What I've been reading

I recently finished reading “Absalom, Absalom!” by Faulkner. I’ve read that article about how reading literary fiction makes you smarter, and I figure now I must be brilliant.

 I had actually read this book before, maybe 20 years ago, but I had a lot of trouble with it then: It wasn’t so much the long, convoluted sentences as the plot itself. The edition I just read includes both a chronology and a genealogy of the main characters, written by Faulkner and included in his first edition, which was either absent from the earlier text I read or else it was in the back and I didn’t notice it. Anyway, that made things much clearer, and I had no trouble following what was going on this time.

When I read it before, I approached Faulkner as you might approach a literary god. It’s possible his reputation was larger then, or it may have been an accident of geography: I was living in New Orleans, and Faulkner famously lived in New Orleans and wrote his first novel there, and of course his real literary territory was Mississippi, which is right next door.

I liked the book – liked it a lot, in fact – but I’m not quite sure it embodies divinity. Yes, the writing is incredible, and impressive. And the story is a hell of a yarn. But frankly, it seemed a bit over the top. I had always thought Faulkner transcended “Southern Gothic,” but boy, this was pretty freakin’ Gothic. And I anticipated the expression of the omniscient third-person narrator would be Faulkneresque, but so was that of virtually every character in the book, in speech and writing (like, in letters). That seemed a little weird. Also, the long sentences didn’t get to me, but the four-page paragraphs did. I’m an episodic reader – before going to bed, or at breakfast, for example – and when the paragraphs are that long, where do you stop? Picayune on my part, I know, but lordy.

It does include this wonderful concise description of New Orleans, as “that city foreign and paradoxical, with its atmosphere at once fatal and languorous, at once feminine and steel-hard…” I remembered that from my first reading; it was still true in 1996, and I bet still true today.

Finishing that book put me into that sweet, or maybe bittersweet, space where you have just done with the book that was your current read, so you are without a current read, and you contemplate what will be next. There is a sense of absence, a touch of anxiety, but also anticipation: Will it be history? Fiction? Something a bit different, like an anthology of essays? I typically alternate fiction and non-fiction, and I typically scour my bookshelves and savor the possibilities. I varied that slightly this time, in that I picked up on a suggestion from a co-worker and from the library acquired “Game Change,” a book about the 2008 presidential campaign. It is, as my coworker described it, political porn. It’s not great, but I am tearing through it and enjoying the heck out of it.

The Tea Party mindset, revealed!

Well, it turns out I am not the only one curious about what underlies the thinking of Tea Partyers: So is Democracy Corps, a research and policy outfit put together by James Carville and Stan Greenberg. They convened focus groups of Republicans to find out where they were coming from, and their report is fascinating (and not as daunting as the length would suggest -- it is broken into bite-sized chunks).
You can find a summary and link to the full report here.

Meanwhile, Harold Meyerson of the Washington Post cited the report in his Oct. 15 column.

And some time back, I was channel surfing and ran across a Cato Institute seminar on the psychology of the Tea Party. Long story short, that led me to this survey comparing broader libertarian views to those of traditional liberals and conservatives (in the survey, "libertarians" essentially stand in for "Tea Partyers," although those groups may not be congruent). Turns out there are some areas of overlap on both ends of the spectrum, according to the report on the survey, which includes a 12-minute video summary.

Enjoy!

Best of Gregger FB comments II

(see previous post)

And this one was in response to this comment: "Basic economics says that minimum wage increases both take jobs away from deserving job-seekers, and take business opportunities away from would-be employers, resulting in a net negative impact on the economy. (If I could operate e.g. a cost-effective bakery before with 10 bakers at $6/hour, it may not be cost-effective anymore at $15/hour, and so the bakery closes and the people lose their jobs). It also shifts jobs away to jurisdictions with no minimum wage regulation, and encourages a black-market economy. I haven't seen any rational, non-emotional argument for minimum wage."

To wit:

Virtually any labor regulation can be logically attacked as job-killing and business-destroying, because it increases the cost of employing people and doing business in a competitive environment: minimum wage, work week and overtime, workplace safety, even child labor laws (which were argued against by pro-business interests at the time). The problem is, absent these kinds of regulations, the result is not pretty. The most economically efficient approach to labor is to treat it as a commodity -- but if you do that, the result is really not pretty. And this is not abstract speculation, because we've seen a developed industrial economy like that: late 19th-century America. The horrible abuses and exploitation of that time (and others) are why we have these regulations in the first place. (It always amazes me that people act as if these laws and regulations were just dreamed up by bureaucrats sitting around with nothing better to do -- like, no one ever got injured at work or burned to death in a shirtwaist factory, everything was just peachy keen, and some pencil-pushers decided to invent OSHA just because). It seems to me the object of our laws and regulations should be to shape the best society, not the best economy -- and though there's a lot of overlap there, those outcomes, sadly, are not identical.

Best of Gregger FB comments I

Seems like some of my best stem-winding declamations come in comments on Facebook threads -- but why limit then to that audience? Why not go global, and drive traffic to my blog?


So, here's one in response to a friend posting a Bill Keller opinion piece (see below):

I like Keller's points on the second page about the "M.D. cartel." Funny how these doctors who rage against government intrusion are perfectly happy to benefit from a cartel whose rules and restrictions are enforced by...the government. If I want to compete with an espresso-stand owner, I can open my own espresso stand and let the invisible hand of the free market sort it out. But if I want to compete with a doctor, I can't do that, unless I jump through hoops the access to which is controlled by the very people I want to compete with -- or else go to (government-run) jail for practicing medicine without a license. Of course, my position is absurd, because nothing so important as the life-and-death issues of health care should be left to the unregulated vagaries of the free market. Oh, wait...

Obamacare: The Rest of the Story

 

Bloviations

When I was in the shower the other morning, I’m not ashamed to say that I got to thinking about political theory and behavior. Two lines of thought crossed in my sudsy brain: one deriving from an article called “The Rise of the New New Left” that has been getting a good deal of attention lately, and the other related to my ongoing curiosity about what motivates Tea Party behavior.

"The Rise of the New New Left,” which I’ve been passing around to my friends and co-workers, maintains that much of the electorate, and particularly the young electorate, is turning away from the centrist, small-government, business-celebrating philosophy that has dominated both the Democratic and Republican parties for the past 30 years and toward a more traditionally leftist perspective that is skeptical about business and more receptive to governmental solutions. The catalyst? The Great Recession, which gave the lie to the free market’s claim to superior wisdom about ordering society. It makes sense: If you graduated from college in the last five years into a world ravaged by an economic collapse that followed on the free market run amuck, a world in which job opportunities were limited or non-existent, you wouldn’t have much faith in the genius of unfettered capitalism – and you might look somewhere else for opportunity (or health coverage).

So, I was thinking, that would apply to the graduating classes of 2008, 2009, 2010…Wait a second: 2010 -- that was the year the Tea Party burst fully on the political scene, in the midterm voting that gave control of the U.S. House to the Republicans (in a very low-turnout election, but that’s a subject for another day). And suddenly, as I was rinsing my beard, it occurred to me that the Tea Party phenomenon is also a reaction to the Great Recession -- just in a different form.

I was political editor for The New Orleans Times-Picayune in 1991, when David Duke ran against Edwin Edwards for governor. Edwards won in a landslide, but the Duke threat was very real: He finished a close second to Edwards in the open primary, beating out the incumbent governor, Democrat-turned-Republican Buddy Roemer, and took 55% percent of the white vote in the general election (in case you don’t know, Duke, who ran as a Republican, is a white supremacist and was an avowed Klansman and neo-Nazi, with the newspaper photos to prove it; Edwards, a Democrat, was a former governor widely regarded as corrupt who ultimately went to federal prison).

At the time, I was as bemused (in the strict sense) by the Duke supporters as I am by the Tea Party types today: What makes them tick? What are they thinking? As Thomas Frank put it, “What’s the Matter With Kansas?”

Louisiana was not in good shape in 1991. It’s an Oil Patch state, and the oil boom of the late ‘70s and early ‘80s had gone bust a few years before, in a major way. And from what I saw in 1991 on TV and heard and felt, the emotion Duke tapped into was anger: anger that les bon temps did no longer rouler, that the American Dream as mass-marketed to ordinary folks by the consumer economy seemed to be slipping from their grasp. When people get angry, when they feel beleaguered by circumstances they neither control nor understand, they often look for someone to blame (a very human reaction, I think we can agree, and more satisfying than blaming yourself, even if that is merited). In 1991, Duke gave to despairing white voters blacks and affirmative action as objects of their wrath; in 2010, the Tea Party channeled recession-spawned rage in the direction of big government, the Muslim socialist in the White House and socialism in general.

Maybe this is not an original idea, but it was a better subject of contemplation than I sometimes chance on in the shower.

WBC final: Japan vs. Korea

I watched most of the game (that's the World Baseball Classic final). As a baseball fan, I dug it. Very high level of play, especially the fielding. It's clearly different from U.S. baseball, though: U.S. leans more on home runs -- probably because there are more sluggers in the U.S. game -- while Korea and Japan play more small ball. So they will have their cleanup hitter bunt a runner to second early in the game. I don't think you'll see Ryan Howard laying down a lot of bunts this year, no matter what the situation.

Also, the announcers were all over the Korean manager's decision to pitch to Ichiro with 2 outs in the top on the 10th--especially after the runner on first stole second, leaving first open, and the at-bat went on and on. Made sense: Do you really want to pitch to one of the greatest hitters in the history of baseball (on any continent) with the championship on the line and a base open? And the announcers were proved right with Ichiro hit the 9th (?) pitch of the at-bat into center to drive in 2 runs -- the eventual winning margin.

BTW, winning Japanese pitcher was named Yu Darvish. It seemed like every other player on the team had a name like Suzuki or Johjima or Okajima or Yamazaki or something other very Japanese-sounding. What's the ethnic background of Darvish?

What I've been reading

"What the Buddha Taught," by Walpola Rahula (1959; enlarged edition, 1974). Apparently, this is a pretty well known book, providing an intro to Buddhism. I don't remember where I got it; from the tag on the cover, it looks like I might have picked it up at a used bookstore. I've had it for a while and pulled it off the shelf only recently.

When I first read it, I was really struck by it. It's very clear and straightforward. I really liked the part about how Buddhism doesn't rely on faith, and doesn't ask you to believe anything the way other religions do. The metaphor is, "If I tell you I have a gem hidden in the folded palm of my hand, the question of belief arises because you do not see it yourself. But if I unclench my fist and show you the gem, then the question of belief does not arise." Buddhism works by showing you what's what: You learn it by yourself, without any outside agents involved. There are no gods in Buddhism.

And the what's what is pretty convincing, too: Life is ever-changing, impermanent; people long for permanence, including the conviction that their self, or soul, is everlasting; their attachment to or desire for things that turn out to be transitory causes frustration, disappointment and suffering; and the extinction of desire and attachment leads to a state of pure joy, compassion for all living beings and appreciation for the world as it is in the present instant.

OK, the bit about reincarnation (which is bad, and happens if you haven't achieved total detachment) requires a stretch of the imagination. And I'm not quite sure I'm ready to completely forswear meat, intoxicating drink and sensuous lust, though I appreciate how they conflict with compassion and the clarity of mind required to meditate and achieve pure detachment. But on reflection, my main issue is with the idea that the unenlightened life is pretty much a total drag. I mean, yeah, there's plenty of suffering and unhappiness and tribulation in life, but if you know that and can roll with it, there are good things, too -- some of it very much involved in attachment to other people.

So I don't think I'll become a full-on Buddhist just yet. But there's a lot of meaningful stuff to take away from all this.