Dr. Metablog

Dr. Metablog is the nom de blague of Vivian de St. Vrain, the pen name of a resident of the mountain west who writes about language, books, politics, or whatever else comes to mind. Under the name Otto Onions (Oh NIGH uns), Vivian de St. Vrain is the author of “The Big Book of False Etymologies” (Oxford, 1978) and, writing as Amber Feldhammer, is editor of the classic anthology of confessional poetry, “My Underwear” (Virago, 1997).

DR. METABLOG’S
GREATEST HITS

  • What Happened at the County Assembly

    At the precinct caucus last month, I was chosen to be a delegate to the county assembly.  The assembly is where we Dems nominate candidates for county-wide offices (and do a lot of other business, using procedures that are obscure to veterans and incomprehensible to first-time attendees).  Yesterday, we filled the Skyline High School auditorium with 1600 delegates, at least three-quarters of whom were young, impatient pro-Obama initiates.  It was exciting and even more chaotic than usual.

    All of the local Dem incumbents were re-nominated without opposition, but there were some open and contested seats: a state senator, a university regent, and, the big one, a congressman (our longtime representative Mark Udall is making a run for the U. S. Senate).  And also the Clinton-Obama showdown, but that event wasn’t held at the morning county assembly but reserved for the afternoon county convention, to which I was not credentialed.

    I was in place at 7:15 A.M, handing out leaflets and stickers for Rollie Heath, a candidate whom I’m supporting for state senator.  Politicking inures you to rejection.  Some delegates for the other candidate, Cindy Carlisle, wouldn’t accept my piece of paper; they acted as though it would compromise their integrity to read or even to touch my pamphlet.  Sometimes they were downright and inexcusably rude, even though we’re all Dems and all in the same family.

    The new attendees didn’t seem to realize that before we could get to Obama, we had to carry out the business of local government.  I heard occasional grumbling and a lot of puzzlement and confusion.  But in compensation there were some rousing addresses:  Ken Salazar, our middle-of-the-road Senator, adapting to his audience, emphasized his liberal side.  I’m skeptical of Salazar, but better a centrist Democrat than a benighted Republican.

    Eventually we voted.  The morning results were predictable.  My candidate for state office came in second but qualified for the party primary, which is in August.  The race will be a marathon.  But the good news is that whoever wins the nomination won’t have a Republican opponent — the other side is punting on state senator.  The Repubs are also surrending the congressional seat, where Fitz-Gerald won over Polis;  there will be a three-way Democratic primary (Shafroth is "not going the caucus route" but petitioning on — I said that it’s  complicated).

    In the afternoon, Obama had a smashing 3-1 win over Clinton.

    Here’s the million-dollar question:  will the Obama enthusiasm carry over to the general election?  Will the young ‘uns who turned out yesterday still be around in October to donate, to walk the precincts, stuff the envelopes, make the phone calls?  Or are they just in it for the glamor of the moment?  Colorado’s now in play; it’s a swing state.  We could go blue. But not unless Bush-disgust, Obama-love translates into weeks and months hard work.

  • My Campaign for City Council

    It's election season once again. I'm thinking of making a run for city council in our progessive western town. Here's my new platform, voters.   

    1.  NO LEAF BLOWERS.  Rationale: it's a horrible noisy unecological machine that can easily be replaced with a broom. And everyone knows that single-stroke engines are major polluters.

    2.  ALL MALL PERFORMERS MUST BE JURIED. Rationale: no more off-key singing. No more bad juggling.  No more ugly balloon animals. No more noisy drummers or whining didgeredoos.

    3.  EVERY RESTAURANT MUST KEEP A PIG. Rationale: a perfect. ecologically-sound solution to the waste food problem. Come to think of it, let's require a piggery of all institutions with lunchrooms, such as high schools and hospitals. Let's fatten up those porkers, turn them into bacon and savory spare ribs. 

    4.  NO "HOLIDAY" LIGHTS. Rationale: waste of electricity and other scarce resources. Global warming. Bad taste. Bad theology. Bauble-olatry. 

    5.  NEW ANNUAL HOLIDAY: Charles Darwin's birthday, February 12. Rationale: uncontroversial celebration of a great thinker. (I reject out of hand those extremists who propose to celebrate Darwin's birthday on December 25. I'm a uniter, not a divider.)

    6.  NO MUSIC WRITTEN AFTER 1897. Rationale: obvious. Why 1897?  Death of Johannes Brahms. Also, no amplified music of any kind in an automobile that is audible outside the vehicle. Higher fines and jail terms hip hop and for excessively patriotic "country."   

    7.  NO SMOKERS.  Rationale:  lung cancer, heart attacks, emphysema, ashes, disgusting odor, cigarette litter. Note: not "no smoking"– "no smokers." No going outside of city limits to light up and then re-entering.

    8.  NO VISIBLE TATTOOS. Why only "visible "tattoos?  Because whole-body inspections might be considered intrusive by squishy civil libertarians. Also, no nose rings, navel rings, or other bodily piercings. Except earrings. I rather like earrings. But no more than one per ear. 

    9.  ANNUAL JUNIOR HIGH SCHOOL PRAIRIE DOG SHOOT AND BARBECUE. Let them kids exercise their Second Amendment rights; eliminate them pesky varmints;  learn to cook. One platform position, three social benefits.

    10. NO DOGS PERMITTED WITHIN CITY LIMITS. Rationale: fatal dog attacks, dog bites, barking dogs, whining dogs, ubiquitous dog "waste," dogs carrying on in parks and open space, the goopy indulgence of dog "guardians," the ecological disaster of dog food. But what about seeing-eye dogs, you ask?  Well, that's a slippery slope, ain't it. Sorry folks, no dogs (except for purposes of vivisection).  

    11.  NO MORE COLLEGE FOOTBALL. Rationale: I don't like college football.

    12.  NO "FACILITATORS" WITH WHITEBOARDS OR FLIPCHARTS AT OFFICIAL MEETINGS. Goodness gracious, do I ever hate those things.  

    That's about it. I feel that I have my finger on the pulse of the electorate. It's going to be a landslide. Tell me that life won't be better as soon as we enact these new laws. 

  • Away From Her/Fiona Andersson/Julie Christie

    Away From Her explores the infinitely sorrowful subject of early-onset Alzheimer’s. Fiona Andersson, in her vigorous mid-sixties, has begun to lose her way and to forget names; she stores the frying pan in the refrigerator. She thinks that she’s “beginning to disappear.” Fiona’s plight is worrisome to every human being but it is especially disturbing to people of her own and of Julie Christie’s generation.

    Here in our home we still manage to find appropriate places for the cooking utensil, mostly.  Nevertheless, things happen. We set out to purchase six items at the market and come home with just three. We have three errands to perform and we arrive back home with two of the tasks undone. We put the camera in a special secure place and then spend a couple of hours searching for it. Keys and lists and books and tickets regularly evaporate or disintegrate or dematerialize.  Are these forgettings normal or are we en route to something that is too horrible to contemplate?

    We exercise, we eat carefully, we gulp those horrid fish oil boluses. Perhaps these defensive procedures have value. Perhaps we’ll be the ones to dodge the Alzheimer bullet.  Perhaps we won’t.

    It doesn’t help that we spend many hours a week at the facility where the Aged Parent is incarcerated. We encounter people just like Fiona — or the remnants of them — every day.  They’re hollow shells, slumped in the wheelchair or poking at the boiled-to-mush food. The angry ones, the ones with dead eyes, the ones who moan all day long, “help me.” Better the Seconal and applesauce, the ice floe, or the bullet in the brain than to live in such horrible oblivion.   

    In Away From Her, Julie Christie is entirely persuasive as the alzheimered Fiona. But let me ask you, friends of a certain age-cohort, is it really possible that that gray old lady was Julie Christie? Here’s a woman I’ve known for forty-five years, ever since she was Liz for thirty incandescent seconds in Billy Liar — and feckless Billy was too much of a jerkass coward to run away with her. Julie and I have had a long (albeit entirely one-sided) relationship.  I was dazzled by her when she was the voracious Diana Scott in Darling and I feared for her when she was Laura Baxter in Nicholas Roeg’s scary-as-all-hell Don’t Look Now.  She was my favorite Gertrude. But Fiona Andersson is outside any recognizable trajectory;  she’s too raw, too dislocating to my tender sense of the way things ought to be.  No, Julie will always be Liz to me.  I’ve held on to that first image for most of my adult life.

    I have no intention of progressing to the "second floor," or to sunset village or to memory lane or to however they euphemize the place that they put the folks with clogged synapses, but, if I should find myself in such a state, let’s hope that it won’t be Fiona but Liz to whom the brain clings.

  • Sweet and Lowdown

    Woody Allen’s Sweet and Lowdown is a sentimental love story with an unhappy ending.  Like most of Allen’s works, it has become a far better work of art with a few years on its back than it seemed on first viewing (1999) — probably because audiences habitually come to the Woodman’s films with the mouth set for wisecracks and one-liners.  Woody’s films grow on you;  some day, when the fuss has died down, their emotional range and artistry will be better recognized.   

    The lovers in Sweet and Lowdown are Emmett Ray, who talks constantly but says very little, and Emmett’s girlfriend Hattie, who is mute but miraculously expressive.  Emmett is a shallow, vain, brittle, damaged bit of goods who exempts himself from emotion and human connection with the assertion that he’s an "artist."  Hattie is said to be dull-witted but whether she is or not we don’t know.  We do know that she’s a woman of great appetites: for sex, for food, for music.  Emmett cannot acknowledge that she’s his best audience and he runs like the wind when it’s revealed that she loves him.  The climax of the film is inarticulate: all Emmett can manage is "I’ve made a mistake."  Viewers, however, can easily fill in the gaps.

    It’s a fine and lovely movie, well worth the re-seeing if only for the music and the affectionate re-creation of the 30s jazz scene.  And also for the acting.  Sean Penn twists his face into an expression of perpetual dissatisfaction.  His Emmett Ray, except for a redeeming moment or two, is horrid and knows it.  On the other side of the coin, Samantha Morton is transcendent as the vulnerable but resilient Hattie.

    See Sweet and Lowdown for what it is.  It’s not a farce;  it’s not raucus.  Don’t look to it for more than it offers or for something other than it offers.  It’s sufficient unto itself. 

  • Hoop News

    Extremely important bulletin:  Cornell’s basketball team is going to the NCAA tournament — first time in a generation.  Twelve and 0 in the Ivy League, Randy Wittman’s son the main man.

    Is the Big Red going to manhandle Kansas and UCLA and Duke?  I’m not, at this moment, prepared to bet the house.  But Cinderelloid success is not beyond possibility. 

    Let’s hear it for Cornell, where I took my first timid steps into adulthood. 

    March 22.  Bad news:  Cornell played like a bunch of junior high-schoolers.  They were nervous and intimidated.  Hey, Duke didn’t do much better.  And is that a rug that Coach K is wearing, or is he just using too much black shoe-polish? 

  • “Cautionary” Songs of the 1950s

    A while back, I recalled that during the late 1940s and early 1950s, students at P. S. 217 in Flatbush were force fed patriotic and religious music. I've now remembered (perhaps it's the DHA) that we were also indoctrinated with songs that could be called "cautionary."  For example: do not chase a bouncing ball into the street, because while you could get a new ball, but "you can't always get a new leg."

    I also remember a lyric in which we were exhorted to solicit divine intervention, and which contained these deistic lines: "Pray in any language, to Him they all are dear/ Pray for it is music to His ear." It was this same song, I believe, in which we were allowed the ecumenical freedom to pray "in temple, mosque, or tabernacle,/ He won't need to search."  (I had heard of temples, but the word "mosque" was beyond my ken and "tabernacle" was a complete mystery, though it had warm associations with "pumpernickel.")

    Does anyone out there in Bloglandia remember either of these songs?  Or other cautionary songs from the old days? They don't google. Any information or citations will be much appreciated.

    Incidentally, despite the well-meant advice, I pursued many a rubber ball into the street. Nor was I ever once moved to pray in a consecrated building, except perhaps in Ebbets Field, and then only in tough ninth-inning situations. 

  • Two Three Tens to Yuma or Two Three Ten to Yumas

    I had trace memory only of Delmer Daves' 1957 3:10 to Yuma, a film that I had not seen since the days of my youth. In my mind it was bracketed with a much better morality-play western, High Noon (1952). I am, frankly, a little vain that I was able to recall that Van Heflin played the Gary Cooper part of the good man deserted by fearful townspeople while the clock ticks toward the climactic arrival of the Iron Horse and while Frankie Laine strums and sings off-screen. Of course, so much detail had evaporated from the ol'  tired brain that the return to the 1950s was, once again, well, not mind-blowing, but certainly eye-opening.

    3:10 to Yuma is a remarkably spare noirish western — not a classic, but respectable and well-made. At its heart is the near-friendship that develops between the bad guy Ben Wade as acted by smooth and charming Glenn Ford, and his captor, the god-fearing impoverished settler Dan Evans, played by the ever-gruff Van Heflin (reprising his role in Shane). As the two (Wade and Evans) test each other, an odd mutual respect springs up between them. Wade has money and authority and the perennial appeal of lawlessness while Evans is grounded in his ranch and his family.  Each envies the other. The relationship is imperfectly delineated and as a result the ending of the film is huddled and unsatisfying.

    Slipping the DVD of the brand new 3:10 to Yuma into the machine, I thought, ah, here's a chance to remedy the original. This time, get that off-kilter relationship between Wade and Evans right;  clarify the ending. I wanted a suspenseful film rich in psychological insights. I couldn't have been more disappointed. James Mangold's reworking of 3:10 to Yuma is bigger, noisier, and a ton more expensive than the original. It adds a lot of ruckus:  a fight with Indians, a barn-burning, feuding townsfolk, a pair of sadistic monomaniacal killers, a gruesome bullet extraction that belongs on the surgery channel, a cursed pistol, thirty seconds of gratuitous torture, and most of all, hundreds of fatalities. In terms of melodrama and gunfire, there's certainly much more bang for the buck, but the characters themselves are flatter and less interesting and the climax, problematical in the first 3:10 to Yuma, is totally botched and incoherent. An opportunity squandered!

    And yesterday I saw the acclaimed Michael Clayton, an eastern western. This time the bad guy is a woman, chief counsel to a nasty polluting international conglomerate. Will the good man, Michael Clayton, under financial and emotional siege, resist temptation and stand up for the right, like Gary Cooper and Van Heflin and Humphrey Bogart before him? What do you think? Will it spoil anyone's appreciation of Michael Clayton if I hint that George Clooney finds his place in the long line of inarticulate American heroes?

    Here's the paradoxical upshot: there's less of the old 3:10 to Yuma in the new 3:10 to Yuma than there is old 3:10 to Yuma in the new Michael Clayton.

  • Another Roth Demon-Child

    Philip Roth's American Pastoral (1997) attacked home-grown resistance to the Vietnam war and featured a child of unparalleled wickedness named Merry Levov. I've now read I Married a Communist (1999) which ridicules the post-World War II political left and gives prominence to an even more horrible demon-daughter. This time it's Sylphid Pennington, an Iago-strength villain, who destroys her mother's marriage to Ira Ringold. She does so by forcing her mother to abort Ira's child, which, if it is born, she will "strangle in its crib." Roth's hatred of children is persistent, intransigent and obsessive. Has there been a writer since Thomas Kyd whose writings were so empty of love (except for self-love) and so focused on vengeance? 

    Moreover, what does Roth's prominence tell us about ourselves?      

  • John Milton and Docosahexaenoic Acid

    Your “mature” brain has mind of its own. It is intermittently balky and stubborn, reluctant to yield up its stored data.

    Many years ago I memorized a few of John Milton’s sonnets.  These poems are not only noble and politically engaged, they are also reflective, immaculately crafted, challenging, and melodious  — as good as any short poems in the language.

    One night, a week or so ago, insomniac as usual, I tried to recall one of the finest of the sequence — the great sonnet in which Milton condemned the ethnic cleansing by Roman Catholic Savoyards of a colony of Swiss Protestants. 

    There was a time when I knew this poem like the back of my hand, but try as I might, all that I could dredge out of my recalcitrant mind was the single phrase “triple tyrant.”  (In Miltonese, the “triple tyrant” is the Pope, wearer of a three-tiered crown.) It's mighty frustrating to have so rusty a brain.

    The next night, sleepless once again, I re-activated the tired old memory system and was able to scrape up a few more words. I retrieved “where still doth sway the triple tyrant.” (The word “sway” does not imply that the Pope has taken to dancing but rather that the holy father “holds sway” over his dominions.) In two days, I had assembled only a single line of poetry and still needed thirteen more to complete the sonnet.  This sorry state of affairs cried out for radical new approach to memory-jogging.           

    It is well known that Omega-3 fatty acids (i.e. fish oils) increase the rate of transmission of certain brain waves that are linked to memory. On the third day of my adventure in sonnet-recall, I swallowed a fish oil pill rich in docosahexaenoic acid (commonly known as DHA). When I woke up next morning, there it was on the tip of my tongue (or the top of my brain) -– another line and a half of the sonnet:  “Slain by the bloody Piedmontese that rolled/ Mother with infant down the rocks.” Did I do it all by myself? Or could it possibly have been the DHA?  

    And in what part of the brain lay hidden this poignant line of poetry before I was able to summon it?  In what chemical form?  Clearly the words were in storage, so to speak, but why couldn’t I freely access them? Was I unconsciously running some sort of failed search program?  Attention searchers:  examine poetry quadrant for missing sonnets by Milton, John [1608-1673]. Did the DHA shift the words from a dusty neglected old storeroom to facility currently in us?

    Does fish oil really lubricate memory?

    The next day, I doubled my intake of the oily acid and, marvelous to say, came up with the poem’s last line:  “Early may fly the Babylonian woe” ("Babylon" is reformation code for "Rome"). On the fourth day of this experiment, I took three fish oil pills and lo and behold was able to remember the entire first quatrain of the sonnet:  “Avenge, O Lord, thy slaughtered saints, whose bones/ Lie scattered on the Alpine mountains cold,/ Even them who kept thy truth so pure of old,/  When all our fathers worshiped stocks and stones.”  There it is: Milton’s agony and fury, his uncompromising conviction, his contempt for pre-Reformation idol-worship, plus the confidence, that, because he's something of a prophet himself, he can boss god around.   

    I continued to take the pills but I was scared to increase the dosage for fear of provoking what Milton elsewhere calls the “fishy fumes.” After several days of medication and head-scratching, I had conjured up this much of the poem: 

    Avenge, O Lord, thy slaughtered saints, whose bones

    Lie scattered on the Alpine mountains cold,

    Even them who kept thy truth so pure of old,

    When all our fathers worshiped stocks and stones;

    Forget not:

              in thy [blank], [blank] their [blank]

    Who were thy [blank]

    Slain by the bloody Piedmontese that rolled

    Mother with infant down the rocks.

                          where still doth sway

    The triple tyrant;

    A hundred-fold

    Early may fly the Babylonian woe.

    And then, progress came to a halt. No matter how many glutinous pills I popped, no matter how I greased my memory, I could recover nary another syllable. Where was the rest of the poem concealed? Why couldn’t I fish it up? Had the molecules of which memory is constituted long ago disintegrated? 

    I've now declared the experiment officially over.  Although the results are inconclusive, I've decided to continue with the fish oil regimen.  It's obvious that my brain needs all the phospholipids it can get. 

    And after a week of disciplined forbearance, I've now peeked at the text of "On the Late Massacre at Piedmont."  Every word was familiar — even the ones that I could not recall.  Perhaps I might ultimately have brought them to the surface;  I'm convinced that they were lurking somewhere in the inner recesses of the brain. 

    I’ll re-memorize and hope for the best.  Perhaps my newly fishified brain is ready for a renaissance.  After all, I’m a lot richer in phosphatidylethanolamine, ethanolamine plasmalogens, and phosphatidylserine than I was just a week ago.  

    Loyal readers: here you may find John Milton's masterful sonnet "On the Late Massacre at Piedmont." Trust me, it's worth a look. In fact, it's worth committing to memory.      

  • The All-Time Most Tired Movie Cliche

    We watched, don't ask me why, the most recent Jason Bourne extravaganza  — The Bourne Hyperventilation I believe it was called. So-called "action" pictures are not my cup of tea. In my view, it's a genre that is far too deeply infatuated with its own cliches. The Bourne Mystification was not only prefamiliar but also unusually tricky to follow. It consisted of swatches of flashback interspersed with vigorous but interminable fight and chase sequences. The "action" was delivered in a multitude of stitched-together one- and two- second slices, which, even on the small screen, were vertiginous and almost barfitudinous.

    The Bourne Hyperbole is a multiple car-chase movie. How many time do we need to revisit this cliche? Cars spinning out of control, cars shouldering each other for a place on the highway, cars ramming into each other, cars becoming airborne, cars landing on their sides, cars weaving into the oncoming lane, cars on sidewalks, sirens blaring, hoods flying open, windows shot out, guys shooting pistols at each other while driving one-handed at 100 mph — interspersed with one-second glances at the speedometer, one-second glances of a foot on a brake — all followed by the inevitable noisy, multiple-vehicle crash where the nasty hired killer winds up dead while our invincible hero emerges with only minimal, symbolic scathe. Is there anything in movies today that is more hectic, more predictable, or more boring? 

    Let me ask my readership this art-versus-life question — what is the ratio of your own participation and/or observation of real-life car chases compared to the number of car chases that you've seen in movies?  Am I the only twentieth-century American who has never been shot at or pursued? Never seen a fleeing Oldsmobile pass just inches in front of the oncoming semi? Yet I've experienced the film version of that very scene scores — perhaps hundreds — of times. 

    I think that in the next century, when movies will be studied by historians eager to understand the great age of petroleum-based transportation (as well as the golden age of film), our descendants will take it for granted that it was absolutely ordinary for pedestrians out for a Sunday stroll to be driven from the sidewalk by an out-of-control vehicle (usually a commandeered taxi trailed by a gaggle of motorcycle cops). They will think that in our century, there was never a time that a fruiterer put that last orange on top of his pyramid of oranges that some sort of vehicle didn't barrel into the display. They will know that any time, day or night, every plate glass showroom window in North America was liable to have a station wagon hurtle through it. Often in slow motion.

    So here's my proposal for a new rating system for movies. In addition to the three or four stars, let's announce in advance how many car chases we are going to experience  — or better still, exactly how many cars were destroyed during the making of the film. It would certainly help me choose my entertainment if I were to learn that The Bourne Yesterday was a three-star, two-car chase, 197 exploded vehicles film. 

    While we're changing the rating system, I have another idea. Let's also have a Cute Puppy warning.  I'm thinking of that scene where the hero and heroine finally make it to bed and there's a reaction shot of Cute Puppy putting his paw over his eyes. I never, ever, want to see that one again. Agreed: no more car chases, no more Cute Puppies. Life will be richer.

    One further exercise: let us divide the number of cases of amnesia encountered in film by the number of cases of amnesia encountered in real life. And the answer is: it's impossible to divide by zero.       

  • Upon “Upon Julia’s Clothes”

    This pretty six-line poem is not nearly as naive as it first appears. But it's a poem to savor and one that has richly earned its place in the anthologies. It's often, mistakenly in my opinion, listed among the best "love poems" in the English language.

    Whenas in silks my Julia goes,

    Then, then, methinks, how sweetly flows

    The liquefaction of her clothes.

    Next, when I cast mine eyes and see

    That brave vibration each way free

    O how that glittering taketh me.

    The story, the "plot," is simplicity itself: a poet becomes infatuated with "Julia's" garments.

    "Upon Julia's Clothes" may be a poem about "love," but it seems severely truncated, because every reader anticipates that, even though the poet is attracted to his lady's adornments, he'll soon confess that he truly desires Julia herself — her hair, her eyes, and if he takes the well-trodden path, her virtue, which he intends to overcome. But not this poet, not this poem. "Upon Julia's Clothes" is exactly what it announces itself to be; a sestet upon Julia's clothes. Readers learn nothing of Julia, and to tell truth, almost nothing of her costume. The poet lays claim to no interest or expertise in fashion. Instead, he offers a series of images of a silk dress in coruscating, shimmering motion: its flow, its "liquefaction", its "vibration," its "glittering."

    It's in this lovely, odd, and surprising sequence of nouns that the poem's intrigue lies. The word "glittering" is troublesome. A ardent wooer would be unlikely to claim that he was attracted to his beloved's "glitter.'' To do so would be an admission of both his and her superficiality. Plus it's a matter of record that all that glisters is not gold. The word "vibration" is an equally curious choice. "Vibration" was brand-new to the language when this poem was written and the Latin word from which it had recently been annexed meant "shaking" — as a spear or a sword is shaken in defiance of the enemy. "Vibration" was more aggressive than it was loverly. "Liquefaction" — the most startling noun, was confined to an alchemical context. Taken together, the series of dispassionate nouns dilutes any expectation that the poem is an invitation to romance. The poet may have been "taken" –charmed — by the "glittering" — but he's not all that pleased to have been so. 

    The contrary or anti-romantic tendency in the poem is realized in a subversive metaphor so ingenious and subtle that it registers only subliminally."Upon Julia's Clothes" is, figuratively speaking, about the sport of fishing. The most overt hint is the employment of the phrase "when I cast mine eyes" which replaces the more ordinary "when I look." Once a reader notices that piscatorial "cast," the secondary meanings of other words become immediately clear — especially when we recall that in those days, fishing line and fishing ties were made of silk. The watery metaphors in "flows" and "liquefaction" provide the stream, the "brave (extravagant) vibration" is an oscillating lure, and "how that glittering taketh me" refers to the deluded poet, who has snapped at a shiner and is now hooked. As soon as the metaphor bobs to the surface, "how that glittering taketh me," which at first glance meant only "how that dress enchants me," acquires a second meaning — "how that lure hooks me." Julia's clothes, of course, have been transformed into the dangerous lure.

    The sestet is therefore not so much about love-longing as it is about confusion and ambivalence toward women, toward sex and toward sexuality. Julia's clothes captivate the poet, yes, but he's a poor fish, unwillingly enthralled.

    And so the reader now understands why nothing much is made of Julia, the supposed inhabitant of these silken, seductive clothes. It's because there is no Julia — that is, no specific warm-blooded woman worth the wedding, the wooing, or even the sport. In her place, there is only an archetypical Dangerous Female and a culturally-loaded intrapsychic battle between reluctant desire and the deeply puritanical fear of desire.

    Would it be possible to guess, strictly on the basis of this poem, that the author of "Upon Julia's Clothes" (Robert Herrick [1591-1674]), was a clergyman and a lifelong bachelor?

  • Philip Roth’s American Pastoral

    A couple of months ago, when I had journeyed through roughly half of his writings, I made some preliminary observations about the fictional world invented by Philip Roth. In the course of discussion, I advanced two hypotheses. The first was that Roth hated children, whom he regarded as encumbrances to male freedom and pleasure. The second is that although Roth had invented a boatload of adult male narcissists, he had not created a single mensch — a caring, responsible, mature man. In Roth's vision of the world, I suggested, "only a schmuck would be a mensch."

    After a pause for rest and rehabilitation, I've now resumed my upriver voyage to the heart of the Rothworld. I've just finished reading American Pastoral (1997), a novel set during the difficult, still-controversial Vietnam war. I must boast that my hypotheses about children and menschdom are fully confirmed by the new evidence provided by American Pastoral.

    In this novel, children are indeed hateful, and the mensch who has at last made an appearance is nothing more than a schmeggegy. Roth has given us Seymour "Swede" Levov, an archetypal mensch, and behold, what a poor naive schmuck is he! Levov nurtures everyone he encounters, but Roth works it so that his virtue leads directly to his downfall. Poor Swede owns and manages an exemplary factory but he is betrayed by his workers; he's loyal to Newark, so Newark riots and pillages; he loves and supports his fragile wife only to discover that she's sleeping with his friend. Most of all, he adores his daughter, unamusingly called Merry, who turns out to be, just as we might expect, a devil child. She screams unaccountably from the moment of birth and stutters through her awkward childhood (Roth seems to think that colic and speech impediments are signs of inherent viciousness). At adolescence, Merry transforms into an unhandsome Patty Hearst clone who participates in several senseless but deadly political bombings. She then goes underground, only to return secretly in Newark to haunt Levov all the more. Under this succession of attacks, Swede Levov's carefully-crafted menschdom is little-by-little exposed as naive schmuckhood. If only Levov had taken the Zuckerman route: love only thyself, fuck 'em and forget 'em; abort when necessary.

    And now, for the benefit of younger readers, I pause for a few refresher sentences about the historiography of the Vietnamese catastrophe. The significance of this period is highly contested. For those on the left, the war was a foolish attempt to block a peasant uprising against neo-colonialist overlords. The Bundys and Lyndonites and Kissingers squandered fifty thousand American and two million Vietnamese lives (plus moral authority and treasure uncountable). Nevertheless, as the left sees it, the war provided an opportunity for heroism: for the first time in human history, a free and patriotic people, making use of peaceful assemblies, petitions, political activism, boycotts, and resistance to the draft, succeeded in turning an erring government from its mistaken path. On the other hand, the right wing knows an entirely different Vietnam war. For conservatives, the war against communism was lost because squishy liberals lost their nerve. Conservatives remember only the excesses of the anti-war movement: the culture of drugs, the sexual freedom, the violence, and of course, the bombings.

    American Pastoral is firmly of the right-hand file. Roth has performed an amazing piece of legerdemain. He has written about the period of Vietnam, but he has omitted (or suppressed) both the atrocities of the war and the organized, largely peaceful opposition to it. In American Pastoral, resistance is not political but personal. It's embodied in Swede's daughter Merry Levov, who is vacant, violent, angry and disgusting. By stripping the novel of its historical context and coloration, Roth reduces the opposition to the war to an oedipal conflict between a demon child and her well-meaning but ineffectual father. The novel lacks even the decent ambiguity that Roth might have created if he had given Levov other and perhaps more reasonable children. But it's a sure thing that in a novel by Philip Roth, more children would have led not to a widening of focus or to a richer novel, but only to more tsouris.

    It's a shame that so skillful an artist (and one who is not generally a right-winger) has written a novel that's only inches away from neocon propaganda. 

  • Forthcoming Swiftboatery

    HRC, who is essentially a centrist Democrat, is widely perceived as a divisive and polarizing figure. Why so?  Because she's a woman, because she's married to Bill, but mostly because  for twenty years now, unscrupulous Republicans have been investigating, castigating, and smearing her. Is there a more vilified politician in the world? She's a murderess, a lesbian, an adultery-enabler, a frigid bitch… etc. etc. 

    Barack Obama is not perceived as a divisive and polarizing figure, but only because Karl Rove and his cruel band of conscienceless propagandists haven't yet gone to work on him. I guarantee that right at this very moment there's a room full of "conservative" operatives who are brainstorming the most vile imaginings about Obama. Think Willie Horton, think swiftboat. They are forging documents, photoshopping pictures; they're developing sick fantasies about Obama's sex life, his wife, his children, his parents, his patriotism, his education, his finances, and certainly, his religion. Don't dare to imagine that racism is dead; the Rovistas will give it new life. 

    And don't think that you are able to anticipate the attack. It will be disgusting beyond anything that ordinary people are capable of inventing. And it will be cloaked by 527s or disseminated anonymously or leaked.      

    And then Obama too will become a divisive and polarizing figure.         

  • What Happened in Our Precinct

    The big news is that our caucus drew unprecedented hordes of voters.  Our site is the local elementary school.  We’re a "super-site" — seven precincts in one building.  In the past, we’d have ten or a dozen or at an absolute maximum thirty attendees per precinct.  Tonight, at 7pm, when we were supposed to come to order, there were still long lines of folks of all ages waiting patiently to register. Eventually, the super-site drew 707 people! When our precinct was finally able to get organized, there were an astonishing 129 people in the room — breaking all records by a multiple of four or five.  We voted 92 for Obama, 37 for Clinton and we divided our delegates 4-2.   It was exhilarating to see so many unfamiliar young faces.  It was also, as dem events are likely to be, chaotic, amusing, and enthusiastic. 

    I asked new attendees what brought had them out.  I received two answers.  Most frequently, George Bush, who, I was told, has driven the country into a ditch, broken the treasury, ruined the civil service, shredded the constitution, exhausted the military, ruined the environment, packed the judiciary, fought a senseless unnecessary, and endless war, and put loyalty to his wing of the party ahead of loyalty to the country.  The second reason:  Barack Obama.  No question but that Obama has given people in our precinct new hope.

    My conclusion:  Colorado is looking good for the Democrats in November.

  • Confessions of a Dysgeographicoid

    This post is written for members of the directionally dyslexic community.  Non-members are welcome to read but they probably won’t get it.

    Some cities are easy to navigate;  others are nightmares.  In the small western city where I live, the mountains are always visible, and they’re always, blessedly, to the west.   In addition, the streets that run north-to-south are consecutively numbered.  I’m thankful that I live in a city where it is difficult to lose your way.  Manhattan, where I spent last month, is pretty good too, except for the confusing lower downtown.  Manhattan is on a grid.  Ninety-fourth Street Street is always north of 93rd and 2nd Avenue is always east of 3rd Avenue. The worst that can happen is that you walk one short block in the wrong direction and then right yourself. But other cities are impossible.  Take Washington D.C., for example.  Washington could only have been laid out by a sadist whose aim was to drive the directionally-disabled off their collective rockers.  It’s those damn diagonals, which cut through the grid at every conceivable angle.  A few steps along one of those diagonals and the points of the compass become hopelessly shuffled.  And then Washington throws in a few wayward, wandering streets that were added just to cause pain. 

    When we visit Washington, we stay at a home on Nevada Avenue that’s a half-hour walk from the Friendship Heights Metro.  I’ve memorized the route (I’m good at rote learning).  But last month, we (that is myself and my spouse — actually "guide" is the better term) — set out on a different path from station to home.  Why did we do so?  I don’t know;  it wasn’t my decision.  A minute hadn’t elapsed before I had lost my bearings and had no idea whether we were heading north south east or west or how our improvised path stood in relation to the route that I had mechanically mastered.  My guide, who is not directionally-disabled, sometimes forgets, even after all these years, that a few steps on the oblique and I’m completely buffaloed. 

    This time, I decided that instead of whining "where are we?" at every street corner, I would just keep my mouth shut.  I pretended confidence, though I hung back at every corner so as not to commit to a ludicrously wrong direction.  I played follow the leader.  Sometimes we were on the grid, sometimes we took diagonals, sometimes we took one of those eccentric curving streets.  My DD compeers understand that at each of the thirty or so corners that we approached, I had not an inkling whether my guide would choose left, or right, or straight ahead.  But I was, let me tell you, oh so cool.  After a while, the terrain began to grow familiar, but just between us, let me confess that it wasn’t until we were thirty feet from our target that I knew where I was.

    So, friends, here’s my new formula:  keep quiet, hang back, avoid humiliation. 

  • Upper West Side Then and Now

    From 1965 to 1969 we lived on Manhattan's Upper West Side. Now we've returned for a month-long visit. In days of yore, we were the busy young parents pushing our baby carriage down Broadway. Now forty years more 'mature, we step aside as nannies maneuver the twins (without question there are both more nannies and more twins) around and past us.

    And the eternal West Side — has it also matured? Certainly it's a more prosperous neighborhood and a more crowded one. With scores of giant high-rise apartment houses added in the intervening years, it's become even more densely populated. Paradoxically, it's also safer. In the 1960s, received wisdom stated that to wander onto 85th Street or onto Columbus Avenue after dark was to risk death or at least a good mugging. Now the area is peaceful morning, noon and night, and newly-fashionable Columbus Avenue houses dozens of trendy ethnic restaurants. Forty years ago, it was foolish to venture across Central Park to the aristocratic East Side, where, it was rumored, there lived people who were fair-skinned and blond. Some areas of the Park, like The Ramble, were famously dangerous and were visited only by those who were itching for action. Now, single women jog without the least concern. We took advantage of the new freedom by taking frequent jaunts to the row of fabulous museums along Fifth Avenue. (In the 1960s, museums were difficult for West Siders to access but admission was free; today, they're easy to reach but the ticket prices are staggering.) In the good old days, West Side street-corners were gathering points for enterprising drug-dealers. On this visit, I didn't spot a single dealer or a single transaction. Moreover, the neighborhood used to be thick with policemen on patrol; this time, police are scarce and apparently unnecessary. Why the improvement in public safety? In a word, money. Only the rich can now afford to live on the Upper West Side, and rich people don't need to knock you down and empty your wallet. They have other fish to fry. 

    There's a new feature of transportation: droves of briefcase-bearing suit-wearers are shuttled Wallstreetway in luxurious "private cars." Meanwhile, the subway is as efficient and as filthy as ever, but nowadays we pay not with tokens but with "metro cards." The New York Times, then 10 cents, is now $1.25; it has fewer columns, a larger font, and poorer writing. More changes: in yesteryear, a man shouting in public was very likely a paranoid schizophrenic; now a noisy talker has a gimmick in his ear and a cell phone and he's doing nothing more lunatic than snapping up undercapitalized mortgages. 

    Dogs, here as elsewhere, are horribly indulged. One day we peeked into a "pet exercise" gymnasium and later were amused by a well-appointed van labeled "Pet Limousine." Although there are many more curs, there are fewer piles of canine poopery on the sidewalks; most dog-walkers make use of plastic bags. Thank you, dog-walkers.

    Affordable supermarkets have disappeared and there are only specialty food shops where the prices are beyond astronomical. But where do the waitresses, cooks, cleaning ladies, nannies, cashiers, shop girls, bank tellers, kioskers, subway maintenance men, bus drivers, janitors, and policemen shop?  Where, in fact, do they live? Not in the neighborhood; not since the entire West Side went condo.

    It's still a polyglot world, but there's much less Spanish and a lot more Russian, Chinese, Hindi and Arabic.

    More novelties: there's a Duane Reade (sometimes two) on every street and there's a second crowded Starbucks visible from the Starbucks where you sit poring over your wireless laptop and nursing your gigantico skinny dry vanilla latte. In the 1960s, there were seven movie theaters within walking distance — including the New Yorker and the Thalia, the mother churches of cinema worship. Now, there are none — nor even a single dvd rental store. It's all Netflix and downloads.

    There's been a phenomenal growth of personal services: not just the barbershops and hairdressers of old, but also whole galaxies of nail care shops. Who could have imagined that in the new millennium, fingernails would become the cornerstone of the economy? An economy of which I'm not a part; my nail care consists of occasionally biting off a sliver of stray keratin and taking a cosmetic nibble or two at the paronychium. I don't believe I've spent a nickel, lifetime, on my nails, nor do I intend to do so. Nope, no manicures, nor pedicures, nor medicures (what the heck is a medicure?) nor massages nor aromatherapy for me. Nor will I have my ears candled (a process that one medical website calls 'useless and dangerous") or my eyebrows threaded or any part of my body, public or private, waxed. It appears that every facial feature and every organ has an entire industry dedicated to its hygiene and its remediation. Is the upper West Side experiencing an outbreak of good health? Or a triumph of narcissism?

    One final observation: since we lived here, many expensively-architected fancy-shmancy private schools have appeared. Meanwhile, public schools have been allowed to slide further into poverty. Ugly, concrete block buildings surrounded by chainlink fence and razor wire — not temples of learning, but prisons.The gap between rich and poor, evident then, has become a chasm. Manhattan is safer and more livable than it was (at least for the prosperous), but it will not be truly healed until its citizenry moves beyond "private wealth and public squalor."

  • “Cesspool of Talent”

    Colorado’s "flagship" football team has had unprecedented success signing up in-state recruits.  In the paper this morning:  "If you look around we’ve just got a cesspool of talent around here."

    A "cesspool of talent?"  Here are two things that we know about the up-and-coming young linebacker who is credited with that sentence:  a) he’s never come face-to-face with a actual cesspool, and b) he’s under the impression that "cess" means "large" or "deep."   Is he alone?  I’m afraid not.  A quick googling retrieves sixty cesspools of talent, perhaps a third of which are ironic.  

    Shakespeare uses "cess" to mean "measure."  A diseased horse, "Poor jade, is wrung in the withers out of all cess."  Is it possible that our linebacker is familiar with The First Part of King Henry the Fourth?  Does he believe that "cesspool" mean "immeasurable pool?

    In a related matter, one of my correspondents sends me this yahoo headline:  "U.S. woman abducted in Afghanistan. A Taliban snatch."  Clearly, the writer is ignorant of the demotic use of the word "snatch."  He should have consulted Shakespeare, one of whose nastiest characters (Aaron in Titus Andronicus) uses the word correctly:  "Why, then, it seems, some certain snatch or so/ Would serve your turns."

  • The “Chinese Bus”

    As is our custom, we journeyed from New York to Washington (and back) on the so-called "Chinese bus." It's a bargain: round-trip between Chinatown here and Chinatown there for just $35. It's a non-standard, non-greyhoundish, no frills experience. It's also shoestring capitalism in the raw. When a potential passenger arrives at the East Broadway departure site, he/she will be accosted by young female representatives of several different companies, each touting her own organization. The ladies are aggressive but hard to decipher inasmuch as they shout in Chinese and possess only the most rudimentary English. A traveler must be careful to board the right bus at the right hour (the first time I used this service, I was almost shanghaied to Boston). The buses are not well marked and misrepresentation is rife. Leaving New York last time, we talked with a number of travelers who were frustrated and angry. Some had been told that the bus would set out for Washington at noon, some at 12:30, some at 12:45 — whatever time would sell the ticket and get the luggage on board and the passenger into a seat. Because there's no terminal and the streets are so crowded, the bus had to run a loop around lower Manhattan. Each time it set out, there was optimism, but then fifteen minutes later it would return to square one to board more passengers. We circulated three or four times. At 1:30, which was in fact the scheduled departure time, we were on the road, but with quite a number of unhappy passengers in tow. 

    A few years ago, almost all the passengers were Asian. Nowadays, the news is out and it's all complexions from ebony to ivory. Still, the dominant language and the dominant food odors are Chinese.

    Sometimes the driver bypasses a scheduled stop. Sometimes it's necessary for one passenger to discipline a fellow passenger for surreptitious smoking. Amenities are minimal. The waiting rooms are small, dank, and squalid. On the bus, the john is unspeakably foul. BYOTP.

    But it's inexpensive, it's fun, and it gets you there.   

  • A Walk With Ella

    Today it was my assignment to pick up the five-year-old granddaughter at the local Montessori school. We walked home together.  It’s a ten minute walk but it took us more than forty minutes.  Here’s why.

    There was a patch of frozen snow on the ground. Ella pretended to skate back and forth on it for a few minutes.  After a while she happened to push some lumps of ice onto the sidewalk and decided to see how far she could kick them. When the ice disintegrated, she went back for more clumps to practice her kick upon.  She repeated this four or five times. But finally, searching for more ice, she found a black and white feather (she collects feathers), which she closely inspected and gave to me to carry.  After that she looked at a number of leaves both on the ground and hanging upon the low branches; she gathered a few of last year’s brittle brown oak leaves.  Next she came upon a small flock of English sparrows who were pecking at some seed; she chased them off but waited to see how long it would take them to return. She decided to add to her rock collection: she found a beautiful, potato-size rock that I was allowed to carry home.  "Could I open it with a knife?  I’d like to see inside it?"  Then it was time to dance on a brick retaining wall.  Finished with that activity, she found two hunks of packed snow and scraped them together.  "It’s beautiful music," she said.  She stopped to practice her whistling, a newly acquired skill. Then came an experiment:  what happens when clumps of snow are rubbed on the trunk of a pear tree.  And so on.   

    Ella’s world:  so various, so beautiful, and so new! 

  • The Tarantass

    Here the all but preternatural patience of metablogian aficionados is solicited as Dr Metablog quotes directly from an ancient (April, ’07) posting on sex and the horsedrawn vehicle — the R-rated entirety of which can be found here:

    "Regular readers of this blague are well aware that I have repeatedly indulged my bemusement with the names of extinct or obsolescent horsedrawn conveyances.  My point is that modern readers, who know precisely what is signified  — in design, in metal, rubber and plastic and other constituents, and especially in social value — by such words as Jeep, Jaguar, Jetta, and jalopy, know zero zilch zip about "fly," "trap," "landau," "chaise," "phaeton," "cabriolet," "sulky," "surrey," "curricle," "gig," "hansom," "buggy," "four-wheeler," "spring-van," "berlin," "barouche," "britchka," "troika," "wurt," "tandem," "caleche," "tilbury," "dog-cart," "wagonette," "go-cart," "victoria," "brougham," "diligence," "clarence" and "post-chaise."  If we notice these words at all, we tend to savor them as archaic Victorian music rather than to identify and evaluate them as specific forms of transportation."

    My point is that we read Victorian novels with one hand tied behind our backs, so to speak, when we don’t know whether a dog-cart or a clarence or a wurt delineates rich or poor, stylish or provincial, pretentious or aggressive or modest. 

    Perpetually naive, I thought that I had pretty much exhausted the list of nineteenth-century horsedrawn conveyances.  However, by a curious coincidence, I just yesterday happened upon two more such vehicles.  The first is a "basket-carriage," an example of which I observed with my very own eyes at the New York Historical Society at Central Park West and 77th Street.  A basket-carriage is a coach constructed of wicker.  The carriage on exhibit looked mighty comfortable for summer travel but would be frigid and leaky when winter winds are raging.   A second new conveyance materialized in Nikolai Gogol’s story, The Carriage.  It’s the very versatile "tarantass" — a horsedrawn coach fitted with removable wheels so that it could be converted into a sled come winter.  Are there still more to be discovered?  I wouldn’t be surprised if there are. Stay tuned.      

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