Eric The Blue

St Aubyn; Schopenhauer

I've been reading the Patrick Melrose novels of Edward St Aubyn, reviewed here by James Wood and here by Giles Harvey.  So far, I like them a lot, though perhaps not so much as either of these learned gentlemen.  More about that later. 

There is a passage in either the first or second installment--all of them, in order, are Never Mind, Bad News, Some Hope, Mother's Milk, and At Last (the two-word titles, as Woods observes, like curses)--wherein the narrator comments upon the audacity of beginning a book with the sentence, "There is but one truly serious philosophical question, and that is suicide."  Who did that?  Albert Camus did, in "The Myth of Sisyphus," the kind of slim, heady book favored by Patrick.  My first guess was that it had been Schopenhauer, and therefore in trying to locate it I found myself paging through his Essays and Aphorisms, noting the passages I had marked in a prior reading:

A quick test of the assertion that enjoyment outweighs pain in this world, or that they are at any rate balanced, would be to compare the feelings of an animal engaged in eating another with those of the animal being eaten.

The scenes of our life resemble pictures in rough mosaic; they are ineffective from close up, and have to be viewed from a distance if they are to seem beautiful.  That is why to attain something desired is to discover how vain it is; and why, though we live all our lives in expectation of better things, we often at the same time long regretfully for what is past.  The present, on the other hand, is regarded as something quite temporary and serving only as the road to our goal.  That is why most men discover when they look back on their life that they have the whole time been living ad interim, and are surprised to see that which they let go by so unregarded and unenjoyed was precisely their life, was precisely that in expectation of which they lived.

The art of not reading is a very important one.  It consists in not taking an interest in whatever may be engaging the attention of the general public at any particular time.  When some political or ecclesiastical pamphlet, or novel, or poem is making a great commotion, you should remember that he who writes for fools always finds a large public.-- A precondition for reading good books is not reading bad ones: for life is short.

Buying books would be a good thing if one could also buy the time to read them in: but as a rule the purchase of books is mistaken for the appropriation of their contents.

In our early youth we sit before the life that lies ahead of us like children sitting before the curtain in a theatre, in happy and tense anticipation of whatever is going to appear.  Luckily we do not know what really will appear. 

Even if Leibniz's demonstration that this is the best of all possible worlds were correct, it would still not be a vindication of divine providence.  For the Creator created not only the world, he also created possibility itself: therefore he should have created the possibility of a better world than this one.

The conviction that the world, and therefore man too, is something which really ought not to exist is in fact calculated to instil in us indulgence towards one another: for what can be expected of beings placed in such a situation as we are?  From this point of view one might indeed consider that the appropriate form of address between man and man ought to be, not monsieur, sir, but fellow sufferer, compagnon de miseres.  However strange this may sound it corresponds to the nature of the case, makes us see other men in a true light and reminds us of what are the most necessary of all things: tolerance, patience, forbearance and charity, which each of us needs and which each of us therefore owes.

It will generally be found that where the terrors of life come to outweigh the terrors of death a man will put an end to his life.  But the terrors of death offer considerable resistance: they stand like a sentinel at the exit gate.  Perhaps there is no one alive who would not already have put an end to his life if this end were something purely negative, a sudden cessation of existence.  But there is something positive in it as well: the destruction of the body.  This is a deterrent, because the body is the phenomenal form of the will to live.

Enough, perhaps, to establish Schopenhauer as a candidate for the sentence to which St Aubyn refers--although, on review, disquisitions on Schopenhauer's "pessimism" should have more qualifying footnotes.

In another vein, here is a link to a poem I think of every Memorial Day; maybe I'm not the only one who thinks all the officially approved, set sentiments for the day have the effect of glorifying obscenities.

 

Alumni notes

It's getting on toward the end of May, time not only for graduation ceremonies but also for college reunions, and therefore the mails--US Post and modern ethereal--are carrying those solicitations for information from one of the class's more earnest, officious members.  For those who fill them out, the rhetorical task is daunting: communicating your success without appearing to boast; making a favorable impression without appearing to try. 

This is the fiftieth reunion year for the class of 1962, which includes Ted Kaczynski, aka The Unabomber, who graduated that year from Harvard.  He evidently received his solicitation and filled it out.  For "occupation," he replied: "Prisoner."  Address?  "No. 04475-046, US Penitentiary--Max, P.O. Box 8500, Florence, CO."  In a section for "awards"--Harvard doesn't require its alums to cultivate an appearance of modesty--Kaczynski wrote, "Eight life sentences, issued by the United States District Court for the Eastern District of California, 1998."  He claims authorship of one publication, "Technological Slavery," published two years ago by Feral House, and indicates that he had lived in Eliot House while at Harvard.

It happens that Henry David Thoreau, a member of the Harvard class of 1837, who resembled Kaczynski in his predilection for solitary living, his distrust of technological advancement, and his contempt for received opinions, received his solicitation regarding his tenth class reunion while wintering on Walden Pond.  He did not reply till the following fall, when in response to the following questions--where and when were you born? where were you fitted for college? are you married? what is your profession or trade? what is your present employment? and what fact of general importance can you mention?--he wrote:

Dear Sir,

I confess that I have very little class spirit, and have almost forgotten that I ever spent four years at Cambridge.  That must have been in a former state of existence.  It is difficult to realize that the old routine is still kept up.  However, I will undertake at last to answer your questions as well as I can in spite of a poor memory and a defect of information.

1st then, I was born, they say, on the 12th of July 1817, on what is called the Virginia Road, in the east part of Concord.

2nd I was fitted, or rather made unfit, for College, at Concord Academy & elsewhere, mainly by myself, with the countenance of Phineas Allen, Preceptor.

3d I am not married.

4th I dont know whether mine is a profession, or a trade, or what not. It is not yet learned, and in every instance has been practised before being studied.  The mercantile part of it was begun here by myself alone.

--It is not one but legion.  I will give you some of the monster's heads.  I am a Schoolmaster--a Private Tutor, a Surveyor--a Gardener, a Farmer--a Painter, I mean a House Painter, a Carpenter, a Mason, a Day Laborer, a Pencil-Maker, a Glasspaper Maker, a Writer, and sometimes a Poetaster.  If you will act the part of Iolas, and apply a hot iron to any of these heads, I shall be greatly obliged to you.

5th My present employment is to answer such orders as may be expected from so general an advertisement as the above--that is, if I see fit, which is not always the case, for I have found out a way to live without what is commonly called employment or industry attractive or otherwise.  Indeed my steadiest employment, if such it can be called, is to keep myself at the top of my condition, and ready for whatever may turn up in heaven or on earth.  For the last two or three years I have lived in Concord woods alone, something more than a mile from any neighbor, in a house built entirely by myself.

6th I cannot think of a single general fact of any importance before or since graduating. 

He then signed "Henry D Thoreau" before adding a postscript: I beg that the Class will not consider me an object of charity, and if any of them are in want of pecuniary assistance, and will make known their case to me, I will engage to give them some advice of more worth than money.

"Advice of more worth than money"--that would be what he thought he gave the world in Walden, one of the great books of American literature.  I'm embarrassed to think how many times I had read it before it occurred to me that the careful ledgers of his expenses, set down in such exacting detail in the chapter called "Economy," are, however accurate, intended as satire.  (I know what you're interested in: money.  So here you go, have a look.)

A dim view of humanity would be another quality shared by Thoreau and the Unabomber.  Something tending toward the messianic as well.  I don't think, however, that Kaczynski would be capable of my favorite nugget from Thoreau's letter--". . . a Painter, I mean a House Painter. . . ."

Reading Leviticus

Judith Thurman says she reads the Bible--"especially Leviticus"--to prepare herself for election-year arguments. Since she's chary with the details, here's some of what she will have found.

You shall not lie with a male as with a woman; it is an abomination. (18:22)

If a man commits adultery with the wife of his neighbor, both the adulterer and the adulteress shall be put to death. (21:10)

The Lord said to Moses, "Say to the people of Israel, If a woman conceives, and bears a male child, then she shall be unclean seven days; as at the time of her menstruation, she shall be unclean.  And on the eighth day the flesh of his foreskin shall be circumcised.  Then she shall continue for thirty-three days in the blood of her purifying; she shall  not touch any hallowed thing, nor come into the sanctuary, until the days of her purifying are completed." (12:1-5)

These are the living things which you may eat among all the beasts that are on the earth.  Whatever parts the hoof and is cloven-footed and chews the cud, among the animals, you may eat. . . .  the swine, because it parts the hoof and is cloven-footed but does not chew its cud, is unclean to you.  Of their flesh you shall not eat, and their carcasses you shall not touch; they are unclean to you. (11: 2-3, 7-8)

You shall not take vengeance or bear any grudge against the sons of your own people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the Lord. (19:18)

When a stranger sojourns with you in your land, you shall not do him wrong.  The stranger who sojourns with you shall be to you as the native among you, and you shall love him as yourself; for you were strangers in the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God. (19:33-34) 

Republicans will notice that I've skipped around in order to arrange the items in descending order of import.

Mitt, his party, and the electoral college

This post, by John Cassidy, concerning the state of the presidential race, was one of the "thirty interesting things to read" that slowed me down the other day.  The most recent CBS/New York Times poll shows Romney with a slight lead--three points, which is less than the poll's margin of error--over Obama.  Cassidy wants to know how worried we should be.  For those inclined to be sanguine, his analysis indicates that, while the race is close, Romney's path to 270 electoral votes is rutted and strewn with brambles.  The basic problem, as I argued here, is that eighteen states (plus the District of Columbia), possessing 242 electoral votes, have gone for the Democratic candidate in five elections in a row--and at this point it appears that Obama has a better chance in such purplish places as Florida, Virginia, Ohio, Colorado, New Mexico, and Nevada than Romney does in any of "the blue eighteen."  That leaves Romney in the place of a poker player hoping to draw to an inside straight.

And it leaves people like me, who hate both the electoral college and the prospect of Republicans running the country, in the uncomfortable position of expecting a favor from a foe.  The flip side, however, may be that Republican support for the electoral college will wane.  For twelve years now the election of 2000, in which Al Gore defeated George Bush by more than half a million popular ballots but "lost" the election when the Supreme Court delivered Florida to Bush, has been the elephant in the room whenever the electoral college is debated.  Admitting that the candidate for whom the most voters vote should win has been too much like saying Gore, not Bush, should have been president--which is true, but it's not a conclusion allowed to Republicans.

Now, however, it's beginning to look as if the stew of geography, demographics, and the electoral college could actually work to the advantage of the Democrats.  True, one vote cast in red Wyoming weighs more than one cast in blue California--that's part of what's wrong with the electoral college. But several of the deepest-blue states--Vermont, Rhode Island, Delaware, Hawaii (not to mention the District of Columbia)--are approximately as favored by the electoral colleage as are Wyoming, Idaho, and Alaska.  Moreover, the Democratic voters in too many urban centers put too many big states out of reach for the Republicans:  New York, no way; Illinois, no way; California, no way; Pennsylvania, very difficult because of Philadelphia and Pittsburgh; Michigan, very difficult because of Detroit.  It seems to me that these facts, together with the all-or-nothing allocation of electoral votes, should make the electoral college as it currently functions so unattractive to partisan Republicans that they might want to take another look at The National Popular Vote bill. 

If it's not clear that the electoral college favors one side or the other, then it can be judged on its merits, which would be its doom.

Richard Ford in The New Yorker

If you like the short fiction of Richard Ford--and I do--then check out, at The New Yorker Blog, Jon Michaud on "Richard Ford's Fathers and Sons."  His observation concerning the number of stories announcing, in their first sentences, "fractured families and tense father-son relationships" is so simple and so right that you feel a little mad about not having noticed it yourself--like why did it take Kittredge to set out how some of the Canterbury pilgrims, in the tales they tell, are jousting with one another regarding opposing views of marriage? 

In my post on "Rock Springs," I mentioned that you can read some of Ford's stories online, and I linked to "Leaving for Kenosha."   Michaud links to three more stories--the ones whose openings he quotes to marshal an argument--although by clicking them you will come face to face with The New Yorker's subscriber wall.  My advice is to take the advice of W. C. Fields, who said he had saved a lot of time by determining always to give in immediately to temptation.  Also, by subscribing you'll be able to read Lorrie Moore's review of Canada, Ford's new novel.  The New Yorker is easily the best "general interest magazine" published in the United States.  It took me about three hours to write this post, because in trying to relocate the Michaud post on Ford I was diverted by around thirty other interesting things to read.

Richard Lugar

Richard Lugar, who was pilloried by Tea-party candidate Richard Mourdock for being "Obama's favorite Republican," was one of my favorite Republicans, too.  I formerly bestowed that honor upon Chuck Hagel, but he then left the Senate, and now Lugar, having lost a Republican primary to Mourdock, will also be gone.  It's getting harder and harder to think of a Republican holding high office who could be called, in an irony-free zone, statesmanlike.  Think of the Republican candidates for president, add in the party leadership in the Congress to get this list: Mitt Romney, Rick Perry, Michele Bachmann, Herman Cain, Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum, John Boehner, Eric Kantor, Mitch McConnell, John Kyl.  Maybe some people, grasping at straws, would name the last standard-bearer and current senator--the guy who elevated to national prominence Sarah Palin.  Good grief!

Lugar was elected to the US Senate so long ago--1976--that hardly anyone remembers his time as the boy-wonder mayor of Indianapolis.  He was first elected to that office in 1968, when he was 37, and served with distinction until his election to the Senate eight years later.  His principal achievement was "Unigov," the de facto annexation of all of Marion County into the city of Indianapolis.  This had the beneficial effect of wiping off the political map all sorts of useless boundaries that nevertheless wreak havoc with the goal of sharing burdens and creating healthy metro areas. 

Lugar reasoned that as people in Marion County prosecuted their daily routines, they kept crossing municipal boundaries without even realizing it.  For example, they might live in one suburb, shop for groceries in a second, go to church in a third, bowl in a bowling league in a fourth, and work "downtown."  It's really one metropolitan community, but the town you happen to live in is decisive for determining your tax burden.  All the different venues rely upon the property tax to provide basic services, but of course the available tax base correlates very closely to the value of the real property in the community.  Firetrucks cost whatever they cost, so a suburb in which the typical home is worth $300,000 can, compared to one in which the typical home is worth only $150,000, raise the needed funds by taxing at a lower rate.  Moreover, the pricey homes tend to filter out people most apt to use government services.  The most affluent citizens therefore tend to enjoy high service levels and low local tax rates.  Over time, it gets worse, because the people who can leave less prosperous communities do so.  Metro areas sort themselves into enclaves of prosperity and desperation.

Here in Minnesota, we have recognized the problem and tried to address it with "local aid" distributed by the state to local units of government according to excruciatingly complicated formulae.  We recently learned that if you have a budget crunch and an ambitious Republican governor, this local aid is too tempting a target.  Forty years ago, Lugar extirpated the root problem, which is the existence of all these artificial boundaries whose only real significance is to define different taxing zones within a single metropolitan area.  But it required feats of leadership and persuasion to achieve this worthy end.  After all, the quilt system has been in operation for a long time, and was working well for a lot of people. 

Since Lugar served six terms in the Senate, his political obituaries have usually glossed lightly over his mayoral career, which however was distinguished.  He achieved as mayor of Indianapolis a signature good-government reform and as a six-term Republican senator earned an F rating from both the National Rifle Association and the Gun Owners of America.  If current trends persist, he will be the last winner of the My Favorite Republican Award.

On a spring day

A beautiful spring day in Minneapolis, the first one this year in which the hum of lawn mowers in  neighborhoods seems a correlative of summer. 

I'm home from work after attending, this morning, the funeral of a work colleague of many years, someone I liked a lot.  He was a Catholic, and after the service it was a relief to walk out of the church into the sun and past the school next door where uniformed children shouted on the playground.  Inside, the median age, boosted somewhat by the two officiants, was probably 60-something.  The homily was boilerplate:  he'd said it a thousand times, and then the censer and incense--to me, not inured by frequent exposures, it seems creepy, repugnant.  In the entryway, on shelving to the side of the casket, there were pamphlets, including "What Does the Church Teach About Evolution?"  No one should care.  There were prayers for the pope and Archbishop John Nienstedt, who are not favorites of mine.  It would be easier to feel some sympathy for these guys if they ever seemed honestly perplexed about something.  But perplexity is for the fallible. They know, for it is written, and the Church teaches.

My friend was just one of countless decent and devout Roman Catholics.  I'm sure, for example, that Garry Wills is right about the nuns he has known.  But he's right about the old guys in the funny hats, too.  Here are some cartoons they wouldn't like.  Same-sex marriage and humor--two things they can't stand.  And, speaking of Wills, here is more of his good sense.

The archbishop writes

On the editorial page of today's Star Tribune newspaper, John Nienstedt, head of the Catholic Church's local subsidiary, criticizes this editorial cartoon in a letter:

I respect and appreciate the role the Star Tribune plays in fostering dialogue on the important issues of our day. While we've not always held the same opinions or seen these issues through the same lens, I know that the publishers and editors of the paper are good people who, like me, work hard to fulfill their mission with dedication and integrity.

So it's with a heavy heart that I write to express my sadness at the depiction of the Catholic Church in Steve Sack's April 30 editorial cartoon. We welcome the dialogue about these important issues, but the depiction crossed the line. Let us address our differences with courtesy, care and compassion. It's only then that we may find some common ground and understanding.

That's the whole letter.  Did the editors edit out Nienstedt's argument?  Since Jesus was silent about homosexuality and same-sex marriage, the crossed line is not the one dividing truth from falsehood.  What line was crossed?  And why is the archbishop so coy about naming it in a letter that purports to complain about it?

Here is a theory.  There is a line separating the robed old men at the top of the Catholic Church hierarchy from the rest of the human race.  Criticism may cross this line, but only if it's headed in one direction--from them, at the rest of us.  The cartoonist was headed north on a south-bound one-way. 

The invaluable Garry Wills has more on the general topic.

Driving home with our 4-year-old

This evening I was standing around with some other parents, waiting for our 4-year-olds at their "school," when they marched in from the playground with their teacher.  Catching sight of their own mom, or dad, they raced out from their single-file line and into the arms of a big person who looked a lot like them.  There are ten kids, and I honestly think that if you had lined them up opposite the parents on the first day, before I"d witnessed this scene a single time, I could have gone at least 8-for-10 matching them up. 

People have recognized since ancient times that offspring resemble their progenitors.  Of course, they were all wrong about how exactly this worked.  A close observer like Aristotle noticed that a person may resemble a distant relative more closely than a parent, and he developed the idea that heredity involved not the mechanical copying of traits but, rather, potentials and probabilities.  We now know that was a pretty wonderful insight, but, still, he was way off on some things.  He thought blood was the medium of transmission, for instance.

It's fashionable to bemoan the current sorry state of things.  I sometimes consider, for example while watching C-Span, that in 1780 there were fewer than 3 million Americans and among them were Jefferson, Franklin, Hamilton, Madison, John Adams, and George Washington.  Nowadays a manifest popinjay like Paul Ryan is regarded with awe. 

On the other hand, when President Adams's daughter had a mastectomy for her breast cancer, she was strapped to a table so that she couldn't move and given a stick to bite down on while the cutting was  done.  We've made considerable progress in science and its applications.  Meanwhile, those most apt to wail about the decline of civilization are determined that creationism be taught in science class.