The death of words...

This morning's "Fresh Air" broadcast featured past interviews with two recently dead writers and critics: Reynolds Price, the much-loved southern novelist; and Wilfrid Sheed, a British critic-cum-nonfiction writer and novelist. Both of these men were about 80 years old, and though they came from different countries, their particular ways of speaking struck me as being quite similar. They each seemed to delight in fastening words together, as if their specific points were secondary to the ways in which they were presented--poetically, thoughtfully, and with a graceful ease. While listening to the broadcast, I was struck by how these men seemed to speak for a different time; the language they made use of and the care with which they composed their statements seemed old fashioned, but also much much better than how almost anyone speaks under the age of, say, 60.

I got to thinking about who would speak for today's American literary presence, and the first author who jumped to mind was Jonathan Franzen. I suppose that, aside maybe from Don Delillo, Franzen is the most respected--at least on a worldwide popular and pseudo high-minded scale--American author today. Compared with Price and Sheed, Franzen's spoken English is sadly inferior. I listened to a clip from a radio interview with Franzen late in 2010, and there is not even close to the same command, confidence, and resonant joy in language as evidenced by writers of ages past.

What does this all mean? I am not sure exactly, but I suspect that there are historical causes at play here. The most interesting possibility is not the most obvious: the postmodern (I know I know: not supposed to use that hackneyed term anymore) condition has eroded a reverence for words that once consumed men and women of letters. That makes me sound like Allan Bloom, but, well, there you have it. Then of course there is the reliance on technology to speed up communication, a condition that obliterates subtlety and joy in the name of efficiency, speed, and access.

I fear that the worst part of the 60s, namely the attempted eradication of a sense of good, better, and best in cultural expression, was so successful that we have lost the ability or interest in promoting a learned mastery of words, all in order to include all points of view.

First interesting development

Today I accepted an internship as an editor and (hopefully) writer for the San Francisco Giants and Oakland A's magazines. I guess there is life after grad school. I have long harbored the dream of one day writing about baseball for a living, but that seemed even more of a stretch than becoming a professor. Not that this internship leads directly down that path, but, at least I'm closer than I was a week ago. Writing about baseball in an official capacity--woah.

Here is another wonderful video; I think it is the best I've seen about the misery of humanities PhDs in training...

http://www.collegehumor.com/video:1944515

Great video.

We well-read people are better than you.

Macbook Air. Politics.

So last week I bought a Macbook Air. The 11in. über cool model. The model that is designed specifically to draw envious stares. Sure, the thinness presents all sorts of practical benefits, but really, nobody buys the Air for that. Those of us willing to spend $1000 on a computer like this are concerned with aesthetics first and foremost. Plus, once you play with one, it is instantly apparent that you can never again go back to the world of regular, non-Air computers. I do not care in the slightest how much more powerful the Macbook Pro is. I do not care that I could have bought a super-PC capable of rendering the fabric of space time for the same price as my diddly little Air. I just had to have this machine.

On a darker note, I want to take this time to announce my complete and total annoyance with the way the horrible tragedy of the Tucscon shooting has turned into a...wow this Air is thin. Did I mention that I bought a new Macbook Air? And it is so quiet. And so fast. And so...

And Another Thing

Tax cuts. Ok, dear republican friends, colleagues: G.W. Bush explained to Matt Lauer on Monday evening that the tax cuts that he is so famously reviled for were necessary to prevent an economic disaster following the events of 9/11. Ok, fine, so let's give that bullshit idea the benefit of the doubt. Why then were they still necessary in, say, 2006, when the economy was roaring along and the Dow was climbing to previously unheard of heights? What argument could possibly have been made to keep them in place then? Oh, to maintain the status quo you say, my republican apologist friend. Things were good, so why mess with taxes? Fair enough. But then, WHY THE HELL WOULD WE EXTEND THE TAX CUTS NOW? You cannot have it both ways Mr. Boehner. If the tax cuts should be kept in place, because without them American businesses can't create jobs, then where are all the jobs that those tax cuts are creating? Not sure why I bother with these rants. Maybe Mr. Boehner googled something about dropping out of grad school and stumbled upon this blog. Maybe I just changed his mind. Or maybe I'll have another glass of wine and go to bed.

As for the professional world: feeling pretty good about the grad school decision. I pretty much woke up one day and...felt...fine. I seem to be dealing with the normal sequence of events following a bowing out of academia. Step 1: freak the fuck out. Step 2: contemplate ways to reenter the protective cocoon of grad school. Step 3: question entire identity. Step 4: send feelers out into the non-academic world to see if it really does exist. Step 5: decide to teach English abroad if nothing else works out. Step 6: freak the fuck out again. How long until opening day starts? Nothing assuages existential crises like the nasaly sweetness of Vin Scully. Time for Dodger baseball indeed.

This May Be...No Really This Time it Probably is...

Is it possible that this next decade will usher in the end of western capitalism? The more I think about it, the more this seems to be a real possibility. Here is what I mean. If the republican controlled House enacts its own chosen legislative agenda, or even if it succeeds in blocking and obfuscating everything the democrats try to do, the middle and working classes of this country will be absolutely crushed. Social services ruined, tax policy favoring the rich even more, etc. etc. etc. This will result in only a couple of possibilities. One, a massive revolt by the lower classes. We've seen this kind of thing before, but it has been awhile since it has been anything other than cultural. The 60s provided a kind of blueprint for a nation-wide movement, but it was vague, unfocused, and mostly concerned with moral and cultural evolution. We need to look back to the massive worker-centered protests of the late 19th century that were fueled by labor unrest related to periodic economic swan-dives that rocked the nation in 1873 and 1893. Think Haymarket square riots, Pullman riots. I'm talking bloody, fiery, angry mobs that were sick of being exploited by the power class. It could and probably should happen again. The second possibility is one that I certainly favor, and which seemed likely to happen anyway until last week's election debacle. A further shift to a Scandinavian-style political and economic environment. This has been the lefts' dream of course for decades now and in some important ways, Obama almost heralded the dawn of this promised age. His watered down health care legislation and his equally diluted plan to create jobs via government investment in green industry pointed the way down this pragmatically utopian path. But this path was blocked last week by a resurgence of idiotic republican voters; a blockage that seems to be only temporary. The republicans have no plan, other than continuing to swindle, hoodwink, and bamboozle ordinary Americans into voting for politicians who will continue to legislate in favor of Wall Street and big business by sidling up to conservative America's fear of abortion, gun control, and, well everything really. This lack of a plan has to backfire, right? I think so. I hope so. I imagine that even conservative America will begin to realize that they have been dependent on government's teat for decades, and that the "free market" really just means the rich preying upon the not rich. Which, hopefully, theoretically, will result in a leftward movement among the American electorate. This could all happen within a decade. And, whether or not this movement is a violent, furious shift, or a ballot-box renunciation of the republican death-machine, there is a good, good chance that American capitalism will have a decidedly socialist flavor as a result.


Still applying for publishing/editing jobs, with no bites yet. Second private school observation coming up next week. The slog continues...

Also: the following link is a great summary of why I decided not to attend grad school next year. Watch and learn.

http://www.leavingacademia.com/2010/10/i-want-to-be-a-college-professor/

Things Will Not Get Better (regardless of what Obama or Dan Savage says)

Thomas Jefferson, possibly the most revered "founding father" was as affluent and elite as they come. Jefferson was fluent in three languages, had an insatiable thirst for French wine, built a fabulous and fabulously expensive estate, and was as comfortable in a Parisian court as he was in Virginia. Jefferson would have, in fact, preferred that the newly emergent American political and social system he helped create hewed more closely to the French model. Much of the same could be said for Ben Franklin, right down to his francophilic tendencies. Alexander Hamilton was terrified that members of the lower class would have any say whatsoever in the government, and he favored a radically aggressive governmental handling of the economy--this from the United States' first Secretary of the Treasury.

These men would be truly saddened to see how their political experiment has borne itself out, but not in the ways that republicans and conservatives assume. Elitists to the bone, the founders of this nation greatly feared that they risked ceding too much control of the government to the uneducated and the incapable. They knew that the masses were quite easily swayed, that passions inflamed were passions uncontrolled, and that in a democracy passions could be just as devastating as foreign armies. The very notion of the representation that is at the heart of our political system reflects this concern. The "people" are in no way smart enough or knowledgeable enough to run a government: hence the need for representation. It was once assumed that citizens of the highest intellectual talent and possessing the greatest education were naturally superior officeholders. It is truly, truly shocking that this faith in intelligence has actually receded.

The sad truth that republicans now have enough obstructionist power to idiotically wrestle the economy into the next Great Depression is probably less important than the powerful truth that should be evident to progressives nationwide: The United States is doomed. This election was not about anger, it was about fear. Conservatives, by their very nature, are a fearful lot, and they lack both the vision and, quite ironically, the hindsight to recognize their folly. Their desire to return America to a WASPY 1950s heyday will ruin us. Americans, read your British history. There we will find the blueprints for an empire in decay, and, unfortunately, our future.

On a lighter note: I've received some very positive responses to my C.V. from private high schools in the area, and have scheduled several observation days and meetings with faculty. And, mark your calendars, I will deliver my third guest lecture at Berkeley City College on November 15th. The theme will be U.S. economic history in the 19th and 20th centuries.

Also: After a recent viewing of "First Contact" I have declared, definitively, that not only is Jean-Luc Picard officially superior to Kirk, but that Patrick Stewart is the greatest...actor...ever.