LINK: I see via Dead Flowers that The Verve have come to their senses and reunited. British law, so far as I recall, requires all bands working in the genre of popular music to have a long-standing creative tension between their singer and lead guitarist (this is also known as "Johnny Marr's Law").* Recently, I've come to the opinion that the standard Verve narrative is incorrect: A Northern Soul is really their most exemplary moment--Nick McCabe's contributions run about equal to Richard Ashcroft's (Urban Hymns, while a great record from the Third Wave of Britpop, is more of a Ashcroft solo album featuring McCabe).

Nevertheless, The Verve demos from Urban Hymns? Awesome.

*Seriously: Ian Brown and John Squire, Brett Anderson and Bernard Butler, Liam and Noel Gallagher, Damon Albarn and Graham Coxon, Jarvis Cocker and Russell Senior. Exceptions certainly exist (Spiritualized comes to mind), but Britain either has really lazy music writers, or a lot of creative tension.

NOTE TO: Stylus' Dave Micevic, on his entry of The Third Man at #4 on the Top Ten Chase Scenes, concluding thus:

"The scene isn't about whether Lime lives or dies, however, but serves as a means to prolong his struggle as a way of further damning the betrayal of Martins. By the end, we understand exactly why, in the closing scene of the film, Anna determinedly walks past a penitent Holly without so much as a casual glance."

Harry Lime is the bad guy. Dude sold stolen, watered-down penecillin. The point is that Martins finally realizes he has to do the right thing, and not just defend his friend and the girl he wants to get with; it's not a betrayal unless you have a really odd sense of when loyalty is called for.

LINKS:

*Jacob Levy on, among other things, ethics and virtue (there was a longer post planned on this one, saying a bit more about Grotius' rejection of virtue as a way of talking about morality in political life, but it got hung up on the question of whether the aim towards a goal on the part of an individual is the central feature of virtue, and exactly how integral Aristotle's distinction between the virtuous action and the action done virtuously is to a definition of virtue. Stupid Aristotle)

*Norm Geras on Mansfield Park. It's at times like this that I wish the internet could produce that great quote from Metropolitan about Fanny Price. Stupid internet.

*An interesting post on The Satanic Verses

REAL IM CONVERSATIONS: Becky, about ten minutes ago:

Becky: okay.... why is the internet (including yourself) so obsessed with the Mitt Romney dog on the car roof story?
Becky: i love animals more than the average person, but i totally don't get it
Nick: well, I wouldn't say I'm 'obsessed'
Becky: no, but the internet is
Becky: and you're part of it
Nick: fair enough

LINK: I can only presume the commenters here are engaging in some kind of postmodern meta-irony that, southern yokel I am, I lack the capability to understand. Some of the positions adopted by animal rights activists appear strange to me (in a way that the Genesis account of human responsibility and accountability for the treatment of animals does not), but there's no good reason to stick your dog on the roof of your car. Alex Massie's point about "non-trivial character indicators" is well-taken; the best I could say is that it shows a worrisome ignorance; it's no stretch to describe it as sadistic.

And the general point is valid, too: not that big failings don't matter, but it is easy in the course of normal life to put in sufficient effort to look morally good wherever failure would be obvious. As a gentleman I know who has counseled couples looking to get married pointed out to me a few days ago, anyone who's been in a relationship, even up to the point of marriage, knows something of what it means to manage appearances; so much more would I expect it from someone whose professional life requires that they cultivate the image of responsibility. The small things can be awfully telling.

(this is not to say, of course, that there's no need for interpretive charity when judging others: the balance between the two is a matter of some art. But c'mon: the guy tied his dog to the roof of his car. Man's got some 'slpainin' to do)

LINK: The appropriate word for the first day of the new The American Scene is 'explosion.'* Or perhaps 'cornucopia.' Possibly 'insane.' This one, however, is brilliant:

"If the show was called Everbody Pisses Off Christopher Hitchens it could then immediately be changed to E.P.O.C.H., the name (not coincidentally) of the semi-secret correspondents' cabal revealed in the episode described ("'Kingsley, Amiss,' or 'Our Manthing in Tijuana'")."


* as 'comma, of posts'

WHAT DANTE MEANS TO ME I: Lactantius predates Dante by, oh, a thousand years or so, but anticipates well the opening of the Commedia:

"Many cling stubbornly to vain superstitions and harden themselves against plain truth; they do no favor to the religions they assert and even less favor to themselves. They have the straight path and yet they go a roundabout, devious course, abandoning the obvious line and tumbling over the edge; they shun the light, and collapse blind and enfeebled in darkness. They need advice, to cease the fight against themselves and to will their tardy release from long-standing error; if they eventually come to see why they were born, they will do so anyway."

-Diuinae Institutiones, 1.1.23-24


I am coming to Dante again now, as part of a reading group with a couple of my friends. It will be my fourth extended period with him: the Inferno was, somehow, the first thing I read when I decided I wanted to try to master world literature (and so my experience with Dante predates even my experience with Eliot). I broke down, then, somewhere towards the beginning of the Purgutorio, feeling the theology to be too 'Catholic' for my tastes. The second time was in college, perhaps best remembered for being half the occasion to meet one of my favorite people (hi Dara!). It was also when various parts of the Commedia leapt out at me--Oderisi's speech in Purgutorio XI, Gregory smiling at his mistake, my first exposure to Anselm and Aquinas in the explanation of Christ's sacrifice. That reading affirmed my sense of the work not being so much epic as total: Dante's mind was one that could somehow hold absolutely everything. The third reading, admittedly a minor effort, was, as I recollect, at the beginning of my second year of grad school.

And so I come to it again. I recognize now I am better equipped to make something of it--I know more of the relevant political history, I have some familiarity with the theological debates of the time (thank you, In the Name of the Rose), and my Latin and residual knowledge of Spanish allow me to follow--if haltingly--Dante's Italian, to appreciate the significance of the poetic acheievement. Eliot's judgment here is right--I can think of very few other works of literature where I can say the writer said exactly what he wished with every word--and it could not be any other way with terza rima over such a extensive subject matter. And I think I am better prepared to read and interpret the text--to watch the use of 'love,' 'hope,' and particularly 'fear' in the first five cantos and see the work each is called upon to do.

But this is simply extended confessional autobiography. What does Dante mean to me? I happened to think this time around of the first canto--where Dante finds himself lost in the middle of the wood, no idea how he ended up there, aware he emerged (he knows not how) from someplace bad, unable to push ahead as he knows he should. A lot of commentary has been devoted to what the three creatures he encounters are meant to represent, what or who the greyhound is supposed to be--but a parallel to Joyce's Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man seems apposite here: we can make no sense of the images presented to us as readers because they make no sense to Dante as the protagonist. I think here of Mark 8:24--we only see the outlines--men as trees, and it takes advice and guidance for Dante, and ourselves, to see anything else.

Dante means something, I think, because he comes to guide the reader, but as one who has failed in ordering his own life. As Virgil says to him:

"But you, why do you return to so much suffering?
why do you not climb the delightful mountain
that is the origin and cause of all joy?" (1.76-78)

Excellent question. Who hasn't ever asked themselves that? "Look, the solution's right there in front of you! Why can't you just do it?" But there's an understanding, an experience that comes from taking the longer way; it would be easiest to just be a good person, and do what you're supposed to, and always be beautiful and perfect to everyone you encounter; but in the other way, ah, there's the beatific vision.

And then:

"I am not Aeneas, I am not Paul
neither I nor others believe me worthy of that" (2.32-33)

This is odd, coming from the man who will, two cantos on, place himself alongside Homer and Horace as one of the eminent poets of all time, and will boast, further on, to be producing metamorphoses that surpass anything Ovid did. But I think the moment is genuine here, not merely rhetorical. He is a man who has been called to to great things, and as he does them, he doesn't hesitate to name them. But the moment here is of reflection: that someone could match Homer, or surpass Ovid, is not difficult to imagine, but why should that person be I, Dante?

There's more text, there will be much more to say (unfortunately or to the good, as it goes), but hopefully this serves as a starting point.

LINKS:

*I generally disagree with the positions John Quiggin takes, but this is brilliant:

"WHAT DO WE WANT? A REASONABLE COMPROMISE !
WHEN DO WE WANT IT? IN! DUE! COURSE!"

The comments are also amusing

*Summer Jamz week at Stylus. Be happy.

*Megan McArdle, cracking me up.

LINK FOR THE EVENING: Much better than I expected: Woody Allen's "The Whore of Mensa"

LINK: Suggested in the comments below, from the best Beck album:



(though I always liked "The Golden Age", or "Guess I'm Doing Fine" a little better. Also "Paper Tiger")

QUOTE FOR THE EVENING: In my ongoing task of acquiring a knowledge of the rudiments of literary culture, I have found myself turning to the lesser works of F. Scott Fitzgerald. Perhaps it's because I've found myself thinking of Princeton more than usual of late (and given that the usual is close to never, I find this plausible); perhaps it's because I've had the realization in the past week or two that I no longer hold the position I used to take for the, er, joy of enraging the sort of people who get worked up over literary questions ('20th century literature sucks'), and in fact find in early-20th century American literature an idiom and stylistic approach that is both useful and interesting to me.

Anyway, long story short: you'd never know it from The Great Gatsby, but this Fitzgerald guy is all kinds of funny. I had a conversation with a friend a week or so ago, where I suggested that we're generally raised to believe that the worth of something is measured by how hard it is. But my experience has led me to think that sometimes giving up really is the smartest thing to do--character-building and masochism run together at some point, and hopefully one of the lessons of maturity is to figure out how to keep cases of the former, and get rid of the latter. So I was particularly entertained to read it said much better than I ever could, in "How to Waste Material:"

"It is here that these confessions tie up with a general problem as well as with those peculiar to the writer. The decision as to when to quit, as to when one is merely floundering around and causing other people trouble, has to be made frequently in a lifetime. In youth we are taught the rather simple rule never to quit, because we are presumably following programmes made by people wiser than ourselves. My own conclusion is that when one has embarked on a course that grows increasingly doubtful and one feels the vital forces beginning to be used up, it is best to ask advice if decent advice is in range. Columbus didn't and Lindbergh couldn't. So my statement at first seems heretical to the idea that it is pleasantest to live with--the idea of heroism. But I make a sharp division between one's professional life, when after a short period of apprenticeship not more than ten per-cent of advice is worth a hoot, and one's private and worldly life, where almost anyone's judgment is better than one's own."

MUSIC-RELATED LINKS: Because the last few days have been particularly good that way:

*Via Norm, I see this collection of overrated albums. It's a little silly, an excuse for musicians to complain about things they generally don't like. Alex Kapranos of the seminal rock group Franz Ferdinand tries to take down Television by pointing out:

"Really, though, they're a band who give guys who like 20-minute guitar solos an excuse. They were the Grateful Dead of punk, and I always hated all that jam-band stuff. They have the ethos of a jam-band but the aesthetic of a New York outfit."

Unsurprisingly, a band that makes no secret of liking the Grateful Dead will occasionally sound a bit like them (if by 'a bit' you mean 'not at all, unless Grateful Dead just means 'long guitar solo' to you'), and I, at least, am prepared to argue that what made American punk between 1975-1977 so very interesting was how it went to a number of un-punk sources for inspiration. I do agree with the guy from Scritti Politti taking down the Arcade Fire, however: if you look at how those songs are constructed, they rely on the same few basic tricks over and over again. Affecting, sure, but not exactly groundbreaking. Norm also uses the occasion of this article to express his disinterest in the Stone Roses and Nick Drake. I can take or leave the latter's first and last albums, but Bryter Layter is almost perfect, front to back.

*Stylus takes on the Blur v. Oasis dilemma. Normally, I would have little hope for the exercise, but Stylus found an ingenious way out: assign someone to write the article who appears to not particularly like either band. That's how you get brilliance like this, in the "Self-Started Record Label" category:

"After Creation Records folded in 1999, the Gallaghers set up Big Brother Recordings to handle their releases in the UK. The first release on this label was “Go Let It Out,” and all Oasis recordings since have been through Big Brother. This means, in terms of average quality, Big Brother is the second worst record label ever. There are two non-Oasis releases on the label. One, “Playground Superstar,” a Happy Mondays single that you have never heard. Two, the soundtrack to Goal!, a movie that features TITUS BRAMBLE. And after that display of big power from “Bomber Bramble,” they still cast Daniel Craig as Bond. Fools.

Graham Coxon also released his solo material originally through his vanity label, Transcopic. Thankfully he also found time to put on such memorable early ‘00s acts as Ooberman and the Buff Medways..."

*And, of course, Dead Flowers, which you should be visiting regularly, for their Bob Dylan 10-song introduction (an inspired use of an mp3 blog, I have to say; their post on The Libertines converted me from a passive listener to a fan), and their OK Computer anniversary post. On the former, I can only quibble with the omission of Dylan's late-60s work; Blonde on Blonde is not really for beginners, but something from Nashville Skyline, perhaps? Also, I have to represent for "From a Buick 6" and "Queen Jane Approximately," as they were the first Dylan songs I liked because I actually thought they were good, as opposed to having been told they were good.

On the OK Computer post, well, I wouldn't call it the best album of all time, but it holds up very well. For me, Radiohead hit their peak with the "Airbag/How Am I Driving?" EP; this was, as I recall, the period of serious pre-millennial tension in Britain, and it looked for a moment like Radiohead would lead us boldly into the future. What we got instead was Kid A, and a bunch of albums I can only sort of remember (including the one sent to me by an old ex-girlfriend over email before it was commercially released). Apart from Pearl Jam,** it'd be hard to name a band that so thoroughly set about bringing themselves into obscurity.

*The Cardigans? Why not.

*Also, I just discovered that I somehow have a cd of Blur's 13 that's in the wrong order. Starting the album with "Tender" seems a lot like starting with "Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands;" "Trailerpark" does seem like a better option.

**Maybe R.E.M., a good case-study in squandering the goodwill of your audience

WHY DON'T WE WHIPPERSNAPS WEAR WATCHES? Jacob Levy asks, quite sensibly. I don't think the reason is primarily aesthetic, or practical (in the sense Levy uses it, where it's clearly less practical to use a mobile phone to tell time than a watch)--it just seems like a question of redundancy and priority. I have to have a mobile phone, and generally have to have it on me (or near me) at all times, because that's just the way everyone communicates to everyone else nowadays. The mobile also tells time. What's the purpose of going out and buying a second piece of equipment to perform a function done by something I already own (unless my motivations are aesthetic)? Nevertheless, as professorly affectations go, it's one I may yet pick up in the future.

QUOTE FOR THE EVENING:

"While reading over these notes, I became convinced of the sincerity of this man who so mercilessly exhibited his own failings and vices. The history of a human soul, be it even the meanest soul, can hardly be less curious or less instructive than the history of an entire nation--especially when it is the result of self-observation on the part of a mature mind, and when it is written without the ambitious desire to provoke sympathy or amazement. Rousseau's Confessions have already the defect of his having read them to his friends."

-Lermontov, A Hero of Our Time, "Introduction to Pechorin's Journal"

QUOTE FOR THE EVENING: Everyone else is linking it, so why can't I?

"I think most writers live at some strange adjacency to experience, that they feel life most intensely in their recreation of it."

QUOTE FOR THE EVENING:

So, inspired by a mix I was putting together yesterday, where I thought of one of the songs (The Radio Dept.'s "I Don't Need Love, I've Got My Band"): "this could totally have been on My So-Called Life," I found the series on Youtube, and it is pretty much exactly as good as I remember. To wit:

Graham: It's okay to like someone, but I mean, boys your age... can sometimes...

Angela: Dad, I know...[long pause] Can sometimes what?

Graham: Can sometimes... not know how to be what you want them to be. My point is that... it's really hard to figure out how to be a man. Practically every man I know is still working on it.

SO: I remember I bought the Fall's 50,000 Fall Fans Can't Be Wrong for the sheer cheek of referencing Elvis (and because I'd heard good things about The Fall). Everytime I look at the cd cover now, I think "oh yes they can..."

LINKS: Thankfully, I did not end up having to take the cat...

*At the three minute mark, I wasn't sure why I was watching this video. Then it got awesome.

*Isn't this what all academics worry about? "Do what is natural to you, and you are sure to get all the recognition you are entitled to."

QUOTE FOR THE EVENING: e.e. cummings

it is so long since my heart has been with yours

shut by our mingling arms through
a darkness where new lights begin and
increase,
since your mind has walked into
my kiss as a stranger
into the streets and colours of a town--

that i have perhaps forgotten
how,always(from
these hurrying crudities
of blood and flesh)Love
coins His most gradual gesture,

and whittles life to eternity

--after which our separating selves become museums
filled with skilfully stuffed memories

...AND THE PROBLEM IS?

"And, what about this? Who would do a finer job, one man practicing many arts, or one man one art?"

"One man, one art," he said.

"And, further, it's also plain, I suppose, that if a man lets the crucial moment in any work pass, it is completely ruined."

"Yes, it is plain."

"I don't suppose the thing done is willing to await the leisure of the man who does it; but it's necessary for the man who does it to follow close upon the thing done, and not as a spare-time occupation."

"It is necessary."

"So, on this basis each thing becomes more plentiful, finer, and easier, when one man, exempt from other tasks, does one thing according to nature and at the crucial moment."

"That's entirely certain"

-Republic 370b-c

Okay, so I'm a little confused by the problem here. As I understand the post, it's bad that things are inexpensive because... youth need hand skills? It's not cost-effective to employ redundant labor to fix things more easily replaced? No one wants original things, just mass-produced ones? I don't actually find any of those things to be particularly compelling as arguments: I'm sure that anyone willing to pay the surplus for something hand-made actually does* (I in fact used to date someone who would on occasion make items of clothing for herself; it was actually probably cheaper on the margin, but that's another issue entirely). I sympathize with the idea that a labor force trained for one set of (intensely manual) skills finds itself priced out of the market; that's genuinely a tragedy and a legitimate issue for society to think about--though it's not clear to me that artifically sustaining the conditions that made that labor possible is actually better (witness Detroit in the last 30 years).

My suspicion, though, is that this is really a complaint about those darn kids:

"But our youth, following in the footsteps of their parents, are foregoing the use of hand skills for... whatever it is that today's youth specialize in. (I'm not sure what that is, but it's gotta be something.)"

Now, the typical stereotype is that kids today don't actually know how to make anything, they just become I-bankers or lawyers, or join some other profession that doesn't qualify as 'real work.' I often get the impression there's a deeply-seated (paleo-?)conservative suspicion of, among other things, credit, the service economy and the division of labor. I'll confess I just don't get this; perhaps this is a remnant of my liberal past, or perhaps it's my love of Dutch and English political theory, but it seems that cheaper, more sophisticated goods, and a global distribution of labor that allows people to utilize their comparative advantage are good things.

But, as I say, I'm not entirely sure I get the objection. If anyone could recommend something for me on this topic, I'd appreciate it.

*and, dear goodness, I've lived in too many yuppified areas to believe that the natural, organic, artisinal, or traditional can't be turned into an object of fetishization just as easily as the shiny, new and plastic.

IT IS SUMMER, RIGHT? So, remaining today I have to:

*finish up the fellowship application due at 5:00
*finish up the paper proposal for yet another conference
*read Bk. II Ch. 5 for my Grotius reading group
*go to the reading group meeting at 4:00 (and so be done with all the above by then)

but after all that gets done... Bulls game!

UPDATE 3:14: Done, and with time to spare, too!