Robert Irwin

Robert Irwin's The Arabian Nightmare is an old favorite, a modern classic of horror/fantasy, written by a medievalist. A short review can be found at http://www.nthposition.com/thearabiannightmare.php

Presented by Washington Post book Michael Dirda columnist as an answer/rebuttal to Edward Said's Orientalism, Irwin has just published Dangerous Knowledge: Orientalism and Its Discontents. It looks to be a nice meaty (409 pp.) history of Western perceptions of the Middle East. I look forward to reading it.

Dirda's review can be found at:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/11/09/AR2006110901770.html

The Blind Owl

Some notes on an old favorite.

Sadegh Hedayat was born "of an aristocratic family" in Iran in 1903. He committed suicide, in Paris, in 1951. His best known work, The Blind Owl, was published in Bombay (Mumbai) in 1937 and in Teheran in 1941. An English translation was published by Grove Press in 1957. This small, repetitive book is as exquisite a portrait of madness as one is likely to find.

The narrator, a pen-case illustrator, lives in a small house in a decrepit suburb. Addicted to opium, he is obsessed by visions seen through a chink in the wall, high up in a closet. He sees a beautiful woman and a harsh, mocking old man with a "hollow, grating laugh, of a quality to make the hairs of one's body stand on end." There are gestures between the two, a cypress tree, and a small stream, images which recur throughout the narrative. The artist seeks the source of the scene, but it exists only when peered at through the aperture, not in the objective world.

The artist obsesses over the repetitive vision, painting it on his pen-cases. When the visions cease, he sinks into despair fueled by wine and opium. The mysterious woman appears to him one night, remote and spectral. On his bed, she turns cold and inanimate. Her eyes open and shut, and then her beautiful body begins to putrefy. In panic, the artist dismembers the body and stuffs it into a suitcase. He leaves the house with the gruesome luggage, and encounters the old man, face covered, sitting at the base of a cypress tree. With derision, the sinister old man offers to help dispose of the body...

At this point, the narrative takes a backwards turn. We learn of the narrators betrothal, at his mother's insistence, to a woman he despises as "the bitch, the sorceress." His anger and misogyny explode with bitterness at the hated woman. The elements of his vision- the gestures, the tree, and the woman- reappear repetitively. We find clues to the opium vision, fears of mortality, and the horrors of eternal recurrence, life as a dark ride and a closed circle from which there is no escape, neither through death nor madness.

The Blind Owl is a masterpiece of existential horror, a portrait from inside a mind deranged by obsession. It is an angry, uncomfortable book, a Persian descendant of Poe, prefiguring Beckett, with touches of central Asian Buddhist imagery. For those intrigued by this text, Hedayat's The Blind Owl Forty Years After, edited by Michael C. Hillman (University of Texas Press, 1978) is an excellent resource for examining its intricacies.

The Metaphysical Club

In my collection I have a fat 2-volume work called Dictionary of Philosophy and Psychology, first published in 1901. Louis Menand mentions this work in passing in his Pulitzer Prize winning book The Metaphysical Club (2001). A quick look at the list of contributors confirms that many of the people discussed in Menand’s book had a hand in the creation of the Dictionary: it is a snapshot of the intellectual climate in America at the turn of the century, and those contributors developed their ideas over the previous few decades.

The theme of The Metaphysical Club is the effect that the Civil War had on the thought of the Americans who lived through the experience and on those who came after. The lives and thought of Oliver Wendell Holmes, William James, Charles S. Pierce, John Dewey and others is examined. I found the earlier chapters on Holmes, James, and Louis Agassiz the most intriguing, although Agassiz’s mental processes come off as so antediluvian that it is hard to believe that anyone took them seriously, yet he was perhaps the most influential scientist working in America before the Civil War.

Charles Darwin’s ideas concerning evolution and natural selection hit the American shores in the mid-19th century and made a profound impact on the debates about race in social and intellectual circles. Combined with Darwin’s ideas, the horror of the Civil War blew away the naiveté that had previously characterized American thought. Originating in Boston and Cambridge, new currents of thought radiated out to touch every aspect of American intellectual life – theology, biology, psychology, education, the law.

The chapters on William James (a man legendary for his indecisiveness) amusingly illustrates how he would come to organize some of the ideas of Charles Pierce (who had been ostracized from society for lapses in his “sexual morality”) into the new philosophy of pragmatism. The Metaphysical Club is an exercise in “six degrees of separation”, as the work and lives of a variety of thinkers intersect and influence each other over a 100 year period. For many of these thinkers, the Civil War came to represent the danger of belief in abstractions, an understanding that specious, unfounded concepts (such as those relating to race) could lead to horrendous results. The book begins and ends with Oliver Wendell Holmes, whose jurisprudence combined his personal war experience with the ideas which evolved from a number of sources after the war.

In the end, there is a message for our time, the idea that ideas can thrive only in a society that sees its freedoms as more than abstractions:

The constitutional law of free speech is the most important benefit to come out of the way of thinking that emerged in Cambridge and elsewhere in the decades after the Civil War. We do not…permit the free expression of ideas because some individual may have the right one. We permit free expression because we need the resources of the whole group to get us the ideas we need. Thinking is a social activity. I tolerate your thought because it is a part of my thought – even when my thought defines itself in opposition to yours.

A brief examination does not give justice to the wealth of ideas and personalities represented in this book. One mourns the loss of an intellectual climate in which new ideas can flourish.

I Used To Think There Was No Such Thing As "Bad Art"

I was mistaken.

Have a look at this and tell me that this isn't documentary proof that we are on a slow Gibbonesque slide into depravity. What kind of sleazy, cheesy nouveau riche white trash crap is this? Who would want to "immortalize" their family with one of these phoney tributes to dysfunctional family alcoholism, complete with fruity drinks? Oh, wait, isn't that George Allen?

And why are the boys looking at Mom like that? Ewww!

http://www.davidcochran.com/pages/fys.htm

Ok, maybe it's not the end of civilization as we know it, but you must admit, these paintings are pretty damn weird.


Lifted from a Crooks and Liars comment referencing Wonkette that I am too lazy to track down. Hat tip to you, in the unlikely event that you will read this.

Big Fish

http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/meast/09/03/iraq.main/index.html

It looks like it's gonna be smooth sailing now, just like when we caught Uday (and not-Uday), Saddam, Zarqawi, and a plethora of al-Qaida second and third-in-commands. I expect the violence in Iraq will stop any minute now...

Rockey

This makes me sick.

So apparently this "regular guy" who met with Bush to express his gratitude for Katrina relief is a Republican pol, who had a White House meeting on his calendar before he even left his teenie weenie trailer. Another Potemkin Village to distract us from the fact that the Emperor has lost all interest in the Gulf Coast, except as a photo op in an election year.

And the old "I'm a regular guy, he's a regular guy" schtick is insulting. Rockey is a sellout to the thousands who have been ravaged and forgotten, their lives torn apart. What's he hoping to get out of it, a double-wide? Screw him for being a shill for this morally bankrupt regime.

Rockey wishes the Emperor could have another term? Pardon me while I throw up.

Love, Theft, and Modern Times

On September 11, 2001, I was having breakfast with my 10 month old son, looking forward to buying the new Bob Dylan cd, due to be released that day. On NPR, there was a short announcement that an airplane had hit one of the World Trade Center towers. I turned on the TV, initiating a day of fear and chaos as all hell seemed to be breaking loose. My thoughts that morning were only of my wife, working for a Federal agency across the river from the Potomac, as rumors swirled in a general state of panic (a bomb outside the State Department, smoke hanging over the city). Great relief when my wife arrived back at our suburban Maryland home, having paid a D.C. cab driver $200 to get her there. That afternoon, we walked along the C&O canal, surreal beauty all around as we held each other with relief and contemplated the horrors of the day.

A few days later I bought the Dylan cd:

I got my back to the sun
cause the light is too intense
I can see what everybody in the world is up against
Won't turn back, can't go back
Sometimes we push too far
One day you'll open up your eyes and you'll see where you are

In those days before Bush/Cheney began to openly and blatantly break their vow to "protect and defend the Constitution of the United States", Dylan wrote:

Tweedledum and Tweedledee
They're throwing knives into the trees
Two big bags of dead man's bones
Got their noses to the grindstone

They got a parade permit and a police escort

Is there a better characterization than this?

Tweedledee is a lowdown sorry old man
Tweedledum will stab you where you stand
"I've had too much of your company"
Says Tweedledum to Tweedledee

Tweedledee and Tweedledum
All that and more and then some
They walk among the stately trees
They know the secrets of the breeze

Neither one gonna turn and run
They're making a voyage to the sun
"His Master's voice is callin' me"
Says Tweedledum to Tweedledee

And a few years later, we are treated to another spectacle of Imperial neglect

High water risin' the shacks are fallin' down
Folks lose their possessions and folks are leavin' town
Bertha Mason shook it - broke it
Then she hung it on a wall
Says "You dance with who they tell you to or you don't dance at all"
It's tough out there
High water everywhere

High water risin'
Six inches 'bove my head
Coffins poppin' in the streets
Like balloons made out of lead
Water pouring into Vicksburg
Don't know what I'm gonna do
Don't reach out for me she said
Can't you see I'm drowning too
It's rough out there
High water everywhere


And an eerie echo of Emperor George's bravado

George Lewes told the Englishman, the Italian and the Jew
You can't open up your eyes, boys
To every conceivable point of view
They got Charles Darwin trapped out there on Highway 5
Judge say to the High Sheriff
I want him dead or alive - either one I don't care
High water everywhere

Love and Theft is a masterful pastiche of American minstrelry, folk blues, and gentle crooning, but some tracks evoke a sense of prophecy, a foretelling of the subsequent five years, and still give me chills when I hear them. Dylan has always been celebrated as a prophet: he is certainly a man with uncanny insights into the madness of modern life and the darker aspects of human nature.

Dylan's new album, Modern Times , will be released next week.

Pynchon

For Pynchon fans, this gives us something to look forward to:


NEW YORK (AP) -- Thomas Pynchon fans, the long wait is apparently over: His first novel in nearly a decade is coming out in December.
But details, as with so much else about the mysterious author of such postmodern classics as "V." and "Gravity's Rainbow," have proved a puzzle.
Since the 1997 release of "Mason & Dixon," a characteristically broad novel about the 18th-century British explorers, new writings by Pynchon have been limited to the occasional review or essay, such as his introduction for a reissue of George Orwell's "1984." He has, of course, made no media appearances or allowed himself to be photographed, not counting a pair of cameos in "The Simpsons," for which he is sketched in one episode with a bag over his head.
This much is known about the new book: It's called "Against the Day" and will be published by Penguin Press. It will run at least 900 pages and the author will not be going on a promotional tour.
"That will not be happening, no," Penguin publicist Tracy Locke told The Associated Press on Thursday.
Like J.D. Salinger (who at one point Pynchon was rumored to be), the 69-year-old Pynchon is the rare author who inspires fascination by not talking to the press. Alleged Pynchon sightings, like so many UFOs, have been common over the years, and his new book has inspired another round of Pynchon-ology on Slate and other Internet sites.
Late last week, the book's description -- allegedly written by Pynchon -- was posted on Amazon.com. It reads in part:
"Spanning the period between the Chicago World's Fair of 1893 and the years just after World War I, this novel moves from the labor troubles in Colorado to turn-of-the-century New York, to London and Gottingen, Venice and Vienna, the Balkans, Central Asia, Siberia at the time of the mysterious Tunguska Event, Mexico during the Revolution, postwar Paris, silent-era Hollywood, and one or two places not strictly speaking on the map at all.
"With a worldwide disaster looming just a few years ahead, it is a time of unrestrained corporate greed, false religiosity, moronic fecklessness, and evil intent in high places. No reference to the present day is intended or should be inferred."
The description was soon pulled from the site, with Penguin denying any knowledge of its appearance. According to Amazon.com spokesman Sean Sundwall, Penguin requested the posting's removal "due to a late change in scheduling on their part. We expect the description to be reposted to the book's detail page in the next day or two."
Locke declined comment on why the description was taken down, but did reluctantly confirm two details provided by Sundwall, that the book is called "Against the Day" (no title is listed on Amazon.com) and that Pynchon indeed wrote the blurb, which warns of more confusion to come.
"Contrary-to-the-fact occurrences occur," Pynchon writes. "If it is not the world, it is what the world might be with a minor adjustment or two. According to some, this is one of the main purposes of fiction. Let the reader decide, let the reader beware. Good luck."

I hope to post my notes on "Mason and Dixon", a pure delight (the book, not my notes) sometime in the interim.

Here's to the Children

Thinking about my eldest son today. He is a remarkably gifted 5 year old: he learned to read at 3, and reads and comprehends at an advanced level. He is a joy to be around, so imaginative and aware of the world around him. I picked him up from summer camp a couple of days ago and the rest of the day was slightly difficult. Some days he has the attitude of a teenager, a bit churlish and contrary. "Knock it off," I tell him, "you're not supposed to act like this for another seven years!" Later that night, I was getting ready for bed and peeked in on him. Among his Lego knights and Playmobil castle, there was my big boy, sleeping blissfully, his teddy bear in his arms.

Arabian Sands by Wilfred Thesiger

The recent death of the author inspired me to read Thesiger's Arabian Sands, a book which has long been on my reading list. I am happy to note that it completely lives up to its reputation as a masterpiece of travel/adventure literature. Thesiger traveled the Arabian Empty Quarter by camel in the late 1940's, and was among the first Europeans to get an in-depth view of this remote and inhospitable area. The journeys were difficult, with thirst, near starvation, and risk of attack from rival tribes as constant themes, but Thesiger's enthusiasm carries him through, and it rings true when he writes that he would rather die of thirst in the sands than live a pampered and uneventful existence in England. His resentment of the modern world is a constant theme in this book. He prophetically deplores the advance of the oil companies into the Arabian peninsula, knowing that it will mean the certain end of a way of life that has endured for centuries. The Bedu (aka Bedouin) with whom he traveled are shown in the starkness and material simplicity of their lives, but also as a people wholly integrated into the landscapes in which they live. They may not be lovable, but they are certainly admirable in the way that they have physically and culturally adapted to a most inhospitable region. Thesiger himself is not particularly lovable either: he is prone to annoyance and misanthropy (except for, how should I say, the certain interest with which he describes some of the younger Bedu men). Published in 1959, this memoir is an enduring testament to a lost way of life and to the man who sought to preserve it, at least in words.

Orhan Pamuk: Weaver of Tales

One of my favorite contemporary authors is the Turkish writer Orhan Pamuk. His works have a delicious intricacy that I won't even pretend to describe here. As the old cliches go, he weaves his tales like a fine tapestry, with a depth that is profound but which doesn't interfere with the enjoyment of his stories on a simpler level. I have to admit that I have enjoyed earlier books like The Black Book, The White Castle, and The New Life more than the more recent novel, but the recently published memoir, Istanbul, is one of the finest autobiographies I have ever read, running second only to Nabokov's Speak, Memory.

Snow, Pamuk's most recent novel, is set in provincial Turkey in the 1980's. Its issues pertain to the dampening effect of the secular military on daily life in the Turkish hinterland, as well as the growing influence of a more fundamentalist Islam as a reaction to western influences. A group of young women in the town of Kars has been compelled by young fundamentalists to wear the Muslim head scarf. The question is one of choice: some girls choose to wear the scarf as a sign of faith, others are compelled due to threats of violence. A wave of suicides follows when the girls are forbidden to wear the head scarves by the secular government. A formerly exiled poet, Ka, visits Kars, ostensibly to write about the phenomenon. During his visit a snowstorm effectively cuts off access to the town and facilitates a minor military seige masterminded by the head of a travelling theater troupe. In addition, Ka begins an affair with the ex-wife of an old school friend, the beautiful, strong Ipek. The events of the visit are recounted by Ka's friend Orhan, who seeks to understand just what happened to Ka during his visit to Kars. Not my favorite Pamuk, but with a fair amount of suspense.

Istanbul: Memories and the City is a memoir of youth and coming of age in a decaying metropolis. Pamuk emphasises the melancholy (huzun) which permeate the city of Istanbul and underlies the lives of it's inhabitants. Lovely passages on the backstreets of the city, which Pamuk explored obsessively as a boy. The Bosporus, in its ever-changing constancy pervades the memoir. There is a gloom and tension in the book similar to that in Pamuk's first (translated) novel, The Black Book, and if one is new to Pamuk, I would suggest reading the two together. Istanbul comes to an end in Pamuk's early 20's, at the point when he abandons the visual arts for a life as a writer. Clearly, the door is open for future volumes of autobiography.

Oh, Yes: Books

I'm planning to go into my notebooks in the near future and post some thoughts on books read over the past few years. Not reading anything too obscure lately, but enjoying Wilfred Thesiger's Arabian Sands, a fascinating account of two journeys across the Empty Quarter back in the wild and lawless 1940's.