and allowed the evidence and testimony related to the fingerprints.

However, the additional sanction of Holderman by U.S. Circuit Judges Richard Posner, Diane Sykes and Ilana Rovner stunned court watchers. The appellate court overturns rulings of Chicago federal judges all the time, but few could remember the last time a judge was removed in the middle of a trial.

"This is an extraordinary situation; it really is," said Len Cavise, a law professor at DePaul University who is a former criminal defense attorney. "Posner is one of those judges that if something happens procedurally that he doesn't like, he will take action immediately." * * *

Before the trial started July 6, Holderman excluded evidence of two fingerprints on drug packaging because the prosecutor had violated a court deadline for evidence gathering. The federal appeals court reversed the ruling, saying the exclusion was too harsh a penalty for missing a deadline.

Yet during the trial, Holderman found problems with the reliability of the same fingerprint evidence. He notified the prosecutors, prompting them to file an appeal with the appeals court July 14. Holderman responded in court papers that he had not made a final decision.

On July 22, the judge definitively excluded the evidence, leading to another trial stoppage. In the petition, Fitzgerald said Holderman had accused multiple prosecutors of lying and threatened to hold misconduct hearings. The judge fired back in court papers filed Tuesday that the government's petition contained "several deficiencies" and "false factual statements."

Looking forward to that opinion. (Via How Appealing.)

We don't love you, Pres. Funkenstein

Another Kevin Drum post on the liberals' discontents, or "funk":

Prior to 2008, what kinds of things had been on the lefty wish list? What made our hearts sing? A temporary tax cut and a one-time investment in infrastructure and energy projects? Nope. Bailing out General Motors? Nope. Financial industry reform? Nope. Before 2008, Wall Street reform was barely even on anyone's radar. It's purely a reaction to a crisis, not the culmination of a long campaign by populist liberals — and in any case the final result was watery enough that it's highly unlikely to change Wall Street in any serious way.

So that leaves healthcare reform. And watered down or not, that really is a big deal. But among big ticket items on the lefty wish list, that's it. That's all we got. And I hardly have to tell you that not every lefty is as enthusiastic about its final form as I am.

So in terms of setting liberal hearts aflutter, there's basically been just one thing — and not much hope of getting anything more for the rest of Obama's term. And to tot up against that, we've had an almost complete acquiescence to the Bush/Cheney vision of national security; an escalation of the war in Afghanistan; the reappointment of Ben Bernanke; a couple of very moderate Supreme Court picks; an obvious unwillingness to back a serious energy bill; and indefensibly slow progress in naming new appointments. All of these things can be justified individually, but if you put 'em together and weigh them against a single major piece of liberal legislation you don't get a very pretty picture. And that's the picture a lot of liberals are seeing.

Hence what Drum calls "the liberal funk." And that ain't the same as P-Funk, Da Bomb, y'all. This is the bad funk, where bad ain't good. And the source of all this bad funk is President Funkenstein.

So what's this "Thus Blogged Anderson" about, Mr. Anderson?

Via Emptywheel, news that Obama thinks you don't have shit for privacy:

The administration wants to add just four words — “electronic communication transactional records” — to a list of items that the law says the FBI may demand without a judge’s approval. Government lawyers say this category of information includes the addresses to which an Internet user sends e-mail; the times and dates e-mail was sent and received; and possibly a user’s browser history.

Wow. Just "wow."

Nietzsche contra Watson

Tyler Cowen reports that Peter Watson has a new book out on The German Genius. Perhaps by now, Watson has developed an understanding of Nietzsche less disappointing than in his claim-to-fame book The Modern Mind:

Nietzsche's concept of the "superman," the Ubermensch, lording it over the the underclass certainly sounds like evolution, the law of the jungle, with natural selection in operation as "the survival of the fittest" for the overall good of humanity, whatever its effects on certain individuals. But of course the ability to lead, to create values, to impose one's will on others, is not in and of itself what evolutionary theory meant by "the fittest." The fittest were those who reproduced most, propagating their own kind. Social Darwinists, into which class Nietzsche essentially fell, have often made this mistake.

This is the kind of thing that sends one straight to the notes, to find out where Watson got his notions about Nietzsche. Sure enough: one citation to The Will to Power (= N's notebooks as selectively edited after he went mad) and several to a secondary source (one Arthur Herman's The Idea of Decline in Western History).

Nietzsche was not a "Social Darwinist." He was not under the least mistake that there was any necessary tendency towards the evolutionary success of the "overman." Far from it. Had Watson left aside his secondary source and a book Nietzsche never published, and read just one book, Beyond Good and Evil, he would've been clearer on that. From section 203 (in the breathlessly caps-for-italics online version of the Zimmern translation):

There are few pains so grievous as to have seen, divined, or experienced how an exceptional man has missed his way and deteriorated; but he who has the rare eye for the universal danger of "man" himself DETERIORATING, he who like us has recognized the extraordinary fortuitousness which has hitherto played its game in respect to the future of mankind--a game in which neither the hand, nor even a "finger of God" has participated!--he who divines the fate that is hidden under the idiotic unwariness and blind confidence of "modern ideas," and still more under the whole of Christo-European morality--suffers from an anguish with which no other is to be compared. He sees at a glance all that could still BE MADE OUT OF MAN through a favourable accumulation and augmentation of human powers and arrangements; he knows with all the knowledge of his conviction how unexhausted man still is for the greatest possibilities, and how often in the past the type man has stood in presence of mysterious decisions and new paths: --he knows still better from his painfulest recollections on what wretched obstacles promising developments of the highest rank have hitherto usually gone to pieces, broken down, sunk, and become contemptible. The UNIVERSAL DEGENERACY OF MANKIND to the level of the "man of the future"--as idealized by the socialistic fools and shallow-pates--this degeneracy and dwarfing of man to an absolutely gregarious animal (or as they call it, to a man of "free society"), this brutalizing of man into a pigmy with equal rights and claims, is undoubtedly POSSIBLE!

Nietzsche is acutely aware that natural selection favors the herd, the "last men," for whom security and satiety is all. That is precisely why he thinks that artificial selection, the "creation of values," is essential if humankind isn't to degenerate and lose its capacity for greatness. One may disagree with Nietzsche as to the value of security and satiety; one may observe that, politically speaking, he hasn't the least clue what is to be done; but for God's sake, in an "intellectual history of the 20th century," don't confuse him with Herbert Spencer, whom Nietzsche classed with Darwin and Mill as a "respectable but mediocre Englishman." (Unfair to Darwin, but then, N. probably knew Darwin through Spencer, at best. One must remember how poor N's eyesight was by 1886; reading caused him eyestrain and headaches.)

The bookshelf

Been reading a good bit of Philip Kerr lately, especially his Bernie Gunther "Marlowe amongst the Nazis" novels. Obviously I like them enough to be on # 5 now, but I'm not sure how good they really are. The One from the Other had the best plot thus far, but Kerr is not as consistent as I'd like; Bernie gets all religious on us in A German Requiem but seems to've forgotten it in the next book. And particularly in the early ones, the Chandler wisecracks and similes seem to flow out of everyone's mouth, not just Bernie's, which gets a bit cute and misses the point of Marlowe's irony, which is part of what sets him against the rest of the world.

Also picked up his Hitler's Peace, which was well-plotted again but did not impress me with Kerr's research skills -- the first chapter has FDR making ultra-strong martinis. Uh, no: Roosevelt's 2:1 gin:vermouth recipe was notoriously nauseating.

... Robert Service, Trotsky: Not as good as his bio of Stalin, this book manages to be rather foggy about just what Trotsky did, and didn't. His collaboration in Lenin's use of terror is more assumed than discussed, and Service seems to have to strain a bit to let us know how bad a fellow Trotsky was. The book mainly left me wishing for a strong narrative account of the Soviet government's 1920s; how Stalin came out on top is a story worth telling well.


... Not sure how I forgot Peter Lyon, Eisenhower: Portrait of the Hero, a left-leaning bio covering both the Army and the White House, which makes it the only reliable full-length, full-dress Eisenhower bio now that Ambrose is more or less discredited. Lyon is more discursive than most biographers these days (the book's from 1974), but his judgment is good and he gives a fair-minded, bemused appreciation of Eisenhower's hits and misses.

Tory Blogged Anderson

Really, I keep looking at the new UK government covetously, like "I wish *I* had a government that talked like that." Latest instance, David Cameron in Turkey:

The Israeli attack on the Gaza flotilla was completely unacceptable. And I have told PM Netanyahu, we will expect the Israeli inquiry to be swift, transparent and rigorous. Let me also be clear that the situation in Gaza has to change. Humanitarian goods and people must flow in both directions. Gaza cannot and must not be allowed to remain a prison camp.

Then there's the fact that the Brits are actually using the occasion of a change of government to investigate how the Iraq war was promoted ... not to mention a torture inquiry.

The Dems are not even practicing good politics. All this seems likely to help keep Labour on the defensive, whereas by ruling out such proceedings up front, Obama has helped keep the GOP on offense against him.

... We must add that, even tho they won despite it, the Tories' "Cameron photo + text" poster should be a textbook example of how not to advertise in the Photoshop era.

The most influential Mississippian of the 20th century?

My money would be on Fox Conner:

Fox Conner (November 2, 1874-October 13, 1951) was a major general of the United States Army. He served as operations officer for the American Expeditionary Force during World War I, but is best remembered as "the man who made Eisenhower". * * *

Conner's most lasting contribution was his mentorship of a young Army officer named Dwight Eisenhower. Conner first met Eisenhower in 1919 at the Infantry Tank School at Camp Meade and the two men immediately developed a great mutual respect. When Conner took command of the 20th Infantry Brigade in Panama, he invited Eisenhower to join his staff. For three years, Conner instituted a systematic course of study for Eisenhower that ranged from extensive readings in military history to daily practical experience writing field orders for every aspect of the command. Finally, Conner pulled strings to get his protege admitted to the Command and Staff School at Fort Leavenworth, where Eisenhower graduated first in his class thanks in no small part to his comprehensive Panamanian tutelage.

IIRC, Conner met Eisenhower over dinner at George Patton's house.

It's of course possible that Eisenhower's talents would have been noticed otherwise, but I tend to doubt it; the Army's main use for Ike at that time seemed to be as a football coach. Would George Marshall have ended up commanding SHAEF? Would Taft have been the GOP nominee in 1952? Would Stevenson have won?

... I'm not sure whether Conner was "from" Slate Springs, which is on Hwy. 9 at the south edge of Calhoun County. I recall driving back from a hearing in Calhoun City and seeing a historical marker to Conner, but it seems to me I was driving to Grenada so it wouldn't have been so far south as Slate Springs. I will have to take a picture of the marker when I'm up that way again.

Against self-conscious self-consciousness

Geertz has encouraged a whole generation of anthropologists to parade their real or invented inner qualms and paralysis .... They agonize so much about their inability to know themselves and the Other, at any level of regress, that they no longer need to trouble themselves too much about the Other .... Why waste too much time in the physical discomfort of the fieldwork situation? [C]ognitive impotence and angoisse can be felt just as well in Paris as in the Middle Atlas. Better, really.

-- Ernest Gellner.

Ex-MI5 chief's testimony on Iraq war

The recent head of the UK's Security Service has been testifying about her office's evaluation of terrorism and Iraq.

[Q. * * *] Can I just ask one final question, which is related to the things that Iraqis might have done, and this refers to the proposition that Saddam's regime were in some way responsible for providing support, potential support to Al-Qaeda, and even might have been involved in 9/11. Did you give any credence to these sorts of assessments?

BARONESS MANNINGHAM-BULLER: No. I think you have material suggesting that there had been intelligence on occasional contact in the past but I think -- I wrote this down when I was preparing for today -- there was no credible intelligence to suggest that connection and that was the judgment, I might say, of the CIA. It was not a judgment that found favour with some parts of the American machine, as you have also heard evidence on, which is why Donald Rumsfeld started an intelligence unit in the Pentagon to seek an alternative judgment. But there were tiny scraps suggesting contact, usually when Saddam Hussein felt under threat, and the danger was that those tiny scraps of intelligence were given an importance and weight by some which they did not bear. So to my mind Iraq, Saddam Hussein, had nothing to do with 9/11 and I have never seen anything to make me change my mind.

SIR LAWRENCE FREEDMAN: Were you given sight of some of the material produced by the Pentagon?

BARONESS MANNINGHAM-BULLER: I don't think I was. Probably a good thing; it would have made me cross.

Via Ricks, who also gives us this bit:

Lady M-B also mentioned that she went to see Paul Wolfowitz once to tell him that disbanding the Iraqi army and banning Baathists from public life was a mistake:

"SIR RODERIC LYNE: But you didn't convert him?

BARONESS MANNINGHAM-BULLER: Not a hope."

Snark aside, perhaps the most telling testimony is this:

Now, how significant in your view a factor was Iraq compared with other situations that were used by extremists, terrorists, to justify their actions?

BARONESS MANNINGHAM-BULLER: I think it is highly significant and the JIC assessments that I have reminded myself of say that.

By 2003/2004 we were receiving an increasing number of leads to terrorist activity from within the UK and the -- our involvement in Iraq radicalised, for want of a better word, a whole generation of young people, some British citizens -- not a whole generation, a few among a generation -- who were -- saw our involvement in Iraq, on top of our involvement in Afghanistan, as being an attack on Islam.

So although the media has suggested that in July 2005, the attacks on 7/7, that we were surprised these were British citizens, that is not the case because really there had been an increasing number of British-born individuals living and brought up in this country, some of them third generation, who were attracted to the ideology of Osama bin Laden and saw the west's activities in Iraq and Afghanistan as threatening their fellow religionists and the Muslim world.

Were they entirely wrong? Given the obviously trumped up nature of the Iraq war, foreigners could be forgiven for assuming that the stated reasons were false, which left lots of room for the true reasons.

We do pretty pretty good

Jon Chait notes that, for Title IX purposes at least, (one district court has held that) cheerleading isn't a "sport."

TBA would not mention this controversy, were it not that Chait has a photo of a cheerleading squad with his post. That of Hinds Community College, to be exact.

Let Mississippi revel in its national recognition!

But baby, they think it's you

In the wake of the Shirley Sherrod debacle, Kevin Drum finds himself unable to imagine the conservative mindset, or heartset:

On an intellectual level, I can sort of get this. If I were a conservative Christian I'd be unhappy with the increasing secularization of society and the 60s-era Supreme Court decisions that largely removed it from the public square. If I were a white guy stuck in a sucky job and heard stories of blacks being given preference in promotions and school placements, I'd be pissed. If I were socially traditional and my school district insisted on a curriculum that endorsed tolerance of gay lifestyles, I'd be horrified. If I only heard the Fox News version of Climategate, it would seem like truly terrifying proof of a massive global conspiracy and fraud.

But on an emotional level, it just seems nuts. So I wish that I could figure out a way to feel it. To understand it. I wish I could somehow do the "Black Like Me" thing. (Explanation here if you're too young to remember this.) But how? What would it take to somehow enter this world and actually try to feel what so many conservatives apparently feel? Since I almost totally lack empathy I probably couldn't do it in any case, but could anyone? What would it take to truly understand what's going on here? Because, if anything, it seems to be getting even more virulent and I find myself increasingly unable to understand it.

I don't know why I'm writing this. I'm just feeling increasingly estranged from the political world these days, as if it's some kind of nightmare that's taken over our national psyche and refuses to let go — and I'm forced to participate and can't wake up no matter how hard I try.

I wonder if some gifted novelist, without descending into satire (very difficult to avoid), has managed to depict what it *feels* like to be a Palinite.

... Of course, being a liberal, Drum titles his post "My Empathy Problem." Had he been a conservative writing from the opposite angle, it would've been "Liberals Make No Sense Whatsoever." We on the left always blame ourselves first.

(Blog title per the undeservedly obscure Brenda Kahn: "You maybe think the world's gone mad / But baby, they think it's you." I have occasion to recall that line at least once a week.)

The decline and fall of America (a continuing series)

At some point, Rome no longer could maintain its roads and aqueducts, due in part to a declining tax base and the decay of central authority. Fast forward:

Paved roads, historical emblems of American achievement, are being torn up across rural America and replaced with gravel or other rough surfaces as counties struggle with tight budgets and dwindling state and federal revenue. State money for local roads was cut in many places amid budget shortfalls.

In Michigan, at least 38 of the 83 counties have converted some asphalt roads to gravel in recent years. Last year, South Dakota turned at least 100 miles of asphalt road surfaces to gravel. Counties in Alabama and Pennsylvania have begun downgrading asphalt roads to cheaper chip-and-seal road, also known as "poor man's pavement." Some counties in Ohio are simply letting roads erode to gravel.

The moves have angered some residents because of the choking dust and windshield-cracking stones that gravel roads can kick up, not to mention the jarring "washboard" effect of driving on rutted gravel.

But higher taxes for road maintenance are equally unpopular. In June, Stutsman County residents rejected a measure that would have generated more money for roads by increasing property and sales taxes.

"I'd rather my kids drive on a gravel road than stick them with a big tax bill," said Bob Baumann, as he sipped a bottle of Coors Light at the Sportsman's Bar Café and Gas in Spiritwood. * * *

Judy Graves of Ypsilanti, N.D., voted against the measure to raise taxes for roads. But she says she and others nonetheless wrote to Gov. John Hoeven and asked him to stop Old 10 from being ground up because it still carries traffic to a Cargill Inc. malting plant. She says the county has mismanaged its finances and badly neglected roads.

Barbarians, Tea Partiers, whatever. (H/t LGM.)

Because it's not like you read the Onion yourself

WASHINGTON—Barack Obama stands alone in the ruins of what was once his living room, calling out in vain for a dog that never comes. Less than 36 hours ago, his house stood proudly intact. But the violent tornado that tore through the region late Sunday night upended everything in an instant, scattering his belongings and leaving his family homeless and helpless.

"My God, just look at this," the 48-year-old government employee said as he surveyed the splintered furniture and mangled chandeliers that littered the 18-acre property. "Everything is gone. Our clothes, our family photos, the federal budget for fiscal year 2011—it's all gone."

Added Obama, "This was our dream home." * * *

While the Obamas acknowledge that regrouping from such a devastating tragedy will be a long and difficult process, they are drawing strength from the overwhelming outpouring of support and generous donations they have received from friends, neighbors, and lobbyists.

"When I heard the bad news, I figured I'd swing over with a few longnecks for Barry and some intimates for Michelle," said Joe Biden, one of Barack Obama's coworkers, referring to the six-pack of Budweiser and assortment of women's underwear and negligee that he hand-delivered to the family Monday evening. "Hope she's a size 10. Sure looks like a 10."

-- "Local Family Homeless After Tornado Destroys White House." The photo of Biden is really not to be missed.