The League of David

Break, Blow, Burn

In Break, Blow, Burn, Camille Paglia does something novel.  She reads a poem.  She reads it closely and then she writes about it.  Why is this so novel?  Close reading is no longer taught in undergraduate and graduate humanities courses.  Philistines long ago usurped the discipline of close reading, essential to the appreciation of poetry.  They replaced it with identity politics and something called poststructualism, a worthless mishmash of neo-Marxism, relativism, French deconstruction, and an unbelievably opaque syntax of half-words, and endless, incomprehensible sentences.  And like everything else that Philistines touch, academic training in the study of literature has become an irrelevant exercise in posing. 

As Paglia writes in the Introduction,

"Poststructuralism and crusading identity politics led to the gradual sinking in reputation of the premiere literature departments, so that by the turn of the millennium they were no longer seen, even by the undergraduates themselves, to be where the excitement was on campus. One result of this triumph of ideology over art is that, on the basis of their publications, few literature professors know how to 'read' any more - and thus can scarcely be trusted to teach that skill to their students.  Cultural studies, for example, despite is auspicious name, has been undone by its programmatic Marxism and is a morass of misreadings or overreadings."

I think I was part of the last generation of  English majors trained in close reading, and so I didn't see much novelty in this book.  However, I did find her insights clever, interesinting, and sometimes striking.  It inspired a certain nostalgia for the kind of reading my professors used to do in front of class.

The book is a "walk the walk" statement.  Dr. Paglia  has made a career confronting the Philistines of academia. But, she doesn't just criticize.  Through her work, she shows Philistines what good criticsm is all about.  And they hate her for it.

The voice of modern woman

In her new book, Break, Blow, Burn, Camille Paglia chooses several poems and poets I didn't know, including Rochelle Kraut's My Makeup.

My Makeup

on my cheeks I wear
the flush of two beers

on my eyes I use
the dark circles of sleepless nights
to great advantage

for lipstick
I wear my lips

Dr. Paglia reads this as an expression of sexual confidence and "modernist anxiety."   I see the confidence, but it's not the confidence of the "liberated" woman.  It's the personal confidence of the worldly woman: She Who Has Graduated from the School of Hard Knocks. 

The first image that came to me was not of a young confident woman who flaunts her "dark circles of sleepless nights" as "trophies of women's hard-won freedom to roam and loiter."  Instead, I saw the aging aunts and cousins' wives from the big immigrant family parties of my childhood.   They would sit together at the picnic table, their costume jewelry clinking against their glasses of mixed drinks, High Balls and Manhattans.  I remember one aunt made a statement by drinking beer (Schaefer, Schlitz, or Budweiser, of course).   

Some wore a lot of makeup; others none at all.  Most had no formal higher education, but they were all street-smart and confident women.  Smartasses, was the word their husbands used.  After a few High Balls, they'd get downright raunchy, smoking like chimneys, swearing like sailors and barking orders to their husbands.

"Hey, Louie, can you cook this goddamn bergha.  It's so fuckin' raw, I'm gonna milk it tomorrow mornin'."

When I think of today's "liberated" woman I have the image of a narcissistic, bulimic loner, drinking a low- carb beer and wondering why the latest boyfriend wouldn't call even though she gave him a blowjob last Saturday.

God, what happened?

I Think I Know Why It's Cold Outside

Hell froze over.

The New York Times offers up a favorable review of Camille Paglia's new book.  It looks like this is going to be a must-read for the League. 

For the cheaters among my three readers, the "key" to the image can be found at the link to the review.

Beyond Cool (Well, for me anyway)

As a student of Indo-European mythology and language, I am always on the lookout for reports like this:

Tehran, Jan. 20 (Iranian Cultural Heritage News Agency) – Researchers from the Copenhagen Museum in Denmark have traveled to the coasts of the Caspian Sea, northern Iran, in search of clues of relationships between Iranians and Vikings.

A few years ago, a researcher from the Copenhagen Museum, Nadia Haupt, discovered more than one thousand coins and relics that did not belong to the Danish or other Scandinavian cultures, and therefore set to find out more about the historical roots of the Danish civilization.

The West's ethnic ties to some Eastern cultures are so thin and bare today that it's hard for people to fathom that at one point we all shared the same language.  There's an odd book on this odd subject that may perhaps be the best book I've ever read on things Indo-European.  It's called The Mummies of Urumchi and is, of all things, a study of the textiles found on a collection of very ancient mummies from western China.  Sporting red and blonde hair, long beards, tall frames, and plaid clothing, these mummies are considered by some to be the forefathers and foremothers of today's Europeans, especially northern Europeans.  The book evolves from a basic study of the well-preserved textiles to the broader cultural and historical implications :

Barber's [the author] field of study is the history of textiles, and my first impression of the book was that it was going to be an analysis of what the mummies were wearing, and how those clothes were made. But it's much, much more. True, Barber starts off with that, but she quickly gets into the whole question of how these people (evidently caucasians) happened to be in this region thousands of years ago. In the process, she takes us through the entire process of modern archeology -- comparative linguistics, tracking down ancient original sources, studying the climate of the time, carbon dating, following artifacts as they move through different cultures .

In the process, we see how archeologists actually do their work. It's one thing to simply dig a hole in the ground and produce some pieces of pottery (or, in this case, mummies). It's quite another to explain how the pieces were made ... and who made them. And ultimately, those are the questions we most want to see answered. Our fascination with the past is primarily a fascination with the human past ... understanding who we are by who we once were. And this book does an absolutely fantastic job of showing us how the pieces can be brought together from disparate sources to explain who a people were ... and how they came to be there.

Written in a chatty, engaging style, the author clearly enjoys her subject and finds in it the threads of a time in the when a sort of pre-Tower of Babel nomadic civilization thrived. 

And if you're reading this, you're part of that civilization.

Book Geek Bona Fides

I received an e-mail from someone -- who is not among my three readers -- demanding to know how I am so sure that this well-intentioned, multimillion dollar boondoggle is NOT going to be the end of libraries and librarians as we know it.

Where to begin:

I worked in a public library when I was in high school the summer and fall of 1986-87 (before the e-mailer was a glimmer in his mommy & daddy's eye).  Off to college at the University of Maryland, I spent two years shelving and repairing books, and checking them out for patrons at the school's two largest libraries.  I've worked as a reference librarian in two government libraries, one legal library, and one non-profit library.  I was the knowledge manager at federal information center.  I've been a corporate intelligence librarian, and an open source intelligence analyst on a government contract where they are designing the next generation of search engines. 

While in college I studied medieval literature. I started graduate school working toward a PhD in medieval literature.  Reality got in the way, and so I decided to pay my bills by becoming a professional librarian.  My coursework at Catholic University's library school included two classes in analytical bibliography, but my emphasis was management, and it was this emphasis that become the inspiration for my first book.

In the early 1990s, I was responsible for digitizing a paper collection of government legal documents.  I've been responsible for assessing current digitization technology and processes.  In the late 1990s, I took some advanced training in copyright and intellectual property law.

I've been listening to the siren calls of End Times for Libraries since 1987.  The Google/Libraries project is nothing more than a very large digitization project, folks.  They happen all the time. 

Reviewing Depravity

Over at New Criterion, Theodore Dalrymple reviews a book being marketed as a "taboo-breaker," and finds some gallows humor in the face of ever-mounting depravity in legitimate publishing circles.  He then proceeds to write the funniest two sentences I've read all year:

The author of The Surrender: An Erotic Memoir is a standard modern taboo-breaker, since her book is largely about a subject not much written about, namely the joys of sodomy.  She claims to have discovered the meaning of life, or to have achieved a kind of enlightenment, through this activity (if she hadn’t, the book would have been pornography merely); a man’s penis in her rectum is to her what the sacred bo tree was to the Buddha.

By contrast, check out what Publisher's Weekly has to say about it:

"I am sitting on the threshold. Perhaps this is the final paradox of God's paradoxical machinations: my ass is my very own back door to heaven. The Pearly Gates are closer than you think." Bentley is writing of her rhapsodic experience with sodomy. So some will call this memoir blasphemous, others spiritual; some pornographic, others erotic. What it is, is wonderfully smart and sexy and witty and moving, a tale of unbounded passion that leads to transcendence...."

Some of  the reader's reviews at Amazon.com are just as depraved.  My favorites:

I'm a big proponent of the notion that the world would be a much better place if everyone would just get over the idea that there is such a thing as `normal' when it comes to sex.

This is the best reason I've yet heard to get rid of the United Nations.

Or this one (Note: real Buddhists -- not the people who practice the Hollywood version -- should be offended):

This is an emotional journey.  A Pilgrimage to Olympus. This is a transcendent masterpiece, by far the best, heals over head above, all else in its genera, thank you Toni Bentley for this work of art, this expose' of your souls journey to bliss.  I am an old man this book brought back decades of memories, hundreds of encounters relived. Buddhist Monks meditate for lifetimes to achieve what Toni Bentley achieves quickly and retains for three years.

Asceticism  be damned.  These men and women don't know what they're doing, all they need to do is practice anal sex!

Here's a male admirer:

The author is true to herself in this honestly brillent essay of her sexual enlightenment.  As a man it realy opend my eyes and I think more men should read this book.  So far this and "A Tourist in the Yucatan" have been my favorite reads of fall 2004.

And this person, who thinks that anal sex can lead you to God and liberate you from the bonds of servitude in a male-dominated world:

Most people never have the chance in their lifetime to know what it means to merge with another through their sexuality, heal masochistic tendencies and childhood wounds through pure love, or find God through ecstatic surrender to another.  This book is the vicarious thrill of knowing what all of that would be like.  It is a voyeuristic pleasure to watch such an articulate, open, cultured and successful woman find such an unconventional way to reach God and her own transformation from hurt child to powerful Goddess.  I would recommend this book to any woman who has been exploited in a man's world and can appreciate the tantric way of sodomy.

Hey!  A two-fer!  I'm there!

Where Commerce and Technology Meet...

..you have civilization. In this case you also have the first printed Koran.

Can you guess where it was published. Baghdad? No. At the court of Shah Jahan? No. Damascus? No. Cairo? No.

None of these great centers of the vast and "sophisticated" Islamic civilization could produce the first Koran printed with moveable type.

It was Venice, ca. 1537

It was printed for the "Ottoman market" but according to this publisher's brochure,

The abundant errors and poor appearance of the type, however, ruined all prospects of success for this Koran edition. Presumably, the copies published were confiscated and destroyed by the Ottomans.

You've got hand it those Venetian businessmen, they knew how to identify potential markets even if their technology and research did not match the production needs.

It might even make you wonder about that much-vaunted Islamic civilization we keep on hearing about. If the first Korans were printed using Western technology in one of the centers of Western civilization in 1537, then it's easy to imagine that by the 16th century, Islamic civlization was in decline.

A Review of a Review

I give the Philistine, er, Washington Post a lot of crap because its news and editorial writing now rivals that of any communist organ newspaper of the 1960s. Case in point: yet another Abu Ghraib article today (I won't link to it). The UN now says that it can account for some of Iraq's WMDs, but this little piece of news doesn't even make it on the Post's newsfeed service. But, man, they must have half their staff working to uncover every sordid detail at Abu Ghraib.

The Post does have a few good writers, including their Book World columnist, Michael Dirda. His wonderful review of the Peter Brown's The Rise of Western Christendom last year was the reason I decided to read the book. He does, however, miss the point in one crucial area:

Most strikingly, two long chapters take up, with much detail and sympathy, the triumph of Islam and the way it incorporated Christians within its empire. Here, Brown speaks warmly of the beauty of Arabic, "the richest language of the Near East," later adding, with even more enthusiasm, that "nothing which happened in barbarian western Europe equaled the energy with which the Muslims around 700 mobilized a sense of their own Arabian past. The creation of an Arabic historical tradition was one of the great intellectual achievements of the early Middle Ages."

Among Philistine writers like Mr. Dirda, any writer that speaks approvingly of Islam is, of course, going to produce a good book. If a writer is critical of Islam then they are a de facto partisan with "simplistic" attitudes. The problem with this passage is that it isn't true. Peter Brown is actually quite even handed in his analysis of the impact of Islam on Chrisitan civilization. After all, this is a book about Christiantiy, and Islam ultimately destroyed centuries of Christian traditions.

If anything, Brown makes several strong points that are never discussed among the Philistines:
1. Muslim Arabs adopted the civili infrastructure they conquered. It wasn't native to their culture. They enslaved or otherwise employed a Christian and Jewish skilled and educated class to design their mosques, copy their Korans, and administer their empire.
2. Christians and Jews were severaly restricted in their forms of worship and their ability to acquire wealth and influence.
3. Christians were not happy to be the slaves of Islam, and many were forced to convert in order to avoid crushing taxes that were used to inflict war on other Christians
4. Arabic was forced on most peoples under the fist of Islam. Native languages such as Chaldean and Aramaic were marginalized.

The question I like to ask Philistines whenever they begin to blabber the party line on Islam -- the religion of peace and tolerance -- is this: If Christiantiy was allowed to "flourish" under Islam why are there only 10 million Christians left in the Miiddle East?

Lesson #3: The Book from the Edge of the World

The Nuremberg Chronicle

It's possibly the world's first coffee table book.

Published in 1493 by a doctor in the town of Nuremberg, Germany the book has over 600 pages and thousands of illustrations, some hand-colored. It was published too soon for the news of the New World to reach Nuremberg, but it is still a marvel of detail and scope. Published with the title Liber chronicarum, it was nothing less than a history of the known world, from Genesis to contemporary times. It's full of sacred and secular stories, "histories," descriptions of people, places and things.

The book was very popular. Hundreds of copies still exist.

I've had the privilege of inspecting one of these beauties. It's huge, and very heavy. The pages turn awkwardly, not unlike browsing a large world atlas. I quickly forgot its age, and I could see myself standing over it alongside its original owner. It's like having the Middle Ages in your arms.

We've all become so used to thinking that the Middle Ages were a dark time of ignorance, disease, unceasing war, and poverty. But much of what survives from the world before 1500 tells a different story.

Men and women of the Middle Ages were insatiably curious about the world around them. Libraries were filled with books that described people and places at the far corners of the world. Marco Polo's adventures were wildly successful. Once printed books became daily items, that curiosity exploded into the Renaissance.

The fruits of our current civilization didn't just pop up out of nowhere. They have their source in the Middle Ages, even earlier. The Nuremberg Chronicle is an artifact from this time, right at the crown of a breaking wave. Within ten years of its publication, almost every aspect of Western society was in flux. Ten years after that came the Reformation. The Chronicle represents the calm before the storm.

The Library of Congress has a copy. It's often on display either at the Jefferson Building or at the National Gallery of Art. If you visit either place keep an eye out for it.

Other proud institutions are showing off their copies online:

University of Maryland

Dartmouth

University of Oregon

You can buy a recently annotated, translated edition from Amazon.