Art and Social Change — Books, Films, Papers…

Whispering in Shadows: a Syilx interpretation of litterature engagee?
    Renate Eigenbrod

I engage, you engage, we engage

The Jeweled Net of Indra

Make it Active: “Action Poetique”
    Kristin Prevallet

Annual Director’s Dialogue on Art and Social Change, free to. the public. These issues are at the forefront of the current sociopolitical climate and the …

The Situation
    Matt Forsman

Operation Homecoming
    Mark Sommer

The Case that Will Not Die
    Jerry Tallmer

It has now been 80 years since the execution of Sacco and Vanzetti tore the United States half apart — and caused a great deal more hullabaloo elsewhere around the globe — in mass demonstrations of hurt, outrage, and fury, bucking against the flanks and flailing clubs of the mounted police, a/k/a Cossacks.

…

…if the Communists jumped on the case, so did a great many other people who were not Communists at all, or very offbeat sorts of Communists — writers and artists and actors and singers and poets from Upton Sinclair to Dorothy Parker to Diego Rivera to Edna St. Vincent Millay to Woody Guthrie to hundreds of others, and none more effectively than the Ben Shahn whose woodcut Sacco and Vanzetti poster is sort of the cornerstone of Peter Miller’s film [Sacco and Vanzetti].

Of its very nature, the footage between the archival footage is a panoply of talking (or music-making) heads, from Howard Zinn to Studs Terkel to Anton Coppola to Arlo Guthrie — and many others — to Jeanette Murphy, daughter of the slain paymaster. “Do I think they killed my father?” she says on camera. “Well, somebody did.”

Shakespeare, Bush, Iraq

Of Shakespeare, Iraq and Afghanistan

   Swaraaj Chauhan

“Step aside, I’ll show thee a president”: George W as Henry V? 

   Scott Newstrom

Political commentators have been claiming Dubya as a modern-day Prince Hal since the 1990s, eager to ascribe a kingly divine right to a ruler who, from his assumption of the throne to his current crusade, lacks justification.

Tropetopia VI — Hurl On

Indeed, in deed, the distance, insofar as it is detectible, between being the next great President of the United States and the Official Sloganeer is unimaginably small.

As that greatest of all Presidents once said, the job of the Presidency is basically to “catapult the propaganda.” It can’t be writ any better. I challenge any sloganeer. 

Think about it — a catapult is an ancient device for firing missiles and comes from the Greek words hurl and down. Meanwhile slogan comes from the Scottish Gaelic words meaning army and cry, or war cry. Thus to “catapult the propaganda” – or slogans – that is, to be the President of the United States, the Commander in Chief, a Chief Executive Officer, or the Official Sloganeer – is to hurl down war cries, upon the country and world, to throw down, to cry out in battle – O thrilling and blessed state of affairs.

“‘Do Less with More’ – How’s that for a great terministration, excuse me, I mean, administration and campaign slogan?”

The first definition of campaign is “a connected series of military operations forming a distinct phase of a war,” and the word is derived from the Latin word for level country, if not a country that has been leveled into perfect uniformity by the determined catapulting of inspired campaign slogans – the propaganda.

I suppose it would be unbecoming at this point in this fastidious war, I mean, campaign journal to go into the combined religious and sexual origins of the word propaganda. Possibly another opportunity shall arise. For now we will limit our examinations of the potency of words, names, speeches to those which are more militantly related to power and might – as most befits any proper campaign journal.

“I love it,” said the Arranger, “Less with More – as in, lower expectations with more effort, reduced role of government with more PR, less disobedience with more authority, less complaining with more pride, less agitation with more religion, more border patrol less immigration, more weapons fewer uprisings, and fewer people controlling more money for the benefit of country and world – of course we won’t go public with that last one, and possibly some of the others. They will be for internal consumption only. It’s for the best.”

“I couldn’t agree more if you had said less,” said I. “This new job you’ve bestowed upon me is so awesome. I can’t wait to get up every morning and hurl the propaganda. It’s such a great time to be a sloganeer.”

“It certainly is,” declared the Arranger. “As always. To slogan is to live, I like to say. What could be better than to slogan away the glorious day? Hurl on, my Good Man. Hurl on.”

Tropetopia V — Official Sloganeer

“There has been a terrible mistake,” the Arranger told me the next time we met.

“Not the Living Wage, again?” said I.

“No, no. But that puts things in perspective, Stan D. Garde. Thank you. Nothing so terrible as that. It’s you we must terminate.”

I will say this was not the first time I began inexplicably to distrust the Arranger. But I will say no more at the moment.

“I thought I was in good standing.”

“Oh, you are Garde, you are, undoubtedly. And far more than good standing, I might add, for you remain indispensable to the DemReps, and, well, in so many ways to us all. However, the Party does not want you to run for President, after all. Apparently, I was given the wrong instructions. We want you to write speeches, talking points, sound bytes, inspirational memos, news releases, and other publicity texts. We’ll pay well – quite a bit more than the subsistence wage you made back at Rockview Terminal.”

They would have to.

For I sorely resented being jerked around so severely, and I vowed it would never happen again. Gone were my visions of personally ordering the bombing of disobedient third world countries. Gone were my visions of restoring the United States to its pre-Civil War bucolic days and ways. Gone were my visions of, well, being a PVI – a Presidential Vision Itself.

I was outraged, infuriated, scandalized. I swallowed and burped softly. I wondered how I could be sure the DemRep Party was about to offer me a real position for the future. There was only one way, I decided firmly – I would create a position myself and demand it for myself.

“We would like you, now,” said the Arranger, “to be The Official Terminate DemRep Sloganeer” (– the United Corporations of course having adopted the inspired school district lingo of Terminal to their purposes many years ago. Thus, corporate became terminate, and corporations became terminations – as in the United Terminations of America and the World, the illustrious ruling global body. Of course, the schools had further changed the formal titles of administrator and superintendent to terministrator and superintermident, but terminations had been content to stick with their old fashioned yet powerfully allusive term, executive).

“The Official Terminate DemRep Sloganeer” – I mulled over the newly offered title. Highly attractive – I had to admit and could not resist. Gone was my good intention to retrench, stand firm, act on my own initiative. I coughed. “I am deeply disappointed,” said I.

“I understand.”

“I accept.”

“I understand that too.”

“The Official Terminate DemRep Sloganeer. It has a nice ring,” said I.

“A grand title.”

“A great honor.”

“One which we are more than glad to bestow. OTS, for short. Very good.” He clapped me on the back so powerfully it almost sent me toppling. But not quite. “I look forward to hearing your very first OTS, tomorrow, Stan D. Garde.”

“You can count on it, Sire. Excuse me, of course, I mean, Sir.” And not the French word from which Sir is derived, meaning Father, or Master.

“Outstanding, Garde. See you then.”

“Yes, Sir,” said I. “On the morrow.”

A slogan instantly popped into my mind: Never stab a man in the back who may as easily be stabbed in the chest.

On second thought, I decided to put that one away for a later day.

What would I come up with? A thousand and one possibilities seemed to flash instantly through my mind.

But first and foremost, that is, after “Conquer the World, Now,” came a blazing, blinking, short and sweet, concise and neat slogan that I knew would be the one to get the whole thing going – We Promise to Do Less with More.

And its various grammarizations — 

Doing Less With More.

Have More, Do Less.

More, Less. More, Less. More, Less.

And so forth.

Numerous understandings and examples of this inspiring slogan seemed so evident that I would scarcely need spell them out for the Arranger and any others tomorrow. The point, the barb, the hook was in the catchiness, the catchingness, the absolute grab you by the ganglia and not let you go nature of the trope — the twist and turn. Some call it spin.

All in all, it may seem quite a tumble to go from being candidate for the next great President of the United States to being the Official Terminate DemRep Sloganeer.

However, anyone who thinks about it for any length of time whatsoever cannot help but see that the distance between the President and Official Sloganeer is so slight as to escape notice. 

After all, the President “catapults the propaganda” in the words of one of the greatest all time DemRep Presidents, George W. Bush, and in this way one “builds a bridge to the future” in the words of his colleague in arms, that other former great DemRep President, Bill Clinton.

And the Sloganeer of course tropes into shape that which is to be catapulted.

What a great future we catapult, indeed.

Zapatista Reader; The Situation; Apoca-lit; Hugo and Novels

The Zapatista Reader, edited by Tom Hayden 

Gina Ruiz

The Zapatista Reader is one of the most amazing collection of essays, interviews, stories and insights by some of the greatest writers of our time: Jose Saramago, Paco Taibo II, Octavio Paz, Naomi Klein, Elena Ponitowska, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Carlos Monsavais, Manuel Vazquez Montalban, John Berger, Andrew Kopkind, Eduardo Galenao, Alma Guillermoprieto, Pascal Beltran Del Rio, Saul Kandau, Jorge Mancillas, John Ross, Regis Debray, Jose de la Colina, Mike Gonzalez, and many more.

Appointment in Samarra

Dealing head-on with Bush’s War, thriller dissects Iraqi unrest and nails the neocons

J. Hoberman

The Situation, Philip Haas’s deftly-paced, well-written, and brilliantly infuriating Iraq War thriller is not only the strongest of recent geopolitical hotspot flicks but one that has been designed for maximal agitation. Based on a script by the Anglo-American journalist Wendell Steavenson, this gutsy attempt to dramatize the way Iraqis live now is an incitement to rage and despair — the most vivid critique of Bush’s War yet put on screen.

Apoca-lit: “Novelists have been feeling downright apocalyptic“

Victor Hugo and Novels

Vivek Sharma

Victor Hugo, the French poet and writer, who wished to change how novels were written and read, wrote The Hunchback of Notre-Dame in the beginning of his career.

Tropetopia IV — Youth Outreach: LCIT, VCIT, and TPIT

I do try to do my part here at home in America in the ever ongoing effort to conquer the world in mind and body, spirit and money, for the greater glory of all. Always have — first by being a loyal-consumer-in-training (a most proper lcit) and then by graduating into a steadfast loyal consumer, and finally by working as a Terminator of History in Rockview Terminal School District (High Schools having been renamed as Terminals, you may recall from Youthtopia, after the word “high” was nearly banned from the language during one of this country’s many brilliant and ongoing wars against certain drugs and their disobedient users and sellers, patients and celebrants).

Such pastoral and otherwise relaxing reflections upon my roots – as these that I’ve put down in this American Campaign Journal — indeed, all our roots – soon gave me the idea to use that language most near and dear to my very heart and soul as an integral part of my campaign. In other words, the Terminal tongue is that of which I speak, and speak, I do.

Thoughts of using specific Terminal lingo in my campaign to be President of the United States led direct to my next campaign planning session with the Arranger. “I would like to make a special appeal to the lcit of our grand land during the campaign,” I told the Arranger, “for it is the lcit to whom I feel I am especially equipped to speak.”

“Ah, yes,” the Arranger rubbed his jaw then scratched his chin. “The lcit. I had been meaning to speak to you about that. It’s a matter of terminology, I fear, which we must fine tune as best we can.”

He nodded sagely.

“The lcit, you see, can actually not be best known as ‘loyal-consumers-in-training’ – useful as that term is. No, the lcit, to you, are more properly known to us, the Arrangers, as, loyal, yes ideally, and faithful, even better, but to be most exact, we Arrangers know and refer to your lcit as vcit, that is, as vendors-consumers-in-training. You see, Stan, for the human condition to best thrive, it is essential that people not only consume as much as possible, whenever and wherever possible, virtually, of course, everywhere and all the time, but also that they vend, that is, sell diligently, as much as possible, virtually all the time and everywhere – all the while accruing profits ever upwards to the venerable masters of commerce that be. Buy-sell, vend-consume, et cetera, ad infinitum. You do see the inescapable symmetry and harmony, rationale and propriety of this inevitable fiscal and social arrangement, don’t you, Stan D. Garde?”

“All the while ever accruing profits upward,” I repeated, reaffirming the glorious mantra. “Yes, I do. I do indeed see the essential and inescapable nature of it all.”

The Arranger clapped his hands. “I’m glad. Of course, vcit, or venders-consumers-in-training is quite a mouthful, so informally, you know, we accruers like to refer to the people simply as “trading posts” – and the students of course as trading-posts-in-training, or tpit – you know it’s easier on the tongue and mind, with its more colloquial, more folksy feel. ‘Trading posts’ is to people as ‘troops’ is to warriors or soldiers. We are dealing with trading posts here, Stan – ideally loyal, faithful, thrill-seeking, diligent, risk-taking, glamour-loving, perspiration-mongering vendor-consumer trading posts.”

“That’s rather delightful, if quaint,” said I. “A real throwback. People as trading posts – I like it. Let us appeal, then, for the votes of all trading posts everywhere – and let us not forget the tpit, too – our ever-loyal trading-posts-in-training.”

“Excellent. And have you arrived at your ultimate campaign slogan?”

“Conquer the World, Now!” I told him proudly, “one trading post at a time.”

“Outstanding! Excellent work, Stan D. Garde. We knew you had it in you. But we will drop the ‘trading post’ part in public, of course. ‘Conquer the World, Now’ — I do like it. Kind of says it all, doesn’t it? Short and punchy — to the point. Brilliant! Stan D. Garde, I believe we have a deal.”

“A deal, indeed,” said I, as proud as could be. “And, indeed, a great deal to do.”

Sylvester Stallone to Direct Movie of Antiwar Novel, Homefront?

It’s not an April Fool’s joke, not quite. But a mixup of titles at Romancing the Tome:

SYLVESTER STALLONE: I’m gonna direct “Edgar Allen Poe” [without] being in it. “Yo, Poe!” doesn’t work. I’d like to direct some nice young actor in it who can get the soul of Poe. It’s a dark story, but the challenge is how to make it enjoyable, so it isn’t that depressing. And then there’s a book I’ve been looking at for a while called Homefront, which is pretty good….

(I’m thinking “Homefront” may be the book by Tony Christini about the Iraq war, f.y.i.) — Amy

Actually, Stallone was probably referring to Chuck Logan’s novel Homefront. At that point, couldn’t have been Kristen Tsetsi’s Homefront.

Stallone would be good in Homefront as the father, or as U.S. Senator Sam Washburn. He would be better in Glory, as Jim Fielder.

Tropetopia II — Great Campaign Theme

“We trust you to come up with your very own campaign themes,” the Arranger told me. “In fact, we are counting on you to do so.”

So I gave the matter long and elaborate thought over the course of a few minutes and decided I would run primarily upon the plank of “Free Work for All!” No charge to pitch in to help this great land of ours. The Arranger vetoed the idea. “It’s not bouncy enough. We need a theme that will truly inspire the very moment in which it is heard, a theme that may be repeated endlessly to the same great uplifting effect.”

Continue reading Tropetopia II — Great Campaign Theme

Tropetopia I — American/Global Campaign Journal

My god, they wanted me to run for President of the United States of America – little ol’ me, Stan D. Garde, semi-retired Terminator (of History) at Rockview Terminal School District, and author of Youthtopia, the Rockview Terminal Parent’s Handbook.

“What? Me?” I asked the DemRep party head. “Why?”

He smiled big. “Because you know just what to say. You could even write your own speeches. You’ve proved it in Youthtopia.”

This made me feel very proud indeed.

“I can hardly believe you’re serious,” said I.

“Oh, yes,” said he.

“But no one knows I even exist.”

“They will.”

“But I’m just – a common man.”

“Not nearly as common as you think, a pity,” said he. “Come now, do you accept the party’s nomination?”

Of course, nowadays, there was only one party that counted, ever since the Dumblicans and Repugnocrats (I’m sorry, I apologize for sometimes slipping into the vulgar street talk one continues to hear too often), I mean, of course, ever since the Democans and Republicrats formally joined forces, instead of unoffically enabling one another in that peculiar collaborative combative fashion all those years.

“How can I accept the party’s nomination?” I asked the DemRep head. ”Isn’t there a formal process to go through, primaries to run?”

The party head smiled again. He seemed endeared to me. “That can be arranged,” said he. “That is what I do, you know. You might call me, The Arranger.”

It’s so nice to have things arranged for you. I figured I could do nothing less than accept. I figured it was my duty – which I gladly and proudly did. “I accept.”

“Gulliver,” whispered a Terminator (of English) nearby, who had come over somewhat surreptitiously to listen.

“Yes,” I said to my fellow Terminator, “I do feel I am starting out upon a grand and wondrous journey into some wild and perhaps ever more strange lands. And I will do it all to serve my Country, my People.”

And so it was – I accepted the party’s nomination to run for the nomination to be the next President of the United States.

Alas, how little did I know at the time. There would be the brutal primary race to survive, lasting a grueling year. I would be forced to compete relentlessly against other such candidates as myself – each of us pitted remorselessly yet cordially against one another in order to find the fittest of the glibbest – to be the next president of the land.

This is my very personal story – the run for the presidency, by Stan D. Garde, the incredible race to be the next President of the United States of America. This is my private journal that I hope to publish after the fact – for whatever benefit it might humbly accrue to humanity.

Maybe too I will write my own speeches, as the Arranger so generously suggested. I’ll take care to craft all the slogans and tropes that best befit the Presidency – powerful slogans and illuminating tropes that I hope to present here as well in these most humble and modest pages.

I present my American Campaign Journal as a public service to all America, to the entire world. As such, I hereby entitle it –

Tropetopia

or,

How To Become the Next Great President of the United States of America

(and the World).

I dedicate this American Campaign Journal – which might more realistically be named, Global Campaign Journal –

“To the great Arranger, first and foremost, without whom I would have remained but a modest Terminator in the latter stages of a vigorous but declining career; and, last not least, to America and the entire civilized world, without which I could scarcely imagine life, or know where to find the will to live.”

Tropetopia. 

———————————

Links to:

First Tropetopia episodes:
Tropetopia II — Great Campaign Theme
Tropetopia III — Great Theme Unveiled
Tropetopia IV — Youth Outreach: LCIT, VCIT, and TPIT
Tropetppia V — Official Sloganeer
Tropetopia VI — Hurl On
Tropetopia VII — The Curse of the Dumblicans and the Repugnocrats
Tropetopia VIII — Epic of Epics
Tropetopia IX — The Pangloss Score: The DemReps
Tropetopia X — I Mean What I Say
Tropetopia XI — The Tropetopian Age
Tropetopia XII — Down with John Doe Dimslow
Tropetopia XIII — The Pangloss Score II: The US Conquest of the Middle East
Tropetopia XIV — The Stan D. Garde and John Doe Dimslow Debate
Tropetopia XV — The Pangloss Score III: The Up Side of Climate Change
…
Tropetopia all

Thoughts on the Novel

Cross-posted from The Valve thread, “Kill One, Save Five”: 

I just want to add that I’m uncomfortable with the word “emotion” as it’s used in this thread. Novels are more, fundamentally more, than “emotional gyms.” (And morality may well be hardwired in our brains to be primary to emotion, to an extent, as well.) If we want to broaden the word from emotion to say “impulse,” it seems to me that novels are still far more than “impulse gyms.” They have to be if they are to reveal “the full human person,” for starters, let alone “the full human condition” (which includes not insubstantial insight into society, facts, and some concepts or ideologies, etc, healthy or decayed, useful or destructive, and all shades in between). Novels are gyms of facts and concepts in addition to being gyms of various impulses far beyond the emotional – aesthetic impulses not least, and principled moral impulses that may cause any variety of emotional impulses to conflict (with each other and other impulses, such as the aesthetic, or intellectual).

So, if we want to stick with the gym trope, it’s more accurate, I would say, to think of novels as knowledge gyms – a term which includes emotional knowledge and knowledge of impulses of all sorts, and conceptual knowledge, and factual knowledge, etc. Novels are special types of knowledge gyms of course, for the label could be applied to all sorts of texts. Novels are, I suppose, personally-based knowledge gyms, intra- and inter-personally based, and situated in narrative (as the larger body is known in all its extraordinary diversity). Or “human condition” knowledge gyms.

I don’t think the emotional component makes novels distinctive as a form any more then it makes emotionally compelling and insightful nonfiction distinctive as a form.

Rather, “the full human condition” imaginatively and aesthetically rendered — that is, the full human condition rendered as aesthetic make-believe, at narrative length (and however often fact-based and fact-filled) — is what makes novels distinct as a type and form of knowledge from any other type and form of knowledge.

Well, what of the human condition?

Just a couple quotes:

In Critical Fictions: The Politics of Imaginative Writing, edited by Philomena Mariani, “The Novel’s Next Step” is the title Maxine Hong Kingston gives to her reflections on a type of novel needed for current times. She writes:

I’m going to give you a head start on the book that somebody ought to be working on. The hands of the clock are minutes away from nuclear midnight. And I am slow, each book taking me longer to write… So let me set down what has to be done, and maybe hurry creation, which is about two steps ahead of destruction…. All the writer has to do is make Wittman [hero of her novel, Tripmaster Monkey] grow up, and Huck Finn and Holden Caulfield will grow up. We need a sequel to adolescence – and idea of the humane beings that we may become. And the world will have a sequel…. The dream of the great American novel is past. We need to write the Global novel.

Kingston further suggests, “The danger is that the Global novel has to imitate chaos: loaded guns, bombs, leaking boats, broken-down civilizations, a hole in the sky, broken English, people who refuse connections with others.” And she worries, “How to stretch the novel to comprehend our times – no guarantees of inherent or eventual order – without having it fall apart? How to integrate the surreal, society, our psyches?”

It seems to me that her concerns should be taken very seriously but that writers have exhausted trying to do something along the lines of what she suggests, “imitate chaos.” The result in part has been what James Wood aptly dissects and excoriates as “hysterical realism.” I find Rebecca West to be perceptive writing in The Strange Necessity when she notes that regarding reality, when it comes to art, “one of the damn thing is ample,” that an inclination to imitation, excessive imitation at least, is ill-advised.

And in Culture and Imperialism, Edward Said states:

It is no exaggeration to say that liberation as an intellectual [including artistic] mission, born in the resistance and opposition to the confinements and ravages of imperialism, has now shifted from the settled, established, and domesticated dynamics of culture to its unhoused, decentered, and exilic energies, energies whose incarnation today is the migrant, and whose consciousness is that of the intellectual and artist in exile, the political figure between domains, between forms, between homes, and between languages. From this perspective then all things are indeed “counter, original, spare, strange” [Gerard Manley Hopkins]. From this perspective also, one can see “the complete consort dancing together” contrapuntally…

Said adds that

Much of what was so exciting for four decades about Western modernism and its aftermath—in, say, the elaborate interpretative strategies of critical theory or the self-consciousness of literary and musical forms—seems almost quaintly abstract, desperately Eurocentric today. More reliable now are the reports from the front line where struggles are being fought between domestic tyrants and idealist oppositions, hybrid combinations of realism and fantasy, cartographic and archeological descriptions, explorations in mixed forms (essay, video or film, photograph, memoir, story, aphorism) of unhoused exilic experiences. The major task, then, is to match the new economic and socio-political dislocations and configurations of our time with the startling realities of human interdependence on a world scale…. The fact is, we are mixed in with one another in ways that most national systems of education have not dreamed of. To match knowledge in the arts and sciences with these integrative realities is, I believe, the intellectual and cultural challenge of the moment….

And so, the “imaginative, aesthetic, human condition knowledge gyms” that are novels face both ever more serious, also exciting, challenges to reveal, sustain, and further the human condition — in full, or otherwise.

Mira Nair, Jim Webb, Poul Anderson, John le Carré

Mira Nair 

“I’m developing an original screenplay about the war in the world…about the Iraq war etc. Right now it’s just an idea.”

 

Jim Webb plans political book

Senator describes it as populist work, not ‘Capitol Hill novel’

   Peter Hardin

The novelist, screenwriter and former Navy secretary that Virginians elected to the Senate is writing a new book – and it won’t be a tell-all.

Freshman Sen. Jim Webb, D-Va., disclosed yesterday that he’s writing what he called a populist’s view of the political situation in the United States today.

He hopes it will hit the bookstores around Memorial Day in 2008….

Webb said the book will touch on many themes he sounded in his underdog Senate campaign in Virginia and in his Democratic response this year to President Bush’s State of the Union speech….

“We talked about the larger need for economic fairness and social justice, in an era where far too much power and money has gravitated to the very top, in both economic and governmental terms.”

 

Anarchist and Libertarian-Socialist Societies Depicted in Science Fiction —

    

Poul Anderson. “The Last of the Deliverers” (1957; revised version 1976). After the USA and USSR have broken up, thanks to a source of cheap, decentralized solar energy, the highest level of political organization consists of libertarian-socialist townships. In these townships, the community owns the land and such tools of production as tractors, plows, and harvesters, but those who raise the crops own the produce. Others are also self-employed, preferring to produce quality, crafted goods as needed, and spending the rest of their time in other rewarding pursuits, such as making love and hunting deer, rather than worrying about making a profit. In a town in Ohio, the last capitalist debates the last Communist, and everyone else is bored by their irrelevance.

Le Carré’s War on Terror

By Christian Caryl  (2004)

Absolute Friends
by John le Carré

 

The Little Drummer Girl
by John le Carré

The best recent novel about terrorism was published in 1983, and its author was John le Carré, better known at the time as a crafter of cautionary tales about the intelligence battles of the cold war. The Little Drummer Girl, reissued this year in paperback, tells the story of an Israeli intelligence operation to foil a frighteningly effective Palestinian terror cell. The leader of the Palestinian group, an expert bomb-maker known only as Khalil, is obsessively security-conscious, and he has succeeded in wrapping himself so deeply in layers of deception and camouflage that the Israelis decide they can track him down only by resorting to the most unorthodox of scams. As their unlikely agent they choose Charlie, a small-time British actress of romantic left-wing politics whose interest in radical causes has brought her into brief contact with one of the terrorists. Kurtz, the mastermind behind the Israeli operation, explains himself to a colleague in a passage that is worth quoting at length:

“‘Put in an agent, Schulmann,’ Misha Gavron shrieks at me from halfway inside his desk. ‘Sure, General,’ I tell him. ‘I’ll find you an agent. I’ll train him, help him trail his coat, gain attention in the right places, feed him to the opposition. I’ll do whatever you ask. And you know the first thing they’ll do?’ I say to him. ‘They’ll invite him to authenticate himself. To go shoot a bank guard or an American soldier. Or bomb a restaurant. Or deliver a nice suitcase to someone. Blow him up. Is that what you want? Is that what you are inviting me to do, General —put in an agent, then sit back and watch him kill our people for the enemy?'” Once again, he cast Alexis the unhappy smile of someone who was also at the mercy of unreasonable superiors. “Terrorist organisations don’t carry passengers, Paul. I told Misha this. They don’t have secretaries, typists, coding clerks, or any of the people who would normally make natural agents without being in the front line. They require a special kind of penetration. ‘You want to crack the terror target these days,’ I told him, ‘you practically have to build yourself your own terrorist first.'”

…

Why can’t Republicans write good novels?

Why can’t Republicans write good novels?

   Rod Dreher

A liberal named Benjamin Nugent has written a pretty interesting piece wondering why Republicans don’t write good novels. Daniel Larison’s answer to the question is vastly more interesting than the Nugent piece itself. I exhort you to read his entire entry — Daniel ought to turn this into an essay, and The American Conservative,which is where the most surprising and unpredictable commentary on the Right is being published today, ought to make it a cover story. Anyway, Daniel says that the question isn’t why don’t Republicans write good novels, as ideologues aren’t ever going to produce good art. Rather:

The real question ought to be why conservatives generally don’t write fiction.

The answer is actually much more straightforward: the sorts of grand conservative thinkers who were scholars of literature (Weaver, Bradford) and writers of ghost stories (Kirk) are sadly no longer with us, they have not found worthy replacements and the importance of imagination is much, much less in the thinking of most self-styled conservatives than it was in theirs.

Part of the problem is indeed an excess of optimism, and optimism on the American right is one part Yankee, one part capitalist and one part Reagan. Whatever else you want to say about these three, they are not generally regarded as the fathers of great writing. Optimistic people typically are not the best artists, and I don’t just say this because I prefer the pessimists among us. Their frame of mind does not allow for real tragedy or real failure. For the optimist failure is not only unlikely, it does not ultimately, truly exist. The best days are always yet to come! But without a sense of nostalgia for a lost age or a lament for your people or even a full appreciation for the petty indignities of life combined with reverence for sacred mysteries (and sometimes, if a writer is really wise, he knows how to find the mystery in the petty indignity–see Dostoevsky, Solzhenitsyn), I think it is very difficult to write really captivating, good fiction.

This is right, it seems to me, and I really don’t have a lot to add to Daniel’s excellent observations. Larison’s post crystallized for me why I find myself so alienated from mainstream conservatism: it has no room for a tragic sense, and too often suffocates mystery and ambiguity in syrupy nationalistic uplift or platitudinous moralizing. Besides, I think most people on the right — shoot, most people, period — don’t trust art any more than they trust religion (real religion, the wild and terrifying stuff, I mean, not just bourgeois churchiness). The more intelligent people on the right understand that culture is more important than politics, but have no idea where to begin creating works of art that live and breathe.

Barbara Nicolosi of Act One, the program that trains Christians in screenwriting, lays into the faithful for their haughty ignorance and attitudinizing. Here’s a more polite version of the spiel I’ve been privileged to hear in person:

Flannery O’Connor, perhaps the greatest Catholic novelist of the past century, once noted, “Christian writers should be much less concerned with saving the world than with saving their work.” Many begin the Act One program with a slight cockiness that our seasoned faculty likes to call “the Messiah complex.” At some point in their lives, they swore off the cinema out of either fear or disdain, and they have come to Act One with the idea that they can save it from the outside. It takes several days of showing them some of the stunning and profound work being done in secular cinema before we can really begin to teach them.
[snip]
Ken Gire, an Act One alumnus, wrote in his book, Reflections on the Movies: Hearing God in the Unlikeliest Places (Chariot Victor, 2000), “I would rather be exposed to an a R-rated truth than a G-rated lie.” Having no conviction of hope, the entertainment industry tends to obsess over the only realities of which it is certain: confusion, darkness, isolation, fear, and depravity. Skewed as it is in its representation of what it means to be human, this kind of cinema can still hold profound truth for us about life without faith and, on another level, about using the screen art form in powerful ways.

Substitute “conservatives” for “Christians” and it still makes sense. Many conservatives, it seems to me, see art as an instrument for propagandizing for a particular worldview, as opposed to telling the truth, even telling hard truths (especially telling hard truths). The last great American novel I read was Marilynne Robinson’s “Gilead.” I don’t know whether Robinson is liberal or conservative, or whether her novel was either. But it was luminous, and it was true. That’s all that matters.

I wonder if there’s a connection between the fact that there are few conservatives among the ranks of novelists, and that there are few conservatives in US newsrooms. I remember when I was on my college paper’s staff, and was pretty liberal, campus conservatives bitched and moaned constantly about how biased we were. When I was in a position to invite them to contribute commentary to the paper, they weren’t faithful about meeting deadlines, and often never turned anything in at all. My guess is that conservatives love to complain about how biased the media are, and they’re more or less correct. But it’s rare to find conservatives who actually love journalism for itself, and what it can do. I’ve met young conservatives who aspire to be journalists, and they have the idea that they’re going to go into the business to tell stories “from the conservative point of view,” or somesuch thing. And I hope they fail. We don’t need to replace liberal bias with conservative bias. We need people to go into journalism because they want to tell the truth, and because they respect the art and craft of journalism. I don’t know why journalism as a profession appeals more to people who are pretty liberal politically. But it does. Perhaps the same is true with art — just as banking tends to attract conservatives.

But really, I’m the wrong person to pontificate on such matters, as I don’t read much fiction. I find contemporary fiction to be dull, as a general rule, and spend my time reading history and history-related books. That’s where life is, as far as I can tell. My wife is a conservative, and she reads almost nothing but fiction. But not much contemporary fiction. Do you who read a lot of fiction think that there’s much good fiction being written by anybody today? If so who, and why is it good? It’s the case, certainly, that the overwhelming number of novelists are liberals, but it seems to me that if they’re any good as a novelist, it’s not because they’re liberals, but because they understand something about human nature, and keep their art free from the proprieties of political correctness.

Larison is spot-on in his final observation, which is that the triumph of the therapeutic did away with a lot of suffering, but also seems to have erased the conditions that make for good art:

The therapeutic has driven out most of whatever remained of the tragic. The spirit of Atlee has spread like a poisonous cloud over the green fields of Logres, and the purpose-driven life has driven us into Babylon rather than leaving us to remember Jerusalem at the edge of her waters.

I’m sitting here tonight in a part of the country that is, I’m sorry to say, rapidly suburbanizing. For most of my adult life lived outside of the rural South, I’ve simply told stories about the kind of stuff I saw and heard growing up. And people think wow, what a good storyteller he is. But it’s not me: it’s the stories, and I’ve just reported what I’ve seen. That world, in all its crazy vitality, is going away. It just about kills me to think of what will pass away before I die. Sitting on the front porch with my dad today, we were talking about loss. He told me that he’s always had confidence that he could pull himself and us kids through any hardship, because growing up dirt-poor in the country during the Great Depression required him to learn how to do all kinds of things for himself. And I felt stupid and small just hearing that, thinking about how little of that I know. How little of that most people of my generation know. I wouldn’t trade the comfortable middle-class life I had growing up for the little cabin on a hill without running water than my dad had in the 1930s and 1940s. But it must be said that my generation is anesthetized by prosperity and the expectation of endless prosperity. There is plenty of suffering and tragedy in all this air-conditioned cheer, of course, but where are the conservatives who can see it and articulate it?

Editorial Cartoonists Take Aim at Iraq War

Pitt to Feature Editorial Cartoonists Who Take Aim at Iraq War

National editorial cartoonists will give illustrated presentations March 28 moderated by the Post-Gazette’s Rob Rogers

The University of Pittsburgh and the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette will host an illustrated panel presentation, “There’s Nothing Funny About War: Editorial Cartoonists Take Aim,” featuring national editorial cartoonists and moderated by Post-Gazette editorial cartoonist Rob Rogers at 7:30 p.m. March 28 in The Twentieth Century Club auditorium, 4201 Bigelow Blvd., Oakland.

Featured panelists are David Axe, military editor for Defense Technology International Magazine; Ted Rall, columnist and cartoonist for Universal Press Syndicate; Scott Stantis, editorial cartoonist for The Birmingham News; and Signe Wilkinson, editorial cartoonist for the Philadelphia Daily News.

We Are All Suspects Now by Tram Nguyen

Everyone Has Become A Suspect

   Emily Abbate

The moon’s glow hits the pavement as you park your car outside of your friend’s Queens apartment. The second hands shadow graces the number two upon your watch and a yawn emerges from tired lips. You walk up the stairs into your friend’s apartment where the two of you begin cooking dinner.

Unexpectedly six or seven FBI agents bust into the apartment, break down the door and scare the tiredness from every crevice of your body. After the initial, “freeze put your hands up in the air!” the agents ask you for your status.

Continue reading We Are All Suspects Now by Tram Nguyen

A Reasonable Proposal

The President Of The United States quite reasonably proposes that his loyal public servants meet privately with Congress – under no oath and with no transcript allowed – and thereby be allowed to lie through their spinning teeth to cover up the firing of U.S. attorneys who were intent upon investigating the president’s administration for criminal activity.

POTUS quite reasonably proposes that Congress continue to fund – as it has all these many years – the ongoing Oil Wars in Iraq, and everywhere else.

POTUS quite reasonably cautions – no, warns – no, threatens – that if he does not get his way in these or other matters, he will carpet bomb Iran in a show of patriotic zeal, and then in close conjunction further carpet bomb the economy of the United States so that the nation comes crawling ever more desperately back to him on its hands and knees begging for relief, which he will piously deny.

POTUS regrets that Congress has chosen to raise a partisan specter in these difficult times. He quite reasonably remains confident that Congress will once again soon change its tune and soften its whistle after a few show trials and showboat votes, and little else. This is the proper nonpartisan function of Congress, after all. The quite reasonable duty of Congress is to betray the people – nothing less, plenty more.

Contemporary Politics and Popular Art (continued) and Ideological Novel

The politics of the man behind “24.” —

“The military loves our show,” [Joel Surnow] said recently. Surnow is fifty-two, and has the gangly, coiled energy of an athlete; his hair is close-cropped, and he has a “soul patch”—a smidgen of beard beneath his lower lip. When he was young, he worked as a carpet salesman with his father. The trick to selling anything, he learned, is to carry yourself with confidence and get the customer to like you within the first five minutes. He’s got it down. “People in the Administration love the series, too,” he said. “It’s a patriotic show. They should love it.”

Literature and Society in Imperial Russia, 1800-1914. – Google Books Result
The Rhetoric of an Ideological Novel I This paper treats the ways in which Dostoevsky’s social and ideological intentions interacted with certain of his …

Greek Fiction: the Greek novel in context – 
Like many an author of the later ideological novel, Xenophon came to the … Since the key to an ideological novel is its redundancy, a prerequisite for …

Political Myth: A Theoretical Introduction – 
…in distinguishing the ideological novel from other novelistic fiction written in a realist mode, Suleiman maintains that, while the number of …

Contemporary Politics and Popular Art

Blood Diamond DVD — “Net effect: like reading Upton Sinclair and passing on the sausage.”

American (U.S.) disaster novel by Jim Crace

Marina Lewycka’s Novels

Jose Saramago’s political novel Blindness to film

V V: Pamuk & After:

Who, among us, can confront the lies and silences that lie at the heart of everyone’s lives, including our own? We need to do that if only to come to terms with ourselves. We are all made up of different selves like a broomstick that needs to be tethered to be of any use.
 
On a different plane the novel raises a much larger question: the role of nationalist historians who see all history in terms of victories, defeats, triumphs, humiliations, their own side on the upgrade and some hated rival on the downgrade. And they do this without batting an eye-lid, without being conscious of dishonesty. Sadly, political commentators can survive almost any mistake, like astrologers, because their devoted followers don’t look for an appraisal of the facts but for the stimulation of nationalist loyalties. This is what has happened in Turkey as it would elsewhere where nationalists take over. To paraphrase Joyce, “history is a nightmare from which we are trying to awake”.

“Crossing Color Barriers…a growing genre of novels” — see also: Ron Jacob’s forthcoming Short Order Frame Up

War violence and movies: 300