David Brooks: Even at Home, He is A Tourist

This article proves that David Brooks snide pseudo-sociologism about red & blue states and attitudes is as superficial as it seems. Do you know how to attend, David?

I'm Not Reviewing (Yet) The New New York Times Book ReviewEditor

The following article in the New York Observer (the choicest place on the web for news of the publishing world) profiles the new editor of the NYTBR, Sam Tannehaus.

I'm not reviewing this choice since one should always give people in new positions time to show themselves. But I am not optimistic, particularly for the fate of poetry in the NYTBR. The profile doesn't even mention poetry, despite the undoubted fact that New York remains the capitol of poetry in the US (though on a per capita basis, SF is not far behind, and Boston remains a center in my map of poetry). Equally worrying is that Tanehaus has made his career writing about neoconservatives and conservatives, most notably Whittaker Chambers who may be the most famous Communist apostate (but not a Bolshevik as the article says, since you could only be one in the Soviet Union). But since he is friends with Eric Alterman, the best scold of the media from the left, and he claims to be a moderate, I will wait until I see the new New York Times Book Review. In the meantime, for good reviews, pick up the new Bookforum, Harper's, and The Believer. All these are fighting the good fight to make literary reviewing substantive and comprehensive, rather than market-driven and conservative (as the NYTBR has been under Charles McGrath, an ex-student of Harold Bloom, if you want to get into literary conspiracies).

Multicultural Bowling

Does diversity necessarily result in fragmented neighborhoods, which inevitability leads to anti-social behavior?

This research doesn't prove anything nearly so metaphysical about human nature. What it does suggest is that in any liberal society increasing access to state services is a value that will compete with opening borders. I became aware of this ten years ago from hearing a Vancouver liberal talk about how the influx of immigrants from Hong Kong and elsewhere was putting strains on BC's vigorous social welfare structure.

Unfortunately, while both values are progressive, they are not necessarily complementary and are sometimes are in conflict. Neither of these values are supported by conservatives, who tend to think everybody must do for themselves and who, in some cases, truly are racist. But this conflict of values does give a little validity to the idea of limousine liberals, not unlike when supporters of public education send their kids to private schools. Such gestures suggest an elite that knows what's good for the amorphous animal, the "people."

The solution is a global one. That is, the right to cross borders in search of economic security and the right to adequate shelter, adequate food, and adequate education must be guaranteed everywhere. When this happens, there will be no arguments about immigration coming at the cost of social cohesion.

One Hit Wonders

My girlfriend and I, both under weather in different ways, wanted to divert ourselves from our aches and pains the other night by watching a movie. She suggested Stone Reader, since it looked nicely soporific. But only 15 minutes in we both had a violent reaction to it and decided to go with a random Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode instead.

The premise of the movie looked promising. A guy who makes video for political campaigns had found a book, The Summer of Stone, on the basis of an effusive review, when he was a kid. Though he didn't read it at the time he bought it, he later came back to it and found it worthy of the extravagant praise of the review (I dimly recall the phrase "a novel of the century".)

Yet he could find no other records of it besides the one review, nor any information about the author. This is the dream of every English major and perhaps every reader: to find a book, usually a novel, that no one but yourself has read, and yet which will shake up the world when you show it to them.

A promising if sentimental set-up. And yet the follow-through (just 15 minutes, mind you) made it clear that was being explored was hero-worship at best, and religion at worst. The straw that broke the camel's back was an interview with Leslie Fiedler (I think), who intoned hierophantically about American writers who have written only one book. However much he intoned, this matter it seemed was too deep for mere scholarly analysis, despite his other assertion about this being intrinsically "American." This is where I started to tear my hair out, not solely because he failed to mention the greatest one book wonder of our time, Harper Lee's To Kill A Mockingbird.

It was clear that analysis of any kind would have killed the almost mystical reverence that Fiedler has for one-book wonders. In other words, his interest isn't scholarly or even about learning, but something closer to worship. It's precisely this attitude that both stymies equal, wide surveys of contemporary literature, but also is deadly for new authors. His talk of course ended with the example of J.D. Salinger, who actually wrote five published books, is symptomatic, because the hermitic J.D. has made cult of his absence. Reputedly, he is still working away on the adventures of the Glass family, even though their published stories had started devolving into preciousness and religious bromides. Don Delillo and Thomas Pynchon, on the other hand, are nearly as private people as Salinger, and yet their privacy barely informs the reading of their work. Moreover, they are not one-book wonders, but writers who have struck out in various paths and occasionally shown up with pretty marginal work. In other words, they have Careers.

Yet common readers and it seems professors enjoy the story of tragic youth, and thereby cultivate (i.e. make a cult) of these writers, to the detriment of actual practicing writers. You only have to think about the "careers" of Sylvia Plath and John Kennedy O'Toole, two young writers who wrote extraordinary first novels only to commit to suicide, to realize how sick this attitude is. Like Diane Wakoski, I believe that we should praise the living and the survivors. Yet our celebrity oriented novel reading culture prefers to kills it young and enjoy their torment.

By the way, I have never read a book that had no other readers. There are books that are more secret than others, but no book that is truly a Book is known by nobody but you. And that, my Best Beloved, is what is lovely about a real Book.