The Prospect looks at Beijing Coma and talks to its author, Ma Jian ... At The Atlantic, Megan McArdle has some advice for you guys who want to share your sci-fi jones with the wife: "Those of you who pitch science fiction to wives and girlfriends who do not enjoy it are probably saying something along the following lines: "Space ships! Alien monsters! Men in tights!" Instead, for women who find that sort of thing distasteful, talk about it as a fairy tale--only a fairy tale with science instead of magic. The basic emotional space it taps is the same." ... Thank you to the many readers who wrote in to alert us to sightandsounds.com's report on a new interpretation of Godot. (Scroll down to Die Welt 20.06.2008); Tom Teicholz has a bit more at his place ... UK publisher Hamish Hamilton has launched on an online literary magazine called Five Dials ... A report on the recent literary festival at Shakespeare & Co ... Ted Hughes's holiday home is open as a writers' retreat (insert Bell Jar joke of your choice) ... Sam Jordison, the literary luminary whose resume includes the masterwork Crap Towns, decides that Disgrace would be at home in one of his towns ... An inscribed presentation copy of a first edition of Emma is about to go on sale ... The International Herald Tribune considers "Egypt's Balzac," (their formulation, not ours) Naguib Mahfouz ... Like most of you, we rue the closing of Cody's Books ... Oh, and finally, we're still irritated by Ian McEwan's recent outburst, especially his contemptible assertion that "American Christians don't want to kill anyone in my city ... " Real Big Picture thinking, sir. Barnett Slepian thanks you for your concern.
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June 25, 2008
WEDNESDAY MARGINALIA
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WORTHY READINGS
TEV DEFINED
The Elegant Variation is "Fowler’s (1926, 1965) term for the inept writer’s overstrained efforts at freshness or vividness of expression. Prose guilty of elegant variation calls attention to itself and doesn’t permit its ideas to seem naturally clear. It typically seeks fancy new words for familiar things, and it scrambles for synonyms in order to avoid at all costs repeating a word, even though repetition might be the natural, normal thing to do: The audience had a certain bovine placidity, instead of The audience was as placid as cows. Elegant variation is often the rock, and a stereotype, a cliché, or a tired metaphor the hard place between which inexperienced or foolish writers come to grief. The familiar middle ground in treating these homely topics is almost always the safest. In untrained or unrestrained hands, a thesaurus can be dangerous."
RECOMMENDED
- Nobility of Spirit: A Forgotten Ideal by Rob Riemen
This slim volume by the president and founder of the Nexus Institute, a European-based humanist think-tank, stands as the most stirring redoubt against the ascendant forces of know-nothingness that we've come across in a long time. A full-throated, unapologetic defense of the virtues of Western Civ – in which "elite" is not and never should be a dirty word – this inspiring exploration of high art and high ideals is divided into three sections: The first looks at the life of Riemen's great hero Thomas Mann as a model for the examined life. The second imagines a series of conversations from turning points in European intellectual history, populated with the likes of Socrates, Nietzsche and others. The final section, "Be Brave," is nothing less than an exhortation to dig deep, especially in times of risk. The notion of nobility of the spirit might strike some modern ears as quaint but it seems more desperately necessary than ever before, and there are worse ways to read the accessible Nobility of Spirit than as a crash refresher in the Great Thinkers, free of academic jargon and cant. As a meditation on what is at stake when the pursuit of high ideals is elbowed aside by the pursuit of fleeting material gain, however, Nobility of Spirit might well be the most prescient book we've yet read on what's at stake in the current election cycle and in the developing global situation. Agree or disagree with Riemen's profound, ambitious and high-minded plea, you will be thinking about his words for a long time. It's been ages since a work of non-fiction moved us this way. Read it. Discuss it. Argue about it. - Netherland by Joseph O'Neill
With rave reviews from James Wood, Michiko Kakutani and Dwight Garner, it might not seem like we need to tell you to drop everything and go read Netherland, but we are telling you, and here's why: The way book coverage works these days, everyone talks about the same book for about two or three weeks, and then they move on and the book is more or less forgotten. Whereas a berth here in the Recommended sidebar keeps noteworthy titles in view for a good, long time, which is the sort of sustained attention this marvelous novel deserves. A Gatsby-like meditation on exclusion and otherness, it's an unforgettable New York story in which the post 9/11 lives of Hans, a Dutch banker estranged from his English wife, and Chuck Ramkissoon, a mysterious cricket entrepreneur, intertwine. The New York City of the immigrant margins is unforgettably invoked in gorgeous, precise prose, and the novel's luminous conclusion is a radiant beacon illuminating one of our essential questions, the question of belonging. Our strongest possible recommendation.
- Dictation: A Quartet by Cynthia Ozick
"History," wrote Henry James in a 1910 letter to his amanuensis Theodora Bosanquet, "is strangely written." This casual aside could easily serve as the epigraph of Cynthia Ozick's superb new collection Dictation, which concerns itself with lost worlds evoked by languages -- languages which separate and obscure as readily as they bind. It can be risky to look for connective tissue between stories written years apart and published in magazines ranging from The Conradian to The New Yorker. But themes of deception, posterity, and above all, the glory of language -- at once malleable and intractable -- knit together this quartet, recasting the whole as the harmonious product of Ozick's formidable talent. Read the entire review here
- Diary of a Bad Year by J. M. Coetzee
Now, on the one hand, you scarcely need us to alert you to the existence of a new J.M. Coetzee novel, or even to have us tell you it's worth reading. But we can tell you - we insist on telling you that Diary of a Bad Year is a triumph, easily Coetzee's most affecting and fully wrought work since Disgrace. Formally inventive, the book intertwines two narratives with the author's own Strong Opinions, a series of seemingly discrete philosophical and political essays. The cumulative effect of this strange trio is deeply moving and thought provoking. It's increasingly rare in this thoroughly post-post-modern age to raise the kind of questions in fiction Coetzee handles so masterfully - right down to what is it, exactly, that we expect (or need) from our novels. It's telling that, for all of his serious pronouncements on subjects ranging from censorship to pedophilia to the use of torture, it's finally a few pages from The Brothers Karamazov that brings him to tears. Moving, wise and - how's this for a surprise - funny and lightly self-mocking, Diary of a Bad Year might well be the book of the year and Coetzee is surely our essential novelist. We haven't stopped thinking about it since we set it down.
- The Indian Clerk by David Leavitt
David Leavitt's magnificent new novel tells the story of the unlikely friendship between the British mathematician G.H. Hardy and Srinivasa Ramanujan, mathematical autodidact and prodigy who had been working as a clerk in Madras, and who would turn out to be one of the great mathematical minds of the century. Ramanujan reluctantly joined Hardy in England - a move that would ultimately prove to his detriment - and the men set to work on proving the Riemann Hypothesis, one of mathematics' great unsolved problems. The Indian Clerk, an epic and elegant work which spans continents and decades, encompasses a World War, and boasts a cast of characters that includes Bertrand Russell, Ludwig Wittgenstein and Lytton Strachey. Leavitt renders the complex mathematics in a manner that resonates emotionally as well as intellectually, and writes with crystalline elegance. The metaphor of the prime number – divisible only by one and itself – is beautifully apt for this tale of these two isolated geniuses. Leavitt's control of this dense, sprawling material is impressive – astonishing, at times – and yet despite its scope, he keeps us focused on his great themes of unknowability and identity. The Indian Clerk might be set in the past but it doesn't resemble most so-called "historical fiction." Rather, it's an ageless meditation on the quests for knowledge and for the self – and how frequently the two are intertwined – that is, finally, as timeless as the music of the primes. (View our full week of coverage here.)
- Then We Came to the End by Joshua Ferris
Joshua Ferris' warm and funny debut novel is an antidote to the sneering likes of The Office and Max Barry's Company. Treating his characters with both affection and respect, Ferris takes us into a Chicago ad agency at the onset of the dot-bomb. Careers are in jeopardy, nerves are frayed and petty turf wars are fought. But there are bigger stakes in the balance, and Ferris' weirdly indeterminate point of view that's mostly first person plural, underscores the shared humanity of everyone who has ever had to sit behind a desk. It's a luminous, affecting debut and you can read the first chapter right here.
- Christine Falls by Benjamin Black
Coming to these shores at last, John Banville's thriller, written under the nom de plume Benjamin Black, has drawn rave reviews across the pond since it first appeared last October. Those who feared Banville might turn in an overly literary effort needn't worry. Influenced by Simenon's romans durs (hard stories), Banville unspools a dark mystery set in 1950s Dublin concerning itself with, among other things, the church's trade in orphans. At the heart of the book is the coroner Quirke, a Banvillean creation on par with Alex Cleave and Freddie Montgomery. Dublin is rendered with a damp, creaky specificity – you can almost taste the whisky.
- The Paris Review Interviews, I by The Paris Review and Philip Gourevitch
Scanning our Recommended selections, one might conclude we're addicted to interviews, and one would be correct. If author interviews are like crack to us, then the Paris Review author interviews must surely be the gold standard of crack (a comparison Plimpton might not have embraced). The newly issued The Paris Review Interviews, Volume I (Picador) rolls out the heavy hitters. Who can possibly turn away from the likes of Saul Bellow, T.S. Eliot, Ernest Hemingway, Jorge Luis Borges, Dorothy Parker, Robert Gottlieb and others? The interviews are formal and thoughtful but never dry and can replace any dozen "how-to" books on writing. What can be more comforting than hearing Bellow, answering a question on preparations and conception, admit "Well, I don't know exactly how it's done.” The best part of this collection? The "Volume I" in the title, with its promise of more volumes to come.
- The Dead Fish Museum: Stories by Charles D'Ambrosio
The best short story collection we've read since ... well, certainly since we've started this blog. And we might even say "ever" if Dubliners didn't cast such a long shadow. The short story is not our preferred form but D'Ambrosio's eight brilliant stories are almost enough to convert us. Defy the conventional wisdom that short story collections don't sell and treat yourself to this marvel. (We're especially partial, naturally, to "Screenwriter".)
- The Mystery Guest by Grégoire Bouillier *Now in Paperback*
What would you do if the woman who’d left you high and dry ten years ago called out of the blue to invite you to a party without any further explanation? If you’re French, you’d probably spend a lot of time pondering the Deeper Significance Of It All, which is exactly what Grégoire Bouillier does for the 120 hilarious pages of The Mystery Guest. This slim, witty memoir follows Bouillier through the party from hell, and is a case study in Gallic self-abasement. Before it’s all done, you’ll set fire to any turtleneck hanging in your closet and think twice before buying an expensive Bordeaux as a gift. But fear not – just when it seems that all is, indeed, random and pointless and there is no Deeper Significance, salvation arrives in the unlikely form of Virginia Woolf, and the tale ends on a note of unforced optimism. Parfait.
- Ticknor by Sheila Heti
When George Ticknor's Life of William Hickling Prescott was published in 1864, it received rapturous notices, and reviewers were quick to point out that the long-standing friendship between Prescott and Ticknor made the latter an ideal Boswell. Sheila Heti has pulled this obscure leaf from the literary archives and fashioned a mordantly funny anti-history; a pungent and hilarious study of bitterness and promise unfulfilled. As a fretful Ticknor navigates his way through the rain-soaked streets of Boston to Prescott's house ("But I am not a late man. I hate to be late."), he recalls his decidedly one-sided lifelong friendship with his great subject. Unlike the real-life Ticknor, this one is an embittered also-ran, full of plans and intentions never realized, always alive to the fashionable whispers behind his back. Heti seamlessly inhabits Ticknor's fussy 19th-century diction with a feat of virtuoso ventriloquism that puts one in mind of The Remains of the Day. Heti's Ticknor would be insufferable if he weren't so funny, and in the end, the black humor brings a leavening poignancy to this brief tale. But don't let the size fool you — this 109-page first novel is small but scarcely slight; it is as dense and textured as a truffle.
- The Believer Book of Writers Talking to Writers by Vendela Vida
No, your eyes aren't deceiving you and yes, we are recommending a Believer product. Twenty-three interviews (a third presented for the first time) pairing the likes of Zadie Smith with Ian McEwan, Jonathan Lethem with Paul Auster, Edward P. Jones and ZZ Packer, and Adam Thirwell with Tom Stoppard make this collection a must-read. Lifted out of the context of some of the magazine's worst twee excesses, the interviews stand admirably on their own as largely thoughtful dialogues on craft. A handful of interviewers seem more interested in themselves than in their subjects but in the main this collection will prove irresistible to writers of any stripe - struggling or established - and to readers seeking a window into the creative process.
- The Sea by John Banville
John Banville's latest novel returns him to the Booker Prize shortlist for the first time since 1989's The Book of Evidence. In The Sea, we find Banville in transition, moving from the icy, restrained narrators of The Untouchable, Eclipse and Shroud toward warmer climes. Max Morden has returned to the vacation spot of his youth as he grieves the death of his wife. Remembering his first, fatal love, Morden works to reconcile himself to his loss. Banville's trademark linguistic virtuosity is everpresent but some of the chilly control is relinquished and Max mourns and rages in ways that mark a new direction for Banville - and there's at least one great twist which you'll never see coming. Given the politicized nature of the British literary scene, Banville's shot at the prize might be hobbled by his controversial McEwan review but we're rooting for our longtime favorite to go all the way at last. UPDATE: Our man won!
- Here Is Where We Meet by John Berger
We've been fans of Booker Prize winner John Berger for ages, and we're delighted to have received an early copy of his latest work, Here is Where We Meet. In this lovely, elliptical, melancholy "fictional memoir," Berger traverses European cities from Libson to Geneva to Islington, conversing with shades from his past – He encounters his dead mother on a Lisbon tram, a beloved mentor in a Krakow market. Along the way, we're treated to marvelous and occasionally heart-rending glimpses of an extraordinary life, a lyrical elegy to the 20th century from a man who - in his eighth decade - remains committed to his political beliefs and almost childlike in his openness to people, places and experiences. There's no conventional narrative here, and those seeking plot are advised to look elsewhere. But Here is Where We Meet offers a wise, moving and poetic look at the life of an artist traversing the European century from a novelist whose talent remains undimmed in his twilight years.
- Home Land by Sam Lipsyte
In his recent TEV guest review of Home Land, Jim Ruland called Sam Lipsyte the "funniest writer of his generation," and we're quite inclined to agree. We tore through Home Land in two joyful sittings and can't remember the last time we've laughed so hard. Lipsyte's constellation of oddly sympathetic losers is rendered with a sparkling, inspired prose style that's sent us off in search of all his prior work. In Lewis Miner's (a.k.a Teabag) woeful epistolary dispatches to his high school alumni newsletter ("I did not pan out."), we find an anti-hero for the age. Highly, highly recommended.
THIS GUN FOR HIRE: Reviews & Criticism
- A Madman Dreams of Turing Machines & The Man Who Knew Too Much (Philadelphia Inquirer)
- Athena (Boldtype)
- Dictation: A Quartet (Barnes and Noble Review)
- Foreskin's Lament (Philadelphia Inquirer)
- Here Is Where We Meet (Boldtype)
- His Illegal Self (Dallas Morning News)
- Hunk City (New York Times Book Review)
- I Love You, Beth Cooper (New York Times Book Review)
- In the Hot Zone: One Man, One Year, Twenty Wars (Truthdig)
- In the Kitchen (Barnes & Noble Review)
- Indignation (Barnes and Noble Review)
- Out of My Skin (Bookforum)
- Personal Days (New York Times Book Review)
- The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time (The Modern Word)
- The End of Mr. Y (Philadelphia Inquirer)
- The God of War (Barnes and Noble Review)
- The Northern Clemency (Barnes & Noble Review)
- The Raw Shark Texts (Philadelphia Inquirer)
- Ticknor (Philadelphia Inquirer)
- Tom Stoppard's Lord Malquist & Mr. Moon (Threepenny Review)
- Where We Are Now: Notes from Los Angeles (Los Angeles Review)
SECOND LOOK
- The Bookshop by Penelope Fitzgerald
Penelope Fitzgerald's second novel is the tale of Florence Green, a widow who seeks, in the late 1950s, to bring a bookstore to an isolated British town, encountering all manner of obstacles, including incompetent builders, vindictive gentry, small minded bankers, an irritable poltergeist, but, above all, a town that might not, in fact, want a bookshop. Fitzgerald's prose is spare but evocative – there's no wasted effort and her work reminds one of Hemingway's dictum that every word should fight for its right to be on the page. Florence is an engaging creation, stubbornly committed to her plan even as uncertainty regarding the wisdom of the enterprise gnaws at her. But The Bookshop concerns itself, finally, with the astonishing vindictiveness of which provincials are capable, and, as so much English fiction must, it grapples with the inevitabilities of class. It's a dense marvel at 123 pages, a book you won't want to – or be able to – rush through.
- The Rider by Tim Krabbe
Tim Krabbé's superb 1978 memoir-cum-novel is the single best book we've read about cycling, a book that will come closer to bringing you inside a grueling road race than anything else out there. A kilometer-by-kilometer look at just what is required to endure some of the most grueling terrain in the world, Krabbé explains the tactics, the choices and – above all – the grinding, endless, excruciating pain that every cyclist faces and makes it heart-pounding rather than expository or tedious. No writer has better captured both the agony and the determination to ride through the agony. He's an elegant stylist (ably served by Sam Garrett's fine translation) and The Rider manages to be that rarest hybrid – an authentic, accurate book about cycling that's a pleasure to read. "Non-racers," he writes. "The emptiness of those lives shocks me."
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I'm with you on Amis these days, but what was so wrong with what McEwan said?
Posted by: Nav | June 25, 2008 at 12:13 AM
"Those of you who pitch science fiction to wives and girlfriends who do not enjoy it are probably saying something along the following lines: 'Space ships! Alien monsters! Men in tights!' Instead, for women who find that sort of thing distasteful, talk about it as a fairy tale--only a fairy tale with science instead of magic.The basic emotional space it taps is the same."
Women are such cute little fluffy-brained creatures, aren't they? Remember always to smile when speaking to them, and to speak slowly and clearly, and to buy them shiny things, or things that smell good, and always compliment their bouffant hairdos and shapely figures!
Posted by: Steven Augustine | June 25, 2008 at 02:08 AM
As an American living in London, I think your comments about McEwan are rather simplistic. Islamism is a real threat in Britain and in Europe -- a threat to women, homosexuals, writers and democracy in general. I'm glad that writers like McEwan have the courage to speak out. If writers don't do it, who will? There is a climate in Britain, as McEwan says, that anyone who speaks out against Islamism is branded a racist. This is a form of societally induced censorship that closes down all debate and I applaud any writer who doesn't bow to this. I agree with you that Martin Amis's comments crossed the line, though he is perfectly entitled to make them. But you seem to think McEwan's comments are racist, though you did not explicitly state this. I think these ideas are much more complex than that and I don't think you can simply compare Islamists to anti-abortion Christian terrorists in the US. While both situations involve religious fundamentalists, the situations are not analogous in the way you've portrayed it.
Posted by: Anglofille | June 25, 2008 at 03:31 AM
I agree with Anglofille about the complexity of this issue. Perhaps in your 'big picture' condemnation of McEwan you are equating the activities of Islamist terrorists with those of George Bush the Christian responsible for the invasion of Iraq? Some clarification please Mark?
Posted by: Nigel Beale | June 25, 2008 at 03:56 AM
Are you suggesting that Crap Towns isn't a masterwork? I sweated blood over that little book, you know, etc.
Posted by: Sam Jordison | June 25, 2008 at 04:34 AM
"As an American living in London, I think your comments about McEwan are rather simplistic. Islamism is a real threat in Britain and in Europe -- a threat to women, homosexuals, writers and democracy in general. I'm glad that writers like McEwan have the courage to speak out. If writers don't do it, who will?"
You're banging your head against a wall here; take it from a guy with a virtual concussion. In a comment thread at the blogspot "This Space" I tried to post information about and from a Turkish lawyer (woman) who was on the front line in this debate, risking her life here in Berlin for many years, but the comment was blocked: her POV is of no use or interest.
I think Americans, living in America, should learn how to *listen* on global subjects they only have abstract or passing acquaintance with, and "Western" White Males (however many of them are taking sides in this), specifically, should learn that their default positions are not overridingly correct in every debate they happen to be peeking over the fence at.
Well-intended or not, that post-colonial arrogance is problematic.
Posted by: Steven Augustine | June 25, 2008 at 05:26 AM
Is there any evidence that American Christians do want to kill people in his city? As I noted recently, had he said such things about Christianity there would be little controversy. It seems to me it is hard to ignore the historical reality that Islam's spread during the Seventh Century was effected through violence not suasion. All religions have problems, often very serious ones, caused by the human failings of their adherents, but Islam's problems seem peculiarly acute. I am a Catholic who is often dismayed by my church's views on homosexuality, for instance, but at least the church does not think homosexuals should be stoned to death. And I am unaware at the moment of any Evangelical Christian suicide bombers.
Posted by: Frank Wilson | June 25, 2008 at 06:40 AM
"Is there any evidence that American Christians do want to kill people in his city?"
No, but if you reframe the question as, "Have Christians been connected, directly or implicitly (politically or by extension of cultural aims in the expansion of hegemony) to millions of deaths in *other* cities, over the past few centuries," the rational response would have to be: "most assuredly." Christians have killed *far* more non-Christians (and fellow Christians) in the past two centuries than Muslims (until the point a Muslim regime uses the A-bomb) have since the beginning of time.
This is the inevitable, and highly regrettable, branch of this important debate: Christians vs Muslims. That's not the issue. The issue is about whether it's as hideously absurd as it seems to give a free pass to a physically violent and/or lethal Gender Apatheid in an effort to respect diverse cultures.
I'll repeat this metaphor because no one has yet bothered to respond: The Boers were also an example of the world's cultural diversity; why no respect for *them*?
Doing something about women being stoned to death in Iran for "adultery" (with the weight of the Law of the Land behind this grotesque throwback) is tricky, obviously. But one should think that "we" could all unite against the same mindset as it threatens lives, and quality of life, in London, Berlin, Amsterdam, etc?
How is it that default bien-pensant "ideals" (The Brotherhood of Man: yay) weigh more than black, white and olive-skinned human lives?
Easy to unite against that moth-breathing monster Bush; why so hard to unite against monsters of other complexions?
Posted by: Steven Augustine | June 25, 2008 at 07:12 AM
(ahem: keyboard malfunction: "mouth-breathing", not "moth-breathing"... though I like the image the error conjures)
Posted by: Steven Augustine | June 25, 2008 at 07:14 AM
'No, but if you reframe the question as, "Have Christians been connected, directly or implicitly (politically or by extension of cultural aims in the expansion of hegemony) to millions of deaths in *other* cities, over the past few centuries," the rational response would have to be: "most assuredly." Christians have killed *far* more non-Christians (and fellow Christians) in the past two centuries than Muslims (until the point a Muslim regime uses the A-bomb) have since the beginning of time.'
This is to equivocate. Nominally Christian societies engaged in warfare that caused immense numbers of deaths, yes. But it wasn't to spread Christianity. And the lion's share of the deaths came in a war against fascist aggression.
It is also beside the point, since we are in agreement on the issue raised by McEwan's criticism.
Posted by: Frank Wilson | June 25, 2008 at 08:43 AM
Banging your head against a wall is right. I'm a big fan of this site, but I'm getting good and tired of posts with throwaway accusations that this or that writer is a racist or a bigot. Those posts are invariably followed by outcry in the comments section, including at least *some* cogent, sober, well-reasoned counter-arguments. These comments are usually simply ignored. At one point TEV challenged them in a brief, terse post in which he cited, in his words, "sound-bytes," and failed to make any real argument except to say something along the lines of, "[This or that statement] is just obviously racist."
Look: branding someone a bigot in a public forum (even one you created) is serious business. If someone did that to you, you'd take notice pretty quickly. So when you take that step, you'd better be prepared to back it up--especially when there's wide room for disagreement on the matter.
Posted by: Michael O'Donnell | June 25, 2008 at 10:12 AM
Sorry folks, did not intend this one to be such comment-bait. I merely found McEwan's sentiments rather disgustingly self-centered - and the notion that London is any more vulnerable to attack than America is sure to strike most Americans as insensitive at best, utterly idiotic at worst. I'm also not prepared to categorize McEwan a racist (Amis is another story), though I do feel his recent statements bear the rotting whiff of racism to them. I suppose what prompted my ire here was merely wondering if it's inevitable that when white, male, British writers reach a certain age, they go off the deep end. But Michael, I don't brand anyone anything - McEwan's statements do all the work by themselves, as the widespread public coverage proves.
Posted by: TEV | June 25, 2008 at 10:21 AM
"It is also beside the point, since we are in agreement on the issue raised by McEwan's criticism."
That's just it, Frank. I'm not sure that we *are* in agreement. I strongly oppose any component of this argument that posits the totality of Christianity as a more clement, or less destructive, belief system than the totality of Islam.
In my opinion, it's fairly obvious that wherever, in the "West", that's more humane, *in the ways under discussion*, than in Islamic societies, is more humane *because* Christianity has waned in influence there (despite recent conservative efforts to roll back the clock by smashing it).
18th century England was fairly close, in tone, to Mullah-run Iran (I seem to remember reading that Jane Austen's mother almost took a trip to the gallows after being falsely accused of thieving some lace). To this day, you're more likely to find more Fundamentalist Christians, than educated Muslims, disdaining the Enlightenment.
Arguably, to the extent that the "West" is still willing to treat women as breeding chattel, the impulse devolves from patriarchal Christianity (think the abortion issue).
And be very very careful about invoking Christianity's presence in WW2:
"On November 1933, A Protestant mass rally of the Deutsche Christians, which brought together a record 20 000 persons, passed three resolutions:
"1. Adolf Hitler is the completion of the reformation, 2. Baptized Jews are to be dismissed from the Church, 3. The Old Testament is to be excluded from Sacred Scriptures. Adolf Hitler converted to Protestantism and joined the German Christians, according to the National Secretary Klundt on April 25, 1933 in Königsberg, Eastern Prussia. An official confirmation or denial was not issued by the Chancellor."
Posted by: Steven Augustine | June 25, 2008 at 10:23 AM
"...and the notion that London is any more vulnerable to attack than America is sure to strike most Americans as insensitive at best, utterly idiotic at worst."
What you keep missing, Mark, is that a substantial chunk of this argument is not about "terrorism" (to which every city on earth is vulnerable, from any brand of terrorism: look what happened to Iraq): it's about a culture clash with everyday, neighborhood casualties; it's also about a shift in demographics which may well threaten secular humanism in places it had *just* started taking root.
The complexity of the matter has something to do with the fact, for example, that many people of the Muslim faith who've ended up in LA are *worlds* apart from many of those in Berlin, or Amsterdam, or even London. Different dynamic of emigration altogether. A second-generation American Muslim is far more likely to be integrated in the culture (for better or worse) than a German Muslim who's been here for three generations.
As I've stated before, this debate needs to be broken down into its various segments. And, in my opinion, the mere fact that one "side" of the debate keeps clinging to statements made by Martin Amis, in anger, more than a year ago, and long-since retracted, points to the logical banktrupcy of the position you're defending by clinging to it.
Posted by: Steven Augustine | June 25, 2008 at 10:39 AM
Whenever we start talking about racism or sexism or whatever ism, we always seem to tread the same ground ourselves. That's what this sounds like at least: "... wondering if it's inevitable that when white, male, British writers reach a certain age ..." Isn't that what Amis did, wonder if Islamists, when following a certain strand of the faith ...
As for Christianity and WWII, I always find it laughable when people try to align Hitler with Christianity. The man had no religious feeling whatsoever; if he did anything religious, it was for appearances. The man wanted National Socialist party buildings taller than churches for a reason. He wanted political ideology to replace theology, but he knew he'd need the priests and pastors to help him bring that about, as there was 2000 years of myth and tradition built up in the church, whereas National Socialism had just begun.
As for Stalin, well, he dropped out of the seminary, so I think the WWII had at least two atheists on the front lines.
Posted by: Stephan | June 25, 2008 at 12:49 PM
Those who brand Amis racist are similar to those who call Bush stupid: intellectual thugs with little interest in airing and/or discussing important issues.
Posted by: Nigel Beale | June 25, 2008 at 02:33 PM
"As for Christianity and WWII, I always find it laughable when people try to align Hitler with Christianity."
Stephan, it matters little what Hitler thought in private about the front he presented to his nation; the fact remains that the Germany of the Third Reich was a fervently Christian country, and Adolph Hitler didn't kill 11 million people with his own bare hands, or with the help of a few atheist chums.
http://www.nobeliefs.com/nazis.htm
Posted by: Steven Augustine | June 25, 2008 at 04:01 PM
"Around 1937, when Hitler heard that at the instigation of the party and the SS vast numbers of his followers had left the church because it was obstinately opposing his plans, he nevertheless ordered his chief associates ... to remain members of the church. He too would remain a member of the Catholic Church, he said, although he had no real attachment to it." Inside the Third Reich, Albert Speer (95-96).
You can argue that as a fervently Christian nation, Germany can tie its war crimes to Christianity. But that's painting in a very broad brush (and requires overlooking the sizable number of nuns and clergy who spoke out against Naziism; many didn't, most remained silent; but a good number did label Hitler's policies anti-Christian).
The US is fervently secular, so can we blame the Iraq War on that? It's more complicated, obviously, and while I don't doubt that certain Christians saw a religious component to the war, I think the cult of personality around Hitler, and how he contributed to renewed national pride, to say nothing of avenging Versailles -- I think all that played into things just as much if not much, much more.
But now I'm going on far too long for the internet, and dinner is ready.
Posted by: stephan | June 25, 2008 at 06:18 PM
Could someone help me pitch sci fi to my husband? Because that's the problem I'm having (although I did get him into BSG).
Posted by: The Girl Detective | June 25, 2008 at 09:08 PM
(((Those who brand Amis racist are similar to those who call Bush stupid: intellectual thugs with little interest in airing and/or discussing important issues.)))
Those who take issue with describing an intellectual thug who articulates a belief that innocent Muslims should be collectively punished for the crimes indivdiual extremists, as Amis did, are full of nothing but blowhard whining and the beaters of big strawmen set up by those pleading special priveliges for the words uttered by a writer who uses his status as 'public thinker' to articulate such vile suggestions, then claims to be being persecuted when people take issue with it.
You're not a racist for criticising an ideology like Islamism. You are a vile, loathsome bigot for articulating the collective punishment of innocent people on the basis of their religion, and then whining about being misunderstood and being persecuted rather that disowning and clarifying your 'thought experiment'
Intellectual thuggery by intellectual thugs -- good phrase for Amis and those who refuse to see what instigated all of this in the first place. It's really very pathetic.
Posted by: Paul | June 26, 2008 at 05:11 AM
Paul:
"It's really very pathetic."
No, it's just that you don't know how to debate a point rather than merely express an opinion, and don't seem to understand that the very real issues that Amis addresses are not invalidated by whatever mistakes (moral or diplomatic) the man makes in articulating them.
Martin Amis's goodness/badness is not the heart of this debate; the fact that you think it is underscores how out of your depth (and others like you) are. This debate is not a referendum on Martin Amis's, or Ian McEwan's, personality traits. Pointing and screaming "he is a bad, bad man!" settles nothing; illuminates nothing; furthers a broader understanding of nothing.
Where would you be if Amis hadn't uttered that one paragraph in that one interview in 2006, were the rest of his argument to remain unchanged? You'd be without a rhetorical leg to stand on; again: harping on this ill-advised outburst from Amis proves, to any thinking person (intellectuals and intellectual thugs alike), that you're incapable of addressing a complex and pressing issue in anything other than the simplest, reflexes-wired terms. You've been watching too much Oprah.
The Truth isn't decided by how many boos versus how many claps come from the audience; the Truth is not, automatically, the nicest or most uplifting version of reality.
Ranting against "intellectual thugs" with so much passion and so little thought seems more like the behaviour of an *anti-intellectual* thug.
As for the original comment:
"Those who brand Amis racist are similar to those who call Bush stupid: intellectual thugs with little interest in airing and/or discussing important issues."
A) GW Bush is possibly the most well-documented idiot in history: from hours of taped footage of gaffes and blitherings to his moronic destruction of US moral credit, the US economy and the bonehead mishandling of the requisite manufacture of a pretext to plunder and control Iraqi oil. Of course, Bush is too dumb to have pulled off all that stupidity on his own: he was the perfect figurehead (with the IQ of a ventriloquist's extraordinarily smirky dummy) for a cabal that's been creeping around, behind the scenes, since before the Nixon administration.
Obviously, even idiots are smart enough to have a few brains working for them, but that's just how the world functions. The Alpha Dogs are never the smartest (is "cunning" an intellectual trait?), they're simply the most brutal. GW Bush is the dumbest Alpha Dog on record.
B) You just called Philip Roth an "intellectual thug".
Posted by: Steven Augustine | June 26, 2008 at 06:38 AM
"But Michael, I don't brand anyone anything - McEwan's statements do all the work by themselves, as the widespread public coverage proves."
Not so fast. In your June 23 gathering of links, entitled, "The Heat Breaks,” you wrote: "Ian McEwan infected by Amisism ... Speaking of racists..." That sure sounds to me like branding McEwan and Amis racists. If you positively reviewed a much-maligned book, and a blogger, linking to your review and mentioning both you and the maligned author by name, pivoted with, "speaking of morons," I bet you’d take offense. Perhaps your cute transition was only meant to label AMIS a racist. If so, you’re still wrong, but I'd suggest a bit more precision in language and a few less scattershot incendiaries.
And you say "the widespread public coverage proves" ... something? Well, what? That McEwan's statements are racist? That they speak for themselves? This is EXACTLY what’s wrong with your posts on this issue: you call someone a bigot, and then when called upon to explain yourself, you totally punt. “See, other people think so too. Now let’s move on.” Rather than short-handing to some vague consensus of public opinion as measured by shrill newspaper columnists most of whose pieces aren't worth the paper they're printed on, I prefer to make up my own mind.
‘“As soon as a writer expresses an opinion against Islamism, immediately someone on the left leaps to his feet and claims that because the majority of Muslims are dark-skinned, he who criticises it is racist,’ [McEwan] said in an interview in Corriere della Sera.”
Is this the point at which you detect "the rotting whiff of racism"? Are you really so culturally sensitive that you believe it is not possible to criticize hateful aspects of an Eastern or Middle-Eastern religion or values system without being racist? Is it racist of me even to ask you that question? Does the “rotting whiff” of homophobia and misogyny (not to mention misanthropy) that undeniably typifies extreme Islamism simply get a free pass from you? Well, I’ll tell you how that homophobia and misogyny makes ME feel. It makes me so angry and disgusted that I’m willing to forgive Amis’s nasty and wrong-headed outburst against the religion that inspired it, because I fervently believe that stoning adulturesses and torturing gays and covering women in burqas and murdering apostates (oh, and slaughtering as many innocents as possible) is much, much worse than, on one occasion, going too far in condemning same.
I do not think that Muslims should be collectively punished for the crimes of Islamists. And if some of us would tone down the sanctimony and read beyond the sound bytes, they’d see that Amis (not to mention McEwan) doesn’t think so either.
Posted by: Michael | June 26, 2008 at 08:44 AM
"In a comment thread at the blogspot "This Space" I tried to post information about and from a Turkish lawyer (woman) who was on the front line in this debate, risking her life here in Berlin for many years, but the comment was blocked: her POV is of no use or interest."
I wish to point out that Steven Augustine's comment was rejected because it was a copy&pasted news story which had only indirect relevance to the blog under which it was posted. I would have allowed it had it been summarised with a link.
Of course, one only has to read the occasional Guardian book's blog to recognise that tiresome verbosity is Mr Augustine's modus operandi.
Posted by: steve mitchelmore | June 29, 2008 at 01:37 AM
Play to your claque with ad hominems as you will, Mitchelmore; makes no difference in the end.
Posted by: Steven Augustine | June 29, 2008 at 03:32 AM