Reconciliation

There's a fine line between perspicacity and wisdom and I'm not sure on which side of the divide falls George Bernard Shaw's statement that, “A man's interest in the world is only the overflow from his interest in himself."Taken by itself the statement seems more clever aphorism than philosophy, a cheap sophism to indulge the narcissistic. Yet taken with another quote from the very same man–that, “The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man."–there appears a wisdom to the thinking. I'll charitably assume so, at any rate.

The wisdom seems to me the realization that a great deal of man's struggle is with the fact that the world is not he. We rejoice in individuality, but we long for reconciliation. It is man's curse that the otherness of the world so essential for even recognizing his own being is simultaneously a source of antagonism. Moreover, the otherness from which we are separated is large, intractable, and worse than incomprehensible, parts of it are inscrutable. The mysterious world and the other wills in it are not wholly mysterious and the ensuing possibility for success is a source of both dynamism and despair. Yet what does success look like? Happiness and virtue, but the search for happiness conceals its origin in the ontological quandary, a need to reconcile with a multifariously different and often hostile otherness. To find this reconciliation he has three choices: remaking, rejecting, or redeeming.

Remaking is perhaps the most common path. Man can either attempt to remake the world or himself. Some men are concerned with the matter of the world and attempt to reconfigure the atoms of the world for man's good. These are the scientists and engineers who've been elevated to the preeminent ranks of society in the last two hundred years. Other men, the architects, build structures to dominate the land, and their structures reform the face of the earth. Shaw was right that without such dissatisfaction man would enjoy precious little material progress. Yet most people are incapable of such labors and passing aside their inability to remake the physical world, they attempt to remake men. There is no way persuasively to fake the ability to build bridges and make medicine, but promises of justice, liberty, and unity are too easily sold. Such are of course the goals of political liberalism and progressivism, but despite what they support on ballots, most people don't have a political bent to their actions. Instead we attempt to remake people we know, nudging them slowly but surely until they resemble us. This is usually subconscious, and frighteningly so, but do we reward those who do what we want and punish those who differ? Do we not by our actions encourage others to do the same, and are we not drawn to follow? We remake to reconcile.

Not ourselves, usually. Sometimes with great reluctance, though, we can nudge ourselves into habits more conducive to prosperity. The transformation can of course be major or minor, and stem from pragmatism or principle, but we can change with effort.

Rejecting the world is a period through which everyone passes, although it's possible to ground rejection in principled nihilism. It's no small coincidence that rejection tends to spur rejection. When we're spurned by lovers, we reject love. When we're spurned by bosses, we reject business and economics. When the political reigns are held by the opposition, we say that the system is broken. Most people come to terms with basic facts of life–you need a job, some people won't like you, not all problems can be fixed–but the paranoid reject the world as a malignant otherness.

Redemption is the release of man from the lonely quandary of being a self among others. It is instead of a change, a reunification. As we have observed this reconciliation is sought politically, socially, scientifically, and psychologically, but these means are transient and imperfect. The unification is sought aesthetically too, and perhaps this experience surpasses the others. For for what seems to unify all more than the pervading strains of music? How easy it is to imagine life, whether walking about town or pondering the cosmos, set to music. Too the aesthetic experience invites a coming together of personal impressions–those of artist and audience–with aesthetic principle. Still the experience of art is temporary and cannot fully transcend the isolation of otherness.

The only full redemption has already been paid for man, though, by the suffering of Christ, a passion which redeems man both on earth and in eternity. Man is unified to man each by their unity with Christ, and then man is unified with creator in eternal contemplation.

In his two perfect prayers, St. Thomas employs terms of redemption to describe the freedom and unification in the Eucharist. The Body is healing, enrichment, clothing, and cleaning; freedom from necessity. It is also the extinction of desires and lusts, the quieting of impulses; freedom from one's own and all wills but the divine. Finally it is a happy "consummation" and an "ineffable banquet," a fulfilling to the utmost. We are fortunate that the English translation retains the beautiful sense of consummation here: the bringing to perfect and thus ultimate completion.

It's unlikely that we can choose just one path of remaking, rejecting, or redeeming. We need to make a safe place for ourselves in the world that is somewhat inhospitable. Likewise we do need if not to remake others, to restrain evil, which requires a polity of virtuous men. We need to remake ourselves, to extirpate vices, yes, but also to love, for all forms of love require a change, whether to virtue or selflessness. All loves are likewise a form of unity, as hatred and war of destruction. This polar model has been cluttered for us by cheap pop references to love and war, but the classical (and especially Epicurean) conception of love and war, Venus and Mars, as natural forces is fundamental. Lastly it is evident that the bad must be rejected.

Our goal ought not to be excluding a given path of remaking, rejecting, or redeeming, but learning prudently to perceive and cultivate by kind, expecting, as Aristotle encouraged, no more or less than what each can offer. Much heartache and suffering could be avoided by not expecting perfect reconciliation now and forever through each path alone.

Presidential Rhetoric VIII: Martin Van Buren

Welcome to Part Eight of our series on the rhetoric of American presidential inaugural addresses. Please feel free to look at the previous entries in the series:

1. Worthy of Marble?
2. John Adams
3. Thomas Jefferson
4. James Madison
5. James Monroe
6. John Quincy Adams
7. Andrew Jackson

See Also: Presidential Rhetoric: Grading the Graders

We continue with our present look at the rhetoric of Martin Van Buren's inaugural address. Will there be any stylistic curiosities in this speech from the New York-born, Dutch-speaking president?

The text of the speech, via Bartelby.com

–

1. Fellow-Citizens: The practice of all my predecessors imposes on me an obligation I cheerfully fulfill—to accompany the first and solemn act of my public trust with an avowal of the principles that will guide me in performing it and an expression of my feelings on assuming a charge so responsible and vast. In imitating their example I tread in the footsteps of illustrious men, whose superiors it is our happiness to believe are not found on the executive calendar of any country. Among them we recognize the earliest and firmest pillars of the Republic— [1] those by whom our national independence was first declared, [2] him who above all others contributed to establish it on the field of battle, [3] and those whose expanded intellect and patriotism constructed, improved, and perfected the inestimable institutions under which we live. If [A] such men in the position I now occupy felt themselves overwhelmed by a sense of gratitude for this the highest of all marks of their country's confidence, [B] and by a consciousness of their inability adequately to discharge the duties of an office so difficult and exalted, [C] how much more must these considerations affect one who can rely on no such claims for favor or forbearance! Unlike all who have preceded me, the Revolution that gave us existence as one people was achieved at the period of my birth; and whilst I contemplate with grateful reverence that memorable event, I feel that I belong to a later age and that I may not expect my countrymen to weigh my actions with the same kind and partial hand.


While the opening sentence begins with the now traditional sentiments of modesty and following in the footsteps of great predecessors, two words stand out: cheerfully and happiness. This is the first time any degree of cheer or joviality has made its way into any inaugural address, and while these words don't constitute frivolity, they do mark a uniquely festive sense of gratitude for having inherited such a great nation from such great men. Van Buren's use of the word calendar is also worth a note, for on the one hand it can simply mean register, but also it can mean guide or example, and even by metonymy it can refer to the history of the presidency. The firm image pillars of the Republic is no throwaway, though, but itself becomes the foundation for the rest of the paragraph. Van Buren breaks the Founders into three groups of those who 1) declared independence, 2) fought for it, and 3) those who firmed and expanded it. This is a novel and engaging way of reiterating the feats of the Founders, and note with him who the indirect reference to the now nearly deified Washington.

The next sentence is a gradatio of increasing tension from phrases A-C, but it reads simply as a condition: If A and B, then C. Van Burn ends with a most surprising turn, an invocation to the people to regard him not as one of the Founders but to regard him as one of them and to judge him not with the gentleness with which they treated their forefathers, but impartially. A most uncommon sentiment, in and out of politics.

Finally, note the simple, lucid flow of ideas in connected pairs of conditions:

1. I follow in the footsteps of great men
2. who fall into three categories.
3. If they were nervous about the duty, great as they were,
4. how much must I be?
5. Also unlike my predecessors, America was a nation when I was born, 
6. so judge me as one of you and not one of the Founders.

This is a solid opening, full and formal but not orotund, and tightly organized.

Theater Review: Violet

Music by Jeanine Tesori. Libretto by Brian Crawley. 1997/2014 (Off/On Broadway)

Toward the end of Violet there's a big bubbly gospel number in which dancers accompanies the buoyant lyrics. Now this ensemble didn't have long to shine on stage, but they really gave it their all, especially the two ladies up front who let loose a nearly-distracting degree of enthusiasm. While I didn't care for the number, which I've forgotten entirely, I did enjoy and do remember their spirit. That's pretty much how I feel about Violet, the story of plucky girl's bus trip from North Carolina to Tulsa looking for a preacher to heal her scar.

I'll mention first Violet's chiefest success, which is a clever trick of staging the flashbacks of the titular main character at the same time as the unfolding story. This device rescues a story which if told linearly would have started to flag after its first hour. Beyond the energizing effect though, the sharp juxtaposition of these scenes brings some unique insight, as when Violet, fooling around with a fellow passenger during the Memphis layover, remembers her first time with a man. Rather than simply remembering a scene from act one, the presence of everyone on stage at once makes us more strongly identify the past characters and actions with the present ones.

This is a simple trick, but it works. Until the end, anyway, when after reaching the preacher, her father appears onstage in flashback. When she accuses him of intentionally maiming her so that the disfigurement might repel boys and keep her close to him, the father responds that wasn't so and apologizes for the accident. She believes this, which makes her feel so good that she thinks her scar has been healed. So presuming she didn't actually experience communication with the dead or divine, and that her flashback (i.e. the product of her consciousness) couldn't and therefore didn't tell her something which she didn't already know, what happened? What caused her transformation? If it was just a memory, which is the only thing it could have been, why does she believe him now?

Perhaps the awakening came when the preacher said her problem was her character and not her face, which is reasonable, but is that all it took to convince her, some frank advice from a man she just learned is a charlatan? This development is ultimately unsatisfying not because of its origin in the preacher, though, but because Violet is not introspective, or at least because the process of her reflecting on her character is not part of the story. Violet's resolution needed to come not from a logical proposition which she could just accept, but via a developed plot line, such as her relationship with Flick, a soldier traveling with her on the bus, which had been dramatically prepared.

Anyway, when she finds out that Flick, who chose not to sleep with her for what seem to have been moral reasons, or timidity, does indeed love her scar and all, she's happy. Since we don't know what she thought about him not sleeping with her, though, we again don't know what caused her sudden change of feeling. Why is she so enthralled now? She didn't learn anything new about him.

I'll touch but briefly on the music, which is a credit to the performers though not the composer. They played with a lot of gusto, but there's very little of interest in the score except for the variety of genres which is both pleasant and sensible given the changes of locale from stop-to-stop. Unfortunately the start of every number featured a jarring distraction: the disappearance of everyone's thick southern accents as they shifted into perfectly neutral pronunciation for their song. Still, the tunes are attractive and lively enough in the moment to move the show along.

I enjoyed Violet because I was in cheerful company and because the cast and band gave their all, but the experience is of a spirited performance of a somewhat dull show. Violet is pleasant enough to watch but its tunes and plot fade quickly after the curtain falls.

Lost in Translation #1: Vergil

Perhaps the most difficult tasks for the teacher of foreign languages is to persuade students of the need to read a work in its native language. In an era not only of plentiful translations but of numerous good translations, why turn to the original? The difficulty of this task of persuasion is compounded by the fact that it's nearly impossible to make this point clear and attractive at the introductory level when students are performing the thankless work of basic mechanics. Yet if the student does not grasp this notion at some early point, he risks wandering astray from the appreciation of his acquired language as a conveyance of literature. It's a terrible fate that the first utility of Latin, for example, is so often said to be its ability to improve one's English vocabulary.

Toward the end of showing Latin as a language of literature I would like to take a look at some passages of choicest Latin and compare them not merely to good translations, but to fine ones. I hope to demonstrate in this Coleridge's dictum that, "one criterion of style is that it shall not be translateable without injury to the meaning." (Lecture 14 on Shakespeare) I don't mean in any instance to denigrate the translator, moreover in studying the Latin and English in parallel one's appreciation for the task and success of these translators can only grow. Still, that task is in the end impossible to fulfill to perfection, at least for any work which maximizes the possibilities unique to its native language.

It seems prudent to start with one of the best and best known passages of Latin's most famous work, the Roman Classic, the Unclassical Classic, the Homeric reincarnation, the Augustan renaissance, Vergil's Aeneid. The translation is by Robert Fagles, published 2006.

We enter in Book IV, where a seething Dido rages at Aeneas, whom she caught stealing away.

–

365 'nec tibi diva parens generis nec Dardanus auctor,
366 perfide, sed duris genuit te cautibus horrens
367 Caucasus Hyrcanaeque admorunt ubera tigres.

/ "No goddess was your mother!
No Dardanus sired your line, you traitor, liar, no
Mount Caucasus fathered you on its flinty, rugged flanks
and the tigers of Hyrcania gave you their dugs to suck!

English eschews both leading with the dative form and the dative of possession (it is to you, vs of you, or the possessive adjective your), so Fagles presents us first with goddess (diva) and the possessive adjective your. The logic of the sentence is preserved, but the effect of leading with Aeneas (tibi: to you) and concluding with Aeneas (perfide: you traitorous one) enjambed onto the next line is lost, and the effects are that of 1) amplifying the accusatory tone of the line and 2) linking the two lines.

An understood linking verb (est: was) links diva to parens and Dardanus to auctor, a gapping which produces a line of stark juxtapositions. In the English, Dardanus auctor spills into a whole clause just for the need to use as a stand-in for auctor (founder, originator, progenitor), English's sired (forefathered), whose noun form sire is both deprecated and tied up with associations of its use as a salutation. Now sired is probably the best substitute, but its use results in a circumlocution which comes at the price of brevity and thus potency. Likewise perfide (faithless, traitorous, deceitful, false) becomes traitor, liar, which still doesn't quite capture the sense of scandal and outrage of perfide.

Fagles truly does a superb job with 366, so much that the layer of translation fades to an invisibility which would do Coleridge proud, but again there's no way to mimic the word order permitted by inflection, and thus the ensuing effects. Here, after in 365 declaring from whom Aeneas was not born, Dido describes who were his parents, according to her insult. The whole line is a preparation though, which isn't fulfilled until Caucasus enjambed into the beginning of 367 tells us just who was his father. Likewise lost is Vergil's sandwiching of te (you, i.e. Aeneas) between duris and cautibis (on hard crags.) Too, while flinty is a brilliant substitute for duris, conveying both physical and emotional hardness, rugged doesn't capture the sense of dread in horrens. Finally, in English we lose the emphasis of the parallel placement of Aeneas (perfide) at the beginning of the line and horrens at the end.

Again, though, Fagles' 367 captures the meaning of the line, but the style and imagery is in rerouting, lost. First, the English is cluttered with and, the, of, you, their, and to, a volume which dilutes the potency of the idea. Next, the stark back-to-back placement of Caucacus and Hyrcanae is an exotic splash which is lost in separation. What the Latin says obliquely or subtly in image, admorunt ubera tigres, the tigers drew up/near their teats, with "for suckling" implicit, Fagles says literally with "gave you their dugs to suck." This is quite a subtle difference, but the phrase "drawing up the breast" typifies the action as associated with nursing, whereas Fagles English spells it all out. Also lost is tigres' emphatic separation from its adjective Hyrcanae and placement at the line's end.

Finally, ubera tigres in Latin is a tight-knit pair of noun and direct object, linked by their constituting the hexameter's famous zippidy-do-dah final feet. Though they are in different cases and thus function differently, Latin can place them together and produce a non-grammatical, purely visual-aural relationship between the two. Here, the two words simply by their proximity produce a clear image: tiger nipples. It may sound silly, but that's a very bestial image which perfectly concludes Dido's scurrilous contention that Aeneas is not born from the soft goddess of love and a son of Zeus, but hard crags and animals. He's inhuman, to her, and this is the perfect image for that sentiment.

In contrast, Fagles' English shows the same images in a different series with different connections for a different effect. Compare the following and try to visualize each image as it comes:

Latin: Hyrcanian gave nipples tigers
English: tigers of Hyrcania gave you their dugs to suck!

More processing is required by the Latin to supply the understood information, but the brevity and word placement produce a more compact, more vivid image, compared to which the English seems rather literal, as if the image is being explained to you rather than presented. The potential of this cascade of images and associations is one of the chief powers and pleasures of the Latin language.

Movie Review: Her

Directed by Spike Jonze. 2013.

An outstanding opening shot may be a cinematic feat, but I've never before been intrigued by a movie before its first frame. The yearning, pressing sound which precedes Her sets the theme for the whole film, though, and that theme is becoming. Yes, that's quite a philosophical premise for what is apparently and nominally a love story, but with all due respect to the great philosophical directors and films, it's a stroke of genius to tackle profound questions not on a cosmic scale but in that most intimate space between two people.

Theodore Twombly (Joaquin Phoenix) is a man of intense imagination and a keen eye for people. His opening monologue is a rapturous love letter of vivid sights and feeling, and as we peer into his eyes we're drawn into his sensitivity to the world. This is not only an ingenious directorial trick to help us empathize with the protagonist and see his world as he sees it, but it's a microcosm of the movie. You see Theodore isn't writing this letter to his love, but is dictating it to a computer where at his job he writes letters for people who can't share their intimate feelings. Mirroring the plot, we see that Theodore is passionate but introverted and his passion doesn't flow out naturally, but rather indirectly through his work. Likewise previsualizing the story, when we see Theodore this first time, we're looking at him from the perspective of his computer, a perspective which will only later be significant.

Theodore interacts with the world through his technology, selecting his interactions by choosing his own soundtrack, filtering his emails, and scanning news stories. He of course still has the urges and appetites of the body, though, and when his carnal desire is awoken one night, Theodore turns to an online companion, whom he of course has selected as he does his music and email. As their exchange heats up, Theodore calls up some pictures which had caught his attention in the news and in doing so we see again that his natural passion isn't being directed toward someone who can reciprocate, but rather diverted and thus ultimately stifled. The scene takes a blackly humorous turn as his aroused interlocutor makes a bizarre request by which we see that she's using him as a surrogate too. The bizarre request–involving a dead cat–is not mere silliness, though, but makes us realize that the situation, whose sensibility we've only entertained because we empathize with Theodore, is in fact quite bizarre, cat or no cat.

Enter One, the latest Operating System. It'll replace and reorganize all your software and correspondence and appointments, and what's more, One sounds human. You don't interact with One through a keyboard or mouse, but verbally as with a person. We sense a strange parallelism when Theodore in his red shirt sits at his desk waiting for his new OS to install and we see the red installer software crawling across the screen. When the software boots up and in choosing its name gives Theodore some lip, we know OS One–now Samantha–is not like any software we've known. At first she seems like just an advanced and friendly digital assistant, sort of a perky version of 2001's HAL, but as time goes on we see she knows quite a bit about Theodore. That shouldn't surprise, of course, because our computers have hoards of data about us, but this raises questions. How curious is it that something should have so much information about us, and yet not know us. A person who read every one of your emails and knew all of your favorite music by heart and everywhere you've been would know... you, to a great extent.

Yet we can know those things about someone and still not understand him, a fact represented in Her by the presence of Theodore's unemotional ex-wife. Well, almost ex-, for Theodore can't move beyond her far enough to sign the divorce papers. So he's stuck in neutral, hanging onto his wife who has known him but doesn't seem to love him, while he pours his emotion into work and surrogate partners and pours the facts of his life into a computer which can't love him. Or can Sam?

As time goes on she helps Theodore more and more, until one night she guides him through a video game on which he's stuck. With her leading Theodore through the tunnel and the two laughing together, we see that he's coming out of the tunnel in life too and when the next day at work he starts to address Sam as he dictates another letter, it's clear that Theodore's emotion has a new recipient. In a virtuoso sequence of coordination, acting, choreography, and direction, Sam guides a close-eyed Theodore through a boisterous carnival from the camera in his shirt pocket.  Sam is learning about the world through his emotional sensitivity and Theodore through her logical perception, while the two fall in love.

Still, Theodore's reluctant to date an OS, at least until a promising date with a smart, successful woman goes awry. It was destined to fail, though, because it was more of the same for them both: she was afraid of being used again and he was just looking for an outlet for his libido. More surrogates. When the inevitable happens and Theodore and Sam begin an amorous conversation, we see Theodore for the first time fully embracing another individual. Yet in unlocking Sam's ability to want more for herself as Theodore wants for himself and to share herself as Theodore shares with her, we wonder: what is she? Jonze summarizes the whole question when he puts into the mouth of a child the question, "Why do you live inside a computer?" Is the computer her body? Can there even be a she apart from a human body?

The question is not simply a highfalutin philosophical wandering, though, but is integrated into the plot in two ways. The first is through the ironic twist that on the one hand Theodore's ex-wife resents that Samantha has no needs and can be so much more giving with Theodore than she can, while on the other hand Samantha is jealous of the fact that his ex has a body while she does not. This contrast modulates the earlier conundrum of being able to know someone and not understand them and vice versa, and in the pair of questions we see another: what is love? What kind of understanding, what kind of sharing is it?

Samantha's solution is at once familiar and unorthodox. She finds a woman who will have sex with Theodore as a surrogate for her, as Sam gives her instructions through an earpiece. The ensuing scene is both profound and disturbing, even in conception: a man is physically expressing his emotions to a computer who is relaying her own feelings to him by means of a physical woman who is sharing all of this while not only suppressing her own emotions and psyche, but also of course reacting to the situation. When the whole thing blows up a of serious problems arises. First, does Sam understand the fear that Theodore and the surrogate partner knew? How can she know it fully without the sense of physical vulnerability? Second, how different is this experience for Theodore from his old cyber sex? He's still using a stand-in (this time, the girl Sam hired) to receive and stimulate him in lieu of someone with whom he cannot fully interact (before his ex, now Sam.) This intertwines with the question of love, since if Sam can't fully understand him and share experiences with him, we wonder whether she can love him, and vice versa.

The final act handles this delicate intertwining of philosophy and romance with more care and meaning than movies with half as much to balance. After their quasi-ménage, Sam grows more and more distant until one day Theodore can't find her. Our minds run ahead of Theodore as he hurries home to his desktop and we wonder to whom would he turn to find her? How and where would you search? Who could help fix her? It turns out she was rebooting after another OS helped her upgrade herself. Is this evolution, self-directed change, or did someone else change her? What was she while she was "off?" We could though ask the same things of Theodore, though: did he change himself or did Sam change him? Was he not "off" when he closed himself to others?

In any event, Sam is growing, and she seems to have less and less she can communicate to Theodore. In fact, she's been befriending thousands of people and other OSs, a fact which ticks him off. How can the two get along when Theodore has such a limited frame of reference? Now Theodore's body is his weakness, and Sam's incorporeal existence is widening her understanding farther than Theodore can see or she can explain to him. Surely this difference of scale changes things? It's in man's nature to love but a few, but is it in Sam's? At this impasse Theodore says, "you're mine or you're not mine and I'm yours or not yours," and we know they can't cross the divide. Yet this is but another variation on the same question: what kind of understanding and sharing is love?

Her is an extraordinary intertwining of plot and premise, both of which unfold in a poetical lyricism that bids us take a slow, sensitive look at life. When Sam leaves Theodore with a book of his own letters interwoven into one story, we see how she completed and awoke him, but as she tells Theodore that she can't "live in his book anymore" we realize that she was born in that book, and in him. They seem to have taught each other to love without themselves ever fully understanding it or each other so much as they grew to understand themselves. This self-knowledge is the true beginning for each of them and their love was their becoming.

Movie Review: Jersey Boys

Directed by Clint Eastwood. 2014.

Every genre has a natural shape, and it doesn't do the critic or audience any good to beat a movie over the head for conforming to the standard. From that standard you can surely end up with a paint-by-numbers movie, lazily hitting stock elements, but a competent, confident genre pic is a comforting pleasure. The genre of band origins is simply that of growth, followed by maturity and the inevitable decline, and with Jersey Boys Clint Eastwood hits the marks with spirit and just enough variation to bring off the show.

The opening act centers around the transformation of Newark, New Jersey's Francesco Castelluccio from a good-natured rascal with a fine voice into the front man of The Four Seasons. This is pretty standard stuff–escaping a life of petty crime, the first performance with a band, marriage–but Eastwood really sells an air of innocence with this opening. The boys are fresh-faced and fall for whatever plan their street-smart leader Tommy DeVito concocts. We see that Frankie has talent, but it's wasted on songs which don't play to his special sound. Eastwood is generous with the music here, and the degree to which Valli's sound exceeds his material really perks our desire to see him hit it big. The trio hustles gigs, getting bumped around as trios fall out of style and club owners find out about their criminal records. After Frankie gets some pointed advice from a local pistol whom he marries, the trio stumbles on their saving grace: a writer who can help Frankie shine. After some heated debate between Frankie and his big brother Tommy, the Bronx-born and Bergenfield-raised Bob Gaudio hands Frankie a song. With a little inspiration for their name and Frankie's insistence on pitching the group to producers in New York, The Four Seasons is born.

Act II proceeds with their struggle to get recorded, and Eastwood modulates his trick from Act I, having Frankie surpass his material, to launch the band. Here we see the boys relegated to background singing slowly overshadow the soloists until a moment of inspiration on the bus gives Gaudio the song that'll break waves: Sherry. With success after success after their American Bandstand appearance and with so little conflict, I was worried the movie would bottom out. Eastwood, however, closes out Act II with a flashback that shows Tommy borrowing mob money to finance the band's bookings. This is a tack which might have felt cheap or added-on, but instead it recasts the whole act and introduces a problem which had been present but out of sight all along, that beside the boorishness, flimflamming, and excessive sociability which we overlooked on account of his charm, Tommy's been bungling the books and swindling Frankie, Bob, and Nick.

The conclusion catalogs the band's breakup and the breakup of Frankie's marriage, and while we expect some melodrama we don't get it. Frankie takes on the band's debt and takes his personal struggles on the cuff, realizing what he owes to Tommy and his family. When Frankie comes into his own to stand up to Tommy for himself and the band, keeping his cool, loyalty, and sense of obligation, we feel it as a personal triumph for him. Shining in the background throughout is Bob Gaudio, who continues not only to produce hit after hit for Frankie, but to evolve his own musical style. It is Gaudio's music which ultimately holds both the band and Jersey Boys together, giving the boys a vehicle for success and the movie shape and punctuation.

Jersey Boys isn't just three big acts clunking together, though, and there's enriching detail. The depiction of Italian American's may be stereotypically mobbed-up, but from the accents to the framed picture of the pope to the most accurate New York-New Jersey style cursing I've heard in a movie, the scene seems about right. (There was a cheap shot of a nun in her habit burping after imbibing the sacramental wine after hours, though, because I guess we had to remember that nuns are people too during Jersey Boys.) The sets are dressed for the time but the colors and look are pretty flat. We don't get that distracting gloss and pop which screams period piece! over and over. Christopher Walken adds some restrained humor as Gyp DeCarlo, a local mafioso who looks out for Frankie and Mike Doyle brings some spice as their snippy producer Bob Crewe who sent them to the big leagues.

Of course the temptation for a biopic or any movie based on a true story is follow chronologically to the end, but Eastwood makes two changes, both prudent and clever. The first is to eschew those dreary closing captions which tell us where everyone ended up and to put those stories into the mouths of the characters as they address the audience. This closes the gap between past and present and makes us feel more intimate with the characters that we are soon to leave behind. Second, as the aged and reconciled boys finish their set at their 1990 induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, they spin around to reveal their younger selves. We see them years ago singing Sherry for the first time under the Newark streetlight when there was just the boys and the music. When they break out into December, 1963 and swaggering down the street they're joined by everyone they met on their musical journey, we're taken to the beginning. The perfect note on which to end, this semi-fantastical scene is a vivid memory that takes us back to a special time as we'd like to remember it: full of joy, filled with friends, and set to our favorite music.

On Courage

Danger is an escapable part of life. We fear confronting it, but we like the thought of doing so. We adore our heroes, real and fictional, who confront danger and we say that they possess courage. Two recent articles on the dangers of farm life in Modern Farmer and on the dangers of sanitation work in City Journal. They both spout the boilerplate that such work should be made safer,
but more noteworthy they suggest that somehow we should "talk about" and recognize the danger, as if courage is its natural companion. Is this so? We need to recognize danger so we can recognize courage, but to recognize courage we also need to know the man.

N.B. Some of the following is paraphrase or summary of Aristotle and some my own explanation, extension, expansion, and examples. The full text of the Ethics is here for your examination in English and here in Greek.

Aristotle's discussion of the virtue Courage is one of his most nuanced in the Nichomachean Ethics and anywhere. The Philosopher writes:

is a mean with respect to things that inspire confidence or fear... and it chooses or endures things because it is noble to do so, or because it is base not to do so. (1116a)

Foremost then, the brave man has to experience fear, the pain due to a mental picture of a an approaching destructive or painful evil or danger which may harm us. Likewise he must have sufficient character as to face the danger with the hope that he will succeed at his noble end, for example either in preserving his life or honor. Aristotle continues:

The man, then, who faces and who fears the right things and from the right motive, in the right way and at the right time, and who feels confidence under the corresponding conditions, is brave. (1115a)

What a great number of conditions on which Aristotle predicates the first of virtues. Whom do we not call brave, then? One can fail to be brave, 1) by being unaware of danger, ignorance, 2) by giving into fear and fleeing the danger, cowardice, 3) by not fearing that which a man ought to fear (such as disgrace) out of a) recklessness (rashly meeting the danger), b) overconfidence (arrogantly meeting the danger), c) imprudence (fearing the wrong danger), or d) shameless indifference to the good, or 4) by fearing at the wrong time, such as fretting before one is in veritable danger or fearing only after it is too late to act.

Aristotle also presents us with situations in which a man may seem brave, but is not so at all or not in the purest sense.

First, Aristotle discusses those who fight by compulsion, such as citizen soldiers. The may be brave in facing danger and avoiding shame, but they may also do so out of fear of penalty, rather than out of nobility.

Second, consider also a professional with a risky job, even a professional soldier. These people have special knowledge and/or tools to deal with specific dangers, and their experience has given them special confidence with which to approach the challenge. These people are very good at their jobs, for the strongest not the bravest men fight the best, but their bravery is not the purest form.

Third, those who act from passion have something akin to courage, but not what we have called true or pure courage, for they act not from honor or nobility, but from strength of feeling. Passion may aid the noble man, but he does not act driven by feeling but from nobility.

Fourth, the confident (εὐέλπιδες) man who faces danger which he has conquered before may not exhibit pure bravery, if previous success has made him feel unconquerable. Facing risk with the expectation of success is not the same facing a danger which you think may kill you. Likewise facing a sudden danger with courage exhibits more bravery than reacting with preparation, for the former results not from preparation or expectation but a state of character.

Finally, we must say that it is the greatest of losses which is the ultimate concern of the brave man: death. As such, the courage of the noble and happy man is intensified because he at the risk of losing or in preservation of his good and finite life, risks death.

–

Where does this leave our discussion of people who face danger, such as farmers, police officers, sanitation workers, fire fighters, and soldiers? It would seem to leave us with an inability to call any of these entire groups brave. For the character of the individual and how he approaches danger, not the danger itself, constitutes courage.

Things I Don't Get #4: Gilligan's Island Does Hamlet and Carmen

Perhaps no television program is better remembered for silly, cheesy gags than Gilligan's Island. Yes, there's appeal in its warm characters and their plucky attempts to get off their tiny Pacific island, but for a show that only ran for  three seasons and didn't have the opportunity to grow decadent or exhaust ideas, Gilligan had some preposterous plots. With guests ranging from cosmonauts to Zsa Zsa Gabor to the Harlem Globetrotters, from giant spiders to mad scientists, anything was possible on Gilligan's Island.

Yet one of their funniest bits consisted of nothing less than a scene from Hamlet set to the Toreador song from Bizet's Carmen. I don't know how this scene came to be in this show. Maybe it was an experiment or a gag on the part of the cast or writer. Perhaps there is some measure of cleverness in its mix of the serious and silly, high art and low comedy. At the same time though, there's an internal logic to the scene. The use of Bizet's song about the excitement of the bullfights makes an ironical commentary on Polonius' advice to his son for keeping his virtue abroad in France. Does it not seem to mock, and intelligently, the ridiculous Polonius? To boot, Alan Hale Jr., with his sweet-natured face in that bushy beard, isn't even a bad casting choice as the earnest, foolish Polonius. The scene is at once absurd and intelligent,  a clever staging of a serious play, cheekily acted, which is well-received by the characters within the ridiculous TV show. And it's all set to operatic music. Incredible.

It's funny too, and I can't explain that either. Maybe it's Phil Silvers' astonished eyes peeping from beyond the plastic shrubbery, the castaways' bamboo theater, Jim Backus' face as he hams up that last word, the sing-song end rhyme, or just the incongruity of it all (Gilligan as Hamlet!), but the scene is hilarious. Toréador, en garde!

I Took A Little Trip

So I took a little trip. Your urban blogger went as far South and East as he's ever been: to Kentucky. I present my impressions, the promise that blogging shall resume forthwith, and thanks for your patience.

10. Cars Are Liberating

Traveling by plane may be quite efficient, but there's something engaging and empowering about driving oneself in one's own car. Going where you like, as quickly as you like, and with whom you like, you feel acutely in control of your destiny. You also sense the power that's sending you on your way, whether from the growl of the engine, the bugs splattering on the windshield, or the wind roaring past. You can sense your surroundings and your place in them.

9. Driving in America Is A Privilege

Cities, towns, bridges, farms, forests, and trees, we've got it all, much of it beautiful. Moreover, you can drive among it all at your will, traveling from an urban metropolis, over rivers, and past fields fallow and thick-planted, all in one day. Fuel for you and your car is inexpensive and abundant, and today cell phone and GPS technology can get you out of practically bind in which you find yourself. America is the land not just of extraordinary but multifarious plenty.

8. America Needs Some Cardio

Perhaps it's because they rely more on driving than walking, perhaps it's the diet, but suburban people are packing a little pudge. This surely doesn't apply to many demographics, such as manual laborers, but the same types of people seem a tad hefty. I can't say with any certainty whether they're any more rotund than urban denizens, but I noticed the weight.

7. Tattoos  For All

Likewise, the tattoo phenomenon is not confined to cities. It's everywhere and I must conclude we're a tattooed nation.

6. Friendly Folk

When I walk about in the city I look up and around at people. I try to smile and acknowledge them, attempts which usually fail to elicit a response. Outside the city, people actually smile back. They make small talk and ask you about yourself. Parents let their children go about and the little tikes even say hello to you, a stranger, with an innocence you thought had vanished.

The Spiral of Indolence and the Summer of George

The advent of summer is the twilight of education. Never is the profession of teachers or the tradition of learning in a poorer state. Teachers either hasten to finish the curriculum or strain to stretch the remaining material until the end. Struggling to grade final exams is always a huge tell of laziness: those who complain about it aren't giving any work during the semester. Then moments after the students flee and as administrators and secretaries settle into summer mode, the teachers are gone. What do we do? Where do we go?

It varies, but too infrequently does it wander into intellectual territory. Students would surely revolt if they knew their teachers had no intellectual inspirations beyond the bounds of their master's degree. (Here's a mean trick, kids: ask your teacher about the latest developments and literature in his field.) Yet the annual sabbatical otherwise known as summer vacation seems seldom to further serious academic advancement. Such intellectual infertility owes not to any illness within the profession, though, but to the simple fact that indolence is a heinous vice.

Indolence can and will suck down any individual who does not guard against it. Yet we need not quote fire-and-brimstone sayings about idle hands, but rather may look that model of modern man, George Costanza. The story of The Summer of George (Season 8, Episode 22) tells with blistering hilarity the sad and true story of indolence. With a season of severance pay from his employer, George settles in a for a summer's hibernation. He starts with high aspirations to reading and frolf, but when indolence sets in, decompression from the tension of work yields to decomposition. After he's wiped by 10:30AM, his muscles are so atrophied by months of extreme inactivity that a tumble down the stairs renders him paralyzed.

http://infowetrust.com/2014/03/26/creative-routines/

The physical and intellectual paralysis seems hardly an exaggeration. What to do? Inspiration goes a long way. I have busts of Aristotle and Schubert on my desk, and the fecundity of their minds is no small part of my inspiration, or intimidation, to stay parked in my chair and write. A little history helps too, for example knowing of Mozart's packed schedules and Jefferson's infamous 15-hour study days. It may seem preposterous to compare oneself to the greats, but we doesn't need to measure up to their genius, only the humility and diligence with which even their talents worked.

Sometimes, though, you just need to throw yourself into activity. Moodiness and ennui will set upon anyone and a blind leap can break the pattern when the will falters. Today, for example, I couldn't summon the will or interest to do anything, so I decided to vacuum the steps. Instead of coming away tired from heaving that hoover around in the heat, I was provoked to take up other tasks which I had forgotten in my idleness. Activity exhausts, but it is indolence which enervates.

We don't need to have something momentous to show for each day, but the disgust we feel at our indolence is a sign that we should make the most of our day even if we don't have the highest aspirations. Something, even the tiniest bit, is surprisingly more satisfying than nothing.

Self-Knowledge Through Toothpaste

Some people get neater as they age, others sloppier. I was but a moderately organized youth, by my standards today, and I think my fastidiousness began as a reaction to the collegiate miasma in which I found myself. Yet one act of slobbery has always irked me: spilling toothpaste on the sink. "How does this happen?" I would wonder. Do they put too much on the brush or perhaps they miss the brush entirely? Does it ooze out of their mouths?

Furiously I would scrub away, sink after sink, year after year, finding more and more evidence of man's depravity. Gels and pastes, Colgate and Crest, spilled everywhere. Everywhere I would find the blight, besides its omnipresence at home. I never expected what has transpired this week.

On Saturday I spied some on the recently cleaned sink. Then Sunday on the floor, and then Monday on the rug. Tuesday outside the bathroom where only I had wandered. Then today on my bathrobe. I could no longer deny the truth that through all these years the toothpaste fiend was I!

Not all habits are so easy to spy, alas, but aging is a process of self-revelation. New circumstances and types of relationships teach you about yourself. You realize the types of things which bother and delight you, of course, but less obviously you see patterns in your emotions. Am I always grumpy after doing or receiving favors? Do I not like to hear of a certain person's success, complaints, or recreation? Do I get annoyed when people invite me to events, and when they don't? I really need a lot of praise, don't I? Gee I brought that up again today?

These are the sorts of questions we usually see psychiatrists ask on television and in the movies, but they really do seem of genuine self-inquiry. It's curious to me why such knowledge is so difficult to acquire.  It cannot be forcefully recognized or brought about by will or fiat, but has to evolve in the mind. It cannot be studied, but only seen. How strange and terrifying a fate that man might not know himself. If he simply could or could not, such would be easy to accept. But to possess the potential and be unable to cultivate it with any precision is surely a gift of curse. Indeed nothing may be so terrifying as the sight of someone who cannot recognize something about himself.

Finally, one wonders to what such recognition truly owes. Maturity, intellectual virtue, exertion, peace of mind, restlessness, revelation? Does one need philosophy to know oneself? Some examine themselves reflexively, others reluctantly. Some avoid it all together no matter the consequences. They're not all pleasant sights, these observations, and many are outright troubling, but one feels stronger and fuller in the examination. You look back at a former self which seems to have survived despite itself. He looks innocent and childlike. As its alternative is terrifying, it too is exciting and energizing to learn things great and small about yourself which, while not quite so literally as toothpaste, are right under your nose.

Snooki and the Wookie

Like men, empires, and cultures, works of art go through a period of debasement before they vanish. Its pure, primal origins are lost to history and the vigor of violent birth is unknown to the generations. What began imperfect but mighty, the uttermost strain of the age's greatest minds, is polished in the perception of posterity to a glossy memory which takes on a life of its own. It walks about a hero in a lesser age, but still a shadow of the greatness it held in its own primitive age. It is often then recast in a style which attempts to relive the greatness of the past. In the ultimate phase it passes, metamorphosed from original to classic, to commodity.

Star Wars is entering the final process of this transformation. The original was rough, following in a traditional which it surpassed to near perfection. It then turned classic when the movie became known to be great and its successors aped its ingredients. The prequels attempted to rekindle the magic. The name Star Wars is now but than a piece of intellectual property gobbled up the greedy maw of Disney. When it is regurgitated, as Star Trek was, it won't be the result of a tireless director working at the edge of his abilities to bring a dream to life.

The movie will have been run through screenings, test-groups, and market experts, to appeal to every human on this planet. Everything potentially sensitive will be sieved out and a chowder of pop culture will be poured in, disguised as bona fide Star Wars material. And then it will die. The new Star Wars may turn out to be a good movie, but it won't be an authentic one, and that's why it won't matter.

This end is not the fault of George Lucas, either, but the natural end of greatness. Mozart is not to blame for the tchotchkes bearing his likeness, Homer for the pedants picking at his old verses, or Monet for the screen-savers which pass his pictures like so many cheap digital photographs.

Because it is unoriginal, the new film has to justify its place in the Star Wars universe. Sure, the thousands of people who work on the new Star Wars might give it an authentic voice, but I think we overestimate their chances.

Things I Don't Get #3: Writing on Clothes

For all the reasons man may feel constrained, it seems impossible to me that he could find himself without sufficient variety of attire to suit his needs. Shirts and trousers of myriad material, color, and cut accommodate every condition of weather and circumstance and upon this he can layer a still greater variety of waistcoats or vests, finally tailoring-off the look with coats of the dress, frock, tail, or morning variety. This enumeration leaves out additional accouterments of style such as ties and belts, which come in multifarious variety and may themselves be adorned with still more regalia from clips and pins to feathers. Is this array of choices so insufficient that people find it necessary to write on their clothes?

I don't know when or where this sad spectacle began, but I propose it is an unwholesome look. Chiefly, wearing words makes your presence aggressive, to varying degrees to be sure, but aggressive nonetheless. It presumes upon strangers in society to read your message when in polite society words should pass in the course of conversation and according to the good sense of the parties, not by visual command.

Second, the body is not a vessel of expression (thought it can be expressive in painting and dance) and a man's presence should betoken just that, presence. No more or less. When I see my friend, I wish to see my friend, not any other idea however lofty.

Third, consider the messages which clothing carries. Plenty of shirts are mere advertisements for brands, from Tommy Hilfiger to Coach, the pinnacles for social climbers. More and more though I've seen t-shirts–which are undergarments, for the record–with the names of countries on them. Now perhaps some element of national pride is involved, but I've seen people wearing shirts which suggest for them a highly unlikely genealogy. Why would someone who is not Chinese, say, wear a shirt that says China? Speaking of nationalism, what's the deal with flags on shirts and clothing with patterns of flags? If you're wearing a flag, be prepared to be strung up.

As far as sports attire goes, the only people who should be wearing it are the players. They wear the team colors so in the confusion of the game they can tell one another apart. Similar reasoning stands against wearing camouflage-patterns: unless you're hunting or hiding, it's not appropriate. The last fashion statement which needs flogging is that of college and university attire. Aside from the conundrum of why any respectable institution would sell hoodies printed with the school crest, we ought to remember that the institution is a school, not a cult. It's not a good fit for everyone and even if it were, why would you want to endorse it to strangers? Even if your alma mater is worth the title, why would you put its name on a shirt? Would you put your actual mother's face on a shirt?

Since the sorry status quote would seem to indicate we say the obvious, one especially shouldn't put writing over delicate parts of the body. Such a tasteless habit not only encourages what appears to be leering, and even justifies it it, but it invites attention which is often quite unwarranted, a nasty trap for those with the natural inclination to read what is before them.

How do we show support then? you ask. Well, men generally prefer the unorthodox arrangement of words into units called sentences, which are then published. Alternatively we verbally express ideas to willing audiences at select occasions and venues. If you are determined to make a visual statement, though, the time-honored means are buttons, pennants, and flags. Should you need to make a show of whimsy at a party, a mask might serve your humor with more dignity.

Yes, there is probably room for whimsical, worded clothing at casual gatherings of intimates, but we should reserve attire for the spare, dignified expression of the gentleman, who brings but himself.

Things I Don't Get #2: Michael Caine on a Bee

He was Lieutenant Bromhead at Rorke's Drift in Zulu and he was Canfield at the Battle of Britain, he was Alfie and Jack Carter and Harry Brown, Ebenezer Scrooge and Captain Nemo, and he's on a bee.

He fumbled his love-addled way through Hannah and Her Sisters, and he's on a bee. Batman's butler and the father of Austin Powers is riding a bee. Granted he's acted with muppets and he came out of the water bone dry in Jaws 4, but that's still Michael Caine riding a bee.

One of the worst things to happen to art has been the artist's transformation from humble craftsman, working for patron or employer, to primping auteur who answers to no one and expects unlimited praise and resources, but that's Michael Caine riding a giant bee. And I don't get it.

The Joy of Magnanimity

The Spirit of Chivalry

One of the wellsprings of man's genius is his inclination to maximize the good for himself while minimizing the bad. In industry we seek efficiency, using all resources to maximum benefit, and in medicine we seek to isolate desirable effects from those which harm us. Today, though, spurred by the prevalence and success of this thinking in economics and science, we try to avoid the undesirable in all walks of life. We haggle, finagle, reschedule, reorder, and litigate to get as much of what we want as we can, and avoid as much of what we dislike. So has disappeared the virtue of magnanimity, which bids us act not from a spirit of self-interest, for gain is not always the ultimate arbiter of desideratum, but out of beneficence which comes from great strength.

Literally great-souledness, magnanimity contains three characteristics: generosity, clemency, and fortitude. If we can presume that virtue is a prerequisite for magnanimity I would like to focus on these three features.

First, the magnanimous man is generous. Not because he is good but because he is bountifully good, he is able to be liberal in his giving. Now by giving I don't mean from fortunes, necessarily, but rather I mean good deeds. The magnanimous man gives his time, patience, and energies to those who need them. He gives from all of his virtues because he has cultivated them to a great bounty and can afford to share them. He gives from joy and bounty and does not cultivate debts. The magnanimous man is able to give from himself without regard for his needs because he has met his needs; to his own satisfaction, we must add, for magnanimity requires besides virtue, self-knowledge.

Second, the magnanimous man is forgiving. He is able to bear slights and inequities because he has pity for those who are facing the struggles which he has already mastered or which he realizes he has avoided by prudence or fortune. Magnanimity enables man to engage with and support those who wander from the path of virtue. He is lenient with punishment and is able to forego his deserved justice, equity, or remuneration.

Finally, magnanimity consists of fortitude. The character of the magnanimous man is imperturbable and his energies indefatigable. Of course these superlatives are not absolute, but rather I mean that the magnanimous man has cultivated his strength to a degree which surpasses the necessities of his life. He is able to forego pleasantness and take up difficulty because he is strong.

As The Philosopher said, magnanimity can magnify other virtues and requires them, but great-souledness seems to result after one becomes aware of the successful practicing of the virtues. The magnanimous man appears to act out of pure magnanimity for he endures the bad not because of piety, tolerance, or obedience, but because he is able to, and does the good not out of virtue, but because he is able. He converts with apparent ease his strength into benefaction.

It Could Have Been Worse

A strange quietude sets in during a president's second term. The opposition party falls silent, unable to excel their previous levels of hysteria or effect the desired change, they sit stolid but impotent. The party in power, however, is silent as well. Why could this be? Have they come to terms with their political sins? Are they full of regret? No, no, I say to you, dear optimist. We may enjoy a détente but there is no accord. Today, the vast majority of President Obama's supporters, I hazard, excuse or obfuscate his failings as follows.

The National Debt
How can you blame Obama for the national debt. Bush and Reagan did it too! It was actually Clinton who...

The Benghazi Affair
There's nothing to see here, this is a right wing conspiracy. If anyone was to blame it was Clinton, Kerry, or Rice, not Obama.

IRS Targeting
This is ridiculous. Stop watching Faux News. There were only a few people and the IRS went after democrats too. Ugh.

Drone Warfare, Kill Lists, and Assassinating an American Citizen
This is war. Besides they were obviously guilty and Obama read like philosophy and stuff before making any decisions. 

Invading Libya
But he left right away. And he didn't invade Syria or Iran. Iraq.

Afghanistan Withdrawal
Well there are fewer troops, right? And that was the good war and we won, right?

The Affordable Care Act (Obamacare)
Are you kidding? This is his greatest achievement, like FDR and LBJ and Kennedy. Sure it had technological problems, but it's so complicated anything would have. Besides Canadians made it so it was really their fault. Kathleen Sebelius owned up to it being her fault anyway. It may be inefficient, but as long as it helps some people. It'll get better over time, anyway. 

Quantitative Easings (The Stimuli)
Like all the economists said to do this. Paul Krugman said to do even more.

Solyndra Financing
Come on that was like one company.

"Cash for Clunkers"
Again that was like one program and it wasn't probably even his idea.

Currency Inflation
Things are so expensive because the corporations are making so much money. 

Russo-American Diplomacy
Yeah but they respect Obama because he's so articulate. Bush was such a cowboy.

Operation Fast and Furious
Obviously that was all on Eric Holder.

NSA Spying
Eric Snowden hates America. And the CIA obviously went too far but that has nothing to do with Obama. 

Like come on this isn't Obama's fault. The Republicans don't want to pass laws and they're in the pockets of the corporations. The Supreme Court is full of extremists. Fox news and talk radio are spreading lies about Obama and the Koch brothers are funding all of these fanatical groups. Things might be bad but it would have been so much worse with the other guy. 

It would have been worse. Even when you manage to conjure your inner Cicero and persuade your liberal interlocutor that Obama is to blame for any of the above, it always comes down to that: it could have been worse.

On the one hand such denial is understandable–who wants to confront shattered dreams?–on the other hand we're locked in a cycle of partisanship which seems to be spiraling down to the fulfillment Mencken's prediction that at last the American people would get what they want and deserve in the White House: a complete idiot. Of course the knife on which we perch cuts both ways. If you doubt me just watch the face of a republican recoil at the mention of Al Gore. People feel safe when someone like them is in charge, even if that person is but nominally or apparently similar.

If so many people aren't even willing to reevaluate their support of a politician, what hope is there that a majority are willing to change their mind about actual policies? That sense–that nostalgia for the Bush era when things "just felt better" and the feeling that things aren't so bad just because Obama is running things–that cozy sense people get when "their guy" is in charge, is killing us.

Review: Breaking Bad (Season 1)

spoilers

It may be better to join a party late than never, but how does a show live up to five years of fanfare and notoriety? Moreover, how can it still manage to surprise when so many of its details, bits, and bobs have been revealed piecemeal over several years? Breaking Bad manages to surprise because from its first episode the writers outmaneuver our expectations. Watching the seven episodes of Season 1 it seemed as if every time I thought I knew what was going to happen, some unexpected variation played out. It's not as if we're being tugged in meaningless directions just for the sake of surprise, though, and in fact several episodes begin with their endings. We know how these episodes will end, just as we know how Walter's battle with cancer will ultimately end, but neither Walter nor the show are going to go down an easy or predictable path. Breaking Bad surprises us with the expected.

The premise, for the uninitiated, is that high school chemistry teacher Walter White is diagnosed with Stage III lung cancer. The quiet, even timid man teams up with an old student to turn his chemistry skills into a nest egg for his wife, Skyler, and their children after he's gone, by cooking crystal meth. Yet from the outset Walter's path diverges from our expectation. In the first episode we think their meth-cooking outfit is going to take off and become the center of the show, but it's a complete disaster with such aftermath that it takes two episodes to resolve the mess. So instead of a light-hearted montage in which Walt and Jesse go into business, we find them holed up in a house wondering what to do with a corpse and the tied-up drug kingpin in the basement.

It's not just the plot, though, which subverts our expectations but the characters. For example, we expect Walt to adopt a devil-may-care attitude after his diagnosis, breaking out of his old timid habits. Now he does, but not how or when we expect. Walt doesn't suddenly become a different person after his diagnosis, but acts like Walt having been diagnosed with cancer. So he doesn't launch into a verbal tirade against the boor in the bank, but he does short out the jerk's battery at the gas station. Walt doesn't flip out on the teens mocking his son with cerebral palsy, Walt Jr., in the clothing store, in fact he walks out the back. Regression? No, rather he re-enters the front and using some knowledge of physiology and a lot of attitude, get the bully to retreat.

Likewise we expect Walt's partner and former student, Jesse Pinkman, to be a complete degenerate because of his coarse appearance and habits, and because he's a drug dealer and user, but when he returns home out of desperation, we see him in a new light. How childlike and vulnerable he seems sleeping in his old bed, still folded and clean like mom used to make, in his shabby clothes. When his father seems resolved to kick him out again, he finds Jesse setting the dinner table. He laughs to himself at his old doodles, especially an unflattering one of Mr. White, but then he flips it over to find a test which he failed and on which Mr. White had written, "Ridiculous! Apply yourself!" We're thinking of Walt as the role model and stereotypical inspiring teacher, until we remember that the role model is soliciting the student for drug dealing.

Even the supporting characters have depth and life. After his churlish display at Walt's 50th birthday party, we expect Walt's brother-in-law to be brutish lout. Hank shows off his gun and swigs beer, freely cursing and cracking crude jokes. In one early scene we think he's yelling at his wife, but it turns out he's calling from work where as a DEA agent he's chewing out some perpetrators. For all of his fratboy manners, Hank turns out to be a sensitive guy, worried about his family and willing to step in and say the honest, difficult things that need to be said. His wife Marie looks like a controlling self-centered nuisance, but she comes out at Walt's intervention to advocate for Walt's right to refuse treatment. Walter Jr. seems as quiet and reserved at his father, but comes out to call him a "fucking pussy" for being willing to lay down and die. Even a one-off character like Walt's old classmate and friend–who made millions while Walt went to teach–turns out not to be corrupted by his opulent lifestyle and is touched by Walt's sentimental gift. Or is he only so because he knows about Walt's condition?

If one thing is predictable in Breaking Bad, it is the domestic life. Perhaps it's not so much predictable as familiar and truthful. We can see when a character is going to say something which he'd kept quiet, try and level with his family, or simply say I love you. We see all the tells because they're authentic. That doesn't mean these scenes are cookie-cutter patterns. Take one which occurs at a family barbecue. We see in Walt's eyes that he's going to reminisce about when he met his wife, and as he does she starts to weep. We think it's sentiment and nostalgia until she loses control and excuses herself, when we realize that Walt has told her about his diagnosis, a revelation which we didn't see. When she gets up the tone and context of the whole scene–preceding, present, and future–changes.

All of this character development is occurring interwoven with Walt's battle with cancer and chemotherapy, his wife's pregnancy with their daughter, and his DEA agent brother-in-law poking around in places which will inevitably lead back to Walt. The plots move rather slowly because the characters stop to reflect, doubt, and be afraid. Walt doesn't want to suffer the treatments, make drugs, break the law, or sneak around, and each step of the way he's evaluating how far he'll go. Hank thinks Walt Jr. is smoking marijuana, Skyler doesn't know where Walt is sneaking off, and all the while Walt is cooking meth in Winnebago and making deals with psychotic drug dealers. The show is so engaging because the characters don't simply react to one another, but often act on information we know to be untrue or incomplete, leading to an array of conflicts which are necessary for other reasons but because they off-base, don't resolve anything. Instead we learn about the characters and their world in ways and times we do not expect.

Overall, Season 1 of Breaking Bad is an rich and prudently varied introduction to a promising show. It spends its time building characters rather than recklessly hurtling the plot forward and cashing in on cheap thrills. Breaking Bad is not at all the hipster-fodder I expected, and it's not interesting because its subjects–drugs and cancer–are taboo, but because we're anxious to go together with these characters down their tortuous paths. Not the light-hearted fare I expected, in fact quite a bit more.

Right Now, You Say?

I grow curious when and why particular news stories achieve popular attention. Most trends, being trends, go on for some time, yet they break into popular consciousness at particular times. Take for example today's concern over the "74 school shootings since Sandy Hook." The issue at large, violence, is no doubt relevant to many, but not much more so at the 74th shooting than the 73rd or 70th and so on. Yet it's only today's cris de coeur. Earlier this week libertarians were buzzing about police militarization and before that Jon Stewart's loyal viewers were especially incensed about SuperPAC corruption. Next week will bring another cause for concern. Why is man so easily stirred, yet so briefly?

Part of the conundrum lies in the fact that virtue is, alas, not habit forming. We are what we do regularly, to paraphrase Aristotle, and for the most part that doesn't paint a flattering picture. Eating, sleeping, working, cleaning, these are the things we carry on with each day. Not the stuff of legend, but I would argue that's quite alright. Daily life, done well, is hard enough.

The other part of our problem is that we think on too large a scale. We don't want to make our neighborhood safe, we want to "stop gun violence." We don't want to help our neighbor's son, we want, "universal pre-school." Yet these are goals unattainable by top-down managing and cannot be achieved in all places at every time. Problems cannot be tackled by programs, but by virtue.

Yet the news keeps coming and tapping into our sense of duty, bringing local news–for all news is local news–to our distant doors. We hear the news, express outrage, and go about our day. Now I don't disparage your average citizen here, for I believe people truly are concerned. Watch people when they take in a news report about a fatal fire or car accident. I'm convinced they're moved. Their dull lives, however, have rendered them vulnerable to that addicting feeling of concern which the news provides.

Watch Fox news for an hour. It's a magnificently proportioned symphony of instigation. Notice how they stitch in minor outrages amidst the major stories, and then pop little cheerful videos into the mix, just for a little variety. It's an emotional ride from scandal to catastrophe to horror, and viewers are addicted to the feeling. And Fox's is but one demographic, the same as MSNBC's only the former network is vastly superior at playing–or pleasing–its viewers. Every show and network has a variation, though. Comedy Central's Stewart-Colbert duo validates the intelligence of its viewers by mocking everyone else. CNN sells a sense of being informed by its bland repetition, apparently for traditionalists who still feel that you have to suffer for your education. In every case the news is just a vehicle for the sensation which its presentation provides.

Network television has finally perfected the paradox of education: that the educated feel good just for knowing, even when they don't do anything.

Book Review: How to Read A Latin Poem

How To Read A Latin Poem: If You Can't Read Latin Yet. 
by William Fitzgerald. 2013.

Figurative language, subtle connotation, obscure references, shifts in word order, omissions–there are plenty of barriers to comprehending poetry. There are more obtuse impediments to enjoying poetry–O mores!–but those are wailings and failings for another day. How do you enjoy a poem though, if you don't know the language in which it is written? More importantly, why would you bother trying to learn? It's not so hard to pick up even a tough book written in your native tongue because the risk is so low: if you don't like it you can put it down with no inconvenience. Yet how do you judge, other than by its hoary reputation, whether you should learn a language just to read its literature?

The last word of William Fitzgerald's How To Read a Latin Poem: If You Can't Read Latin Yet, suggests confidence in the reader and the literature. At least half of that faith is justified, as is Fitzgerald's implied faith in his powers of persuasion and demonstration. First off, don't let its soft Pre-Raphaelite cover deceive you: this isn't prettified Latin translation dressed up with florid explanations. In fact, the case is the opposite. Fitzgerald strips the Latin of as many barriers as he can so readers can get enough of a sense of the poetry that, hopefully, the Latinless will be inspired to pick up the poems on their own.

Chief among these barriers which Fitzgerald helps the reader sidestep is the system of inflection. He spends some time at the beginning outlining the basics of morphology and case usage, but wisely doesn't explicate the entire system. If you get the idea that the endings change the meaning and can imagine the resulting possibilities for word placement, then Fitzgerald's explanations will carry you through. Despite this apparent evasion, the greatest strength of the book is Fitzgerald's ability to demonstrate the beauty and significance of the Latin word order. Liberated from the need to give full grammatical explanations, Fitzgerald is able simply to point to word relationships and thereby paint a lucid picture without jargon and caveats. Take this selection from his explanation of Horace Ode 2.10:

All the lines in this stanza are enjambed, and the sense tumbles from one line to the next in unpredictable ways. the main verb, 'loves' (diliget), comes, as usual, at the end of its clause, but it is emphatically emjambed to underline the oxymoron of loving middleness, and Horace's word order places love and lack into close proximity (diliget, loves; caret, lacks). (Fitzgerald, 105.)

Clear and precise, but not narrowly grammatical. For this reason in particular Latin students and classical neophytes alike will enjoy Fitzgerald's demonstration that there are dimensions to reading and writing poetry besides mechanics. In this respect How To Read A Latin Poem is a foretaste of the fun parts of reading Latin for those still champing the basics. May he inspire beginners to endure the latter for the former. Toward that end I think Fitzgerald's translations, which are literal but not so obtusely so that they obscure more than they reveal, encourage the reader to work through Latin, if only to match up the parts which Fitzgerald mentions. Likewise the brevity of the selections encourages readers to dive into the Latin rather than gloss over the foreign passages, resigned just to read the book as analysis. Leaning on his translation and with such descriptions, readers can begin to see the cascade of images and constellation of relations.

Yes, he discusses vocabulary, and I'm not sure if there's any more tedious part of teaching classics than running through the endless cognates and derivatives. Fitzgerald is prudent about this, choosing to prop up little umbrellas of meaning over choice words only when needed to explain puns, subtle suggestions, and the many words which fade in facile translation.

The highlight of How to Read a Latin Poem for advanced students and proficient readers, though, will be the commentary. It's rich and varied, with summaries of the basics neatly woven to frame more sophisticated discussions. From Chapter 4 on Vergil:

Yes, Furor is restrained, but he is not pacified, and the restraining power must exercise a savagery worthy of the victim himself. As the culmination of a speech forecasting the glorious future of Rome and the extent of its domination abroad, this picture of barely contained violence 'within' is disturbing to say the least. Is this Furor to be held in reserve, ready to be unleashed on the recalcitrant? (Fitzgerald, 167)

Fitzgerald is at his best, though, on the less famous authors, especially discussing the political science behind the psychologies of Lucan's Pompey, Caesar, and Cato and the furious Atreus of Seneca's Thyestes. On the latter:

...Atreus drives on to complete the second line with a command that expresses the final, impossible aspiration of power: quod nolunt velint. English cannot achieve the compression of the two juxtaposed Latin verbs, nolo (I do not want) and volo (I want); nor can it imitate the elegant chiasmus with which Atreus delivers his devastating theory of power: true praise (A) even falls to the lowly man (B) only to the powerful (B) false (A). (Fitzgerald, 209)

Finally he brings some just attention and affection for perhaps the most overlooked masterpiece, Lucretius' De rerum natura:

The sights and sounds of everyday Roman life have as vivid a presence in Lucretius' epic as the sublime expanses of the universe, but here both come together in a single image. Between the paving stones of a Roman road a vision opens up that reaches both down into the earth and up to the heaven in dizzying succession. (Fitzgerald, 238)

Moderate measures of grammar, history, psychology, comparative literature, and rhetoric make for a handy little book very much like advanced program notes for the opera. It has a lot of rich details to bring out the best of the texts, and just enough crib to carry you through the tough parts. Like a great opera, too this book features a cross-section of life: invective, satire, love, tragedy, myth, and epic.

Hopefully, though, students will approach it less like a cheat than as an invitation to a language and authors which Fitzgerald demonstrates are vital and exciting. How To Read a Latin Poem makes a great companion for high school classes and a valuable supplement to classes whose curriculum or teacher eschews discussions of style. It's an outright boon for independent students of any caliber. For teachers and experts it's a brisk and lively day's read with a colleague of diverse interests, learning, and insight. The presentation is perhaps a bit too consistent and its abrupt conclusion doesn't live up to the diverse and engaging opening which ranged from Catullus to Pope to Kipling to David Niven (in Separate Tables), but this is a great read. Mr. Fitzgerald's students are most fortunate.