Posted Sunday, May 12
Crito, I owe a Link to Ascepius

I thought .Mac would pull the plug on my bandwidth. But now I've got a real problem. It's official. I've got jetlag. Caught it from my family. Middle of the afternoon. Full to the brim with nice, warm coffee - and I've just gotta take a long nap.

But before I go, debts to pay. Mr. And Mrs. Gallowglass have a new site, Gallowglass; it's good stuff. The top item about Spanish anti-terror measures: airline passenger data collection (the reign in Spain falls mainly on the plane.) Criminalizing 'defeatism'? Below that, interesting stuff about 'The New Wierd', which isn't such a great name for a movement. But I have an interest in it: China Mieville, in particular. (Blogged about him myself.) Oh, and then they link to little old big fat me! They've been doing that a lot lately. (Yes, but I wouldn't link back except they deserve it. Salt of the Earth, those rootless mercenaries.)

And then there is the three-toed sloth, answers to Cosma, the only known mammal to whom I am not married who has actually troubled to render critical judgement - in writing - of my philosophical dialogue about 'theory', and my arguments about 'argufments'. He has a post which really needs an answer - and will get one. Basically, he makes the quite correct point that, as it stands, my loose equation of argufying and poetry seems on track to culminate in a bad theory of poetry rather than a good theory of argufying. (Oh, and he has a long quote from Dr. Johnson that's perfect.) Today I can get away with saying: this bit about attitudes to globalization is sharp and shrewd. And then below that the article from "Nature" he links is great. As he says: "Nature to Creationists: Drop Dead". Here's a think that doesn't get thunk enough because empirical scientists get creeped out by saying 'a priori'. The proposition, 'if there are genes in us, and harsh environments out of us, then Darwinism is true' is an a priori truth. Oh, and going way back, this was funny. I like it because, if it's all true, it probably explains a lot about giant squid. (I don't want to give it away, but here's a hint: I'll bet they're ancient astronauts!)

And now, after giving a wierdly long speech, I die.
Posted Sunday, May 12
Welcome Home, Zoë!
Posted Saturday, May 11
The Prodigal Wife

I feel a little like an interloper returning to the scene after John has gotten us all famous in the blogosphere. But you'll note that both John and Belle have a blog, according to the masthead up there. Ergo, Belle must have a blog. And I feel like we're right back where I started back in the day, making fun of John Derbyshire.

On the baby front, I feel that we've outclassed Lileks in one respect: tot sleeping problems. Try a 30-hour plane trip followed by a 12-hour time difference on for size, thank you very much. Lying down for a nap at midnight? Bien sur. Getting ready for bed as the sun comes up? Oh yeah. Still waking up every two hours to nurse through the "night", i.e., the day? Ovviamente. If only she were willing to go to clubs with me too, things could be pretty cool.

We live in the tropics. Three mighty degrees north of the equator. It's pretty hot, I've realized. Welcoming me home on my return are some very pointless insects: ant drones. We've got both the little ones and the inch-long soldier ant drones. Revelling in their brief existence, they swarm in the windows at night and buzz futilely around the lights. They are so poorly constructed that their wings fall off for no reason. Finding wings lying everywhere is gross. Obviously Mother Nature is a bit of a tightwad when it comes to expending those valuable biological resources like wings that stay on. I mean, they only live for a day or so, right? They're like mobile, expendable DNA packets. Makes you think about the big questions.

They're incredibly easy to kill, too, once you get over the fact that they look like big wasps. I don't feel bad doing it because if they're in my house, they've lost the genetic lottery. There are no soldier ant queens in my house (at least, I freaking hope not.) But why do I ever feel bad about killing bugs, often going to the trouble of catching them under glasses and setting them free outside? Why extend them this Jain-like courtesy, given that I eat baby lambs and cows and fluffy rabbits? Well, I've learned recently from the National Review that I no longer have to bother my head with these pettifogging concerns about consistency. Ah, the bracing air out here, beyond Good and Evil. Positively intoxicating. I never expected that my fellow dancers over the abyss would claim to be Burkean conservatives. I hope no one looks down.

Just one more thing. I think my husband is letting the the Derbster off a little lightly, implausible as that may seem. He is not merely like a college freshman with a poster of Fidel Castro. Why not? Well, the college freshman at least claims to share Castro's political goals, even if his efforts to bring about the revolution are less than strenuous. The position Derbyshire articulates is more like this: imagine a UC Berkeley college professor who borrows authenticity from a Chicano labor organizer (not straining you too much, to start with.) We all agree this is a bit weak, as per John's objections below, given that the forms of life of these two people are wholly different, intersecting only at some conferences where they make awkward small talk. Now imagine that the Chicano labor organizer is an old-fashioned macho type, while the professor is a staunch advocate of women's rights. Fine so far. Now let's say that the labor organizer teams up with others who share his views about women and men's respective positions to create a new law in California, under which a man who kills his wife and her lover after catching them in flagrante gets off scot-free, and one who does so after thinking about it for some time (but is still in a white-hot rage) gets a slap on the wrist. No similar defense for wives with straying husbands is proposed. To parallel Derbyshire in this case, the Berkeley professor has to think that the work done to pass this immoral law, with which he disagrees, is not only a good thing, but more important to the future of left politics than any of the professor's own, moral actions. (Lest you think I am being unfair, Derbyshire explicitly states that compared with someone home-schooling her child in falsehoods about creationism, Derbyshire himself is doing something "not as critical to the future of conservatism".) And though women's rights will be trampled by this unjust law, the professor reasons that since women can move to other states, there's really no harm done. That, my friends, would be completely nuts. Chock full o'nuts, even. And that's John Derbyshire in a nutshell.
Posted Saturday, May 10
The Matrix Bedrabbled

I've been giving conservatism hell, which is funny - me being so conservative and all. (No, not really, but sort of.)

Casting my hunter's eye along the opposite horizon, I've been wanting to write something about Margaret Drabble's descent into madness. But, what to say? Lots of things are worth fisking, and some are sort of self-fisking so you have to work fast to beat them to beating themselves to death. But Drabble performs sort of an insta-self-fisking. Which leaves the lonely fiscatore, as Romance languages style him, casting forth his nets of truth, reason, fact and logic across an empty sea. Sad.

So here's my suggestion. If someone fisks themselves so quickly that that whole thing is just ashes by the time the fire engines arrive, the thing to do is compel the silly fool to be in a movie.

I thought about this months ago, actually, when that stupid guy insulted the cadet. I went to his homepage and there was the sweater. I thought the thing to do was not to revoke his tenure, as many intemperately suggested. I'm in favor of academic freedom. The thing to do was to force him to be in a bad movie, Tenured Cadet, starring himself as himself. It goes something like this:

He gets in trouble for being an idiot (just like in life.) The President of the University (a bescarred Vietnam vet) is reading a dog-eared and much-annotated copy of Starship Troopers and laughing maniacally to himself as the silly fool is called on the carpet. 'Join the cadets yourself,' he is told, 'or have your tenure revoked.' He gets stuck in a sad sack outfit of tired, filmic cliches: the fat kid who is always eating; the nervous guy; the geek; the surfer dude; the Latin lover; the angry black dude; the chick. Sarge despairs of whipping them into shape. Then there is a mix-up and, instead of the elite combat special forces unit getting parachuted into Iraq, as planned, the sad sack cadets get substituted, and no one believes their protests about mistaken identity (laughs). Well, the rest writes itself. Obviously they all learn to be men (except the chick, who learns to be a woman.) Laughter, tears, band of brothers-type stuff. Each of them turns out to have a 'special power', whether it is smacking people with a surf board, seducing the enemy, whatever. I think our professor ends up garotting a fedayeen with his sweater, to save the nervous guy (who finds his courage and save the professor back.) When they return the University President (with tears running down his scars like rivers) pins a medal on each, and - when it is the professor's turn - he says, you're free now. "No, sir, now I will always be a tenured cadet, sir!"

And here's what I've got planned for Drabble. She has to be in a remake of that scene from The Matrix. The one in which Agent Smith delivers his great soliloquy to the bound Morpheus:

Can you hear me, Morpheus? I'm going to be honest with you. I hate this place. This zoo. This prison. This reality, whatever you want to call it, I can't stand it any longer. It's the smell, if there is such a thing. I feel saturated by it. I can taste your stink and every time I do, I fear that I've somehow been infected by it.

Margaret Drabble must read her entire Telegraph editorial in Smith suit and sunglasses, in perfect Smith vocal cadences, while angrily palpating a confused George Bush's head. Bush, covered with silly electrodes, gazes around confusedly, interrupting her every other sentence with 'what? what?' like Homestar Runner in this classic toon from the 30's, "Parsips a Plenty". Meanwhile, downstairs, Rummy and Condi are gearing up: 'Guns, lots of guns.' Writes itself.

Posted Saturday, May 10
Conservative Consistency Concluded: Fluffy and Stuffy

Welcome, visitors via Andrew Sullivan. (I haven't been this famous since Instapundit somehow figured out I confessed to being Nick de Genova's former roommate.) I am a little surprised the site didn't go down. Apple must be extending me more bandwidth for my punk-ass .Mac account than I supposed. Thank you, Steve Jobs! (Now just get the damn iTunes store working in Singapore, if you please.)

Things are cooling down at the Corner, consistency-wise. Stanley Kurtz is employing very calming tones. But I'm increasingly genuinely (not just pretend for comic effect) confused about why many of these folks think it is a good idea to be conservative. There's this bit from Kurtz, for example, in which Churchill is quoted on Burke:

But a charge of political inconsistency applied to this life appears a mean and petty thing. History easily discerns the reasons and forces which activated him, and the immense changes in the problems he was facing, which evoked from the same profound mind and sincere spirit these entirely contrary manifestations....No one can read the Burke of Liberty and the Burke of Authority without feeling that here was the same man pursuing the same ends, seeking the same ideals of society and Government, and defending them from assaults, now from one extreme, now from the other.

Now Kurtz is substantially in the clear, having not breathed a bad word against logic all week, nor confessed to not believing in his own beliefs. (He's got a thing against gay marriage but - well, as the guy said at the end of the good movie, 'nobody's perfect'. That's what makes America great. Wear a dress. Wear any old tinfoil hat you think will ward off the rays, the cooties, whatever. Perhaps you will even prove, in time, as the immortal Burke might say, 'a graceful ornament to the social order.') So I've got hope for Kurtz.

But my problem with Goldberg and the Derb (whom Kurtz is collegially shieldling with this spectre of Churchill mediating the spirit of Burke) is that - if they don't think the ends they are pursuing can be defended as consistent or true, which seems to be the case - why bother? Why not just hit the snooze button all day rather than get up and go to work at the National Review? What are the reasons and forced which activate them?

If you reread the Derb's piece, which you should - it's really witty and interesting and well-written and nicely observed - you may, like me, come to the conclusion that the only possible reason the author can still have for being a conservative is that he loathes 'liberals' in an aesthetic way. He's not a conservative due to any positively activating force or reason (unlike Burke). He's not actually a conservative. He just likes conservatives for being enemies of his enemy. He gazes out over the fruited plains, purple moutains, et al. and sees herds and herds of women like the one he talks to in the piece. The Marilyn Quayle hair, vaguely suggestive of a bison's horns. This - he thinks - will do. Moving all in the same direction, in force, they will trample the enemy most satisfactorily. (Alas, for the lack of such creatures on fair Albion.)

I say this is an aesthetic outlook because, in part, it obviously is, and Derb wouldn't even deny it. There is a scene in Eating Raoul. Paul screams 'I hate swingers!' at a naked crowd of hedonists carousing hedonistically in a hot tub. He throws in an electric lamp. They all instantly pitch over dead. Very funny. (You've really got to see it.) That's the Derb in a nutshell. But I used to believe there was actually more going on in the nutshell. Now I'm no longer sure there is anything more going than a sort of constant lamp-into-the-hot-tub-full-of-liberals. Alpha and omega of Derb's conservative philosophy, this reflex action. His reasons and forces, Churchillianly speaking.

I am tempted to dub this 'heartless conservatism', not as an antonym to the compassionate sort, which does exist, but because there seems to be no heart - no solid center of conviction or doctrine or belief, unmoved yet moving. It's an aesthetic stance. An actor's gesture. It's very shallow. The Derb even compares himself to shallow leftists who embarrass themselves with their stupid choices of associates, for Jeeper's Creeper's sake! When the man comes out and announces 'my thought is like unto a Fidel Castro poster on a stupid freshman's wall, and I see nothing to apologize for,' what is there left for me to say? It's a self-Fisking. Very well done, too.

This all dovetails with my late, dire mutterings about consistency. But it isn't that the Derb is inconsistent. The thing Derb and Goldberg have in common, I begin to suspect, is that there is no there there. They are managing to make conservatism fluffy and stuffy. Which is something new under the sun, admittedly.

Kurtz fits in here because it seems he's caught a mild case of whatever bug has gotten into the water at the National Review. There's this, for example:

Still today, but even more so back in the 1950's when Bennett grew up, there would have been nothing surprising at all about someone who smoked and periodically traveled to Las Vegas to gamble, but who thought that legalized drugs were a bad idea. Society is entitled to choose which forms of pleasure are permitted and which are prohibited. It’s always going to be a mixture. And someone has to enforce the prohibitions society decides upon. It’s silly to pretend that prohibiting one pleasure has to mean that no other pleasures are legitimate–for the enforcers, or for anyone else.

The 50's. I'm getting sort of a James Ellroy, L. A. Confidential vibe off this (how 'bout you?) Lieutenant Dudley Smith, in his smooth brogue and poetic style: "Good work, lads, cracking every last of these merry hopheads that have infested our fair City of Angels for far too long, tempting sons and daughters onto paths of sin and indulgence. I should think a weekend in Las Vegas, and a fine cigar and the jingle of silver in each man's pocket, would be quite the thing to reward ourselves for honest labors." Nothing surprising about that. Is there anything in particular to be said for it? (I always feel so damn sorry for the earnest commies and leftie intellectuals and hapless Hollywood homosexuals in Ellroy novels. You know they don't stand a chance: they are lucky if they just die.) Kurtz seems to rest his case on the fact that it is a descriptive truth that this sort of thing will happen. But that is no reason to declare it a philosophical end. Classic is/ought problem, says the philosopher.

It will be objected that Dudley Smith is a terrible criminal, whereas Bill Bennett surely hasn't sapped anyone to death this week. Fair enough. But the long practice of treating legally distinguished, morally indistinguishable practices as morally distinguishable breeds moral cyncism; which breeds immorality. There's my virtue homily for the day. Kurtz is defending Bennett on the grounds that he emerged from a situation practically engineered to engender immorality. This is a defense of Bennett in what way?

And then there's Kurtz' 'culture war' piece, whose irenic theme is 'can there be a peace process'? Which is a sensible thing to hint at, I am quite sure. And I'm going along OK until I get to this bit: The hippy communes tried to combine group solidarity with total personal freedom. The result was chaos. Now - I should really let Belle tell this story - in 1969 Belle's mom and dad lived on a commune with a silly name, run by Dennis Hopper, for two weeks. No joke. Wig-wams and everything. And I am therefore in a position to report confidently second-hand: it was worse than chaos. It was vortex. It sucked. It also had nothing to do with anything that still walks the earth today. The hippies are off the radar. (What Simpsons episode is it? Bart is reading Mad Magazine's 'lighter side of hippies'. "Ha, ha, ha, they don't care whose toes they step on." Oh, I see it must have been "Bart of Darkness", '94.)

I venture to lay down an absolute rule, Burkean considerations notwithstanding.

Rule: you will not clarify the conditions/problems of American culture by adverting to the threat of hippyism. Don't even use the word 'hippy'. It means you have left the contemporary culture behind and are engaging in the archeology of an ancient thing.

Corollary: if the the general sense I am getting from reading various things you have written is that you have the general sense that the occasional Dudley Smith is needed to combat the hippy threat, then I am inclined to doubt the presence of your finger on the cultural pulse.

Kurtz says:

So we are continually pulled in the direction of two opposing moral systems, neither of which can be fully or consistently lived out. That means we're going to be stuck in between the Fifties and the Sixties for some time to come. There will be moments when one or the other moral outlook is stronger. But neither side of the culture war will be able to definitively win.

Seriously, I don't think the way to see the culture wars is as some 50's versus 60's Clash of the Titans. That is the wrong way to see it. The cure for that view is to watch a bunch of sitcom characters from the late 90's (doesn't matter what show) interact, proving with their every gesture, word and action that the whole thing has been mediated to complete satisfaction. It's OK to be gay; heroin should probably be illegal but pot probably should not. (Pot is obviously less harmful than alcohol, and probably less harmful than gambling.) I could rattle on, but I already did, which is why I'm still writing even as I type these words.

Let me just conclude by remarking that, even if we could raise Edmund Burke from the crypt to ask which side of the conflict he would take, it would take so long to explain the question - and he would have to watch every episode of the Simpsons - that we are probably best off just settling it ourselves, as best we can.
Posted Friday, May 9
We're Pretty, We're Pretty Vaaacant! And we don't care!

Ah, conservatism. Goldberg (see previous posts) has booted logic from beneath the big tent; now the Derb has given up on truth. (He doesn't believe the silly stuff, at any rate. Country cousin, though he has more guns, is a bit slower on the intellectual draw.) That would leave ... ? Oh, authenticity. As the Derb rightly says: You can't buy it, you can't fake it, and you can't help but wish you had it.
Posted Friday, May 9 (v. 2.0)
More On Consistency

OK, I think many of my points of last night were a bit intemperate and wide of the mark (I was in a hurry, but a few of the jokes were funny, I have just confirmed.) With wife and daughter home and asleep, let me try again.

The problem with Goldberg's sundry defenses of inconsistency (just go and scroll all up and down the place today: can't throw a rock without hitting one) is twofold. First, demanding consistency is not tantamount to demanding systematicity or perfection or completeness or any number of other things. It is possible to get lost in logical cloud cuckooland. But, ordinarily, one who demands consistency on a given point - Andrew Sullivan is such a one - is not, perforce, demanding that you build a probably bad metaphysical system. He's asking that you make sense, if you want to tell him his lifestyle is immoral. If he's going to give up some stuff he likes, give him a reason.

Goldberg seems to be trying to leverage his reluctance to inhabit an tower of abstract moral theory into a blank check, bankable for any belief in anything that feels sort of right to him, even if it apparently doesn't make sense.

One reader actually writes in Goldberg (who quotes approvingly) suggesting that those who demand consistency are actually unscientific. Apparent contradictions or inconsistencies may only prove a lack of knowledge or understanding ... In philosophy, the idea is to sit in a dark room and understand the universe using reason alone. In science, the idea is to ask "OK, what actually happens" i.e. do an experiment and see what reality says about your ideas. I'll take reality over intellectual consistency any day

Sigh. If you sit in a dark room and try to figure out what philosophers think ... deducing it a priori, rather than doing an experiment, e.g. reading a valid sample ... oh, never mind.

It is, of course - and Plato would quite agree, otherwise why write dialogues that end in confusion - all right to be in a state of abject confusion, in which one cannot see past an contradiction that one knows (reality being a consistent place) can't be right. But if one is in such a state, one should not trumpet the inconsistent elements with punditry-grade self-confidence. Scientists who have excellent evidence that P, and excellent evidence that -P do not just go around declaring (P & -P). It wouldn't be scientific. It wouldn't make sense. So, no, I don't think Goldberg has scientific method on his side.

If only Bennet and Goldberg (and the Derb and Kurtz), like good scientists, acted like some their contradictions proved a lack of knowledge or understanding. If only they were forever going around scratching their heads, 'this homosexuality and gambling stuff is really conceptually tricky. Andrew Sullivan has several arguments to which I have no reply. I wonder what I should think.'

Again, this has nothing to do with system-building. (Well, it may, but needn't.) It's just everyday, ordinary reasoning. We have a dispute. I think P, you think -P. We look for reasons why one is right and the other is wrong. Maybe this won't go anywhere. Very likely it will just turn into a shouting match. Even so, there is nothing unscientific or intellectual discreditable about trying to think it through. And, surely, if it does turn into a shouting match, tie goes to Andrew Sullivan. Because, in a liberal society, we tolerate where agreement can't be reached.

OK, so I'm rambling a bit. Let me just get to the second fold of the twofold problem. Goldberg's Burkean argufying is wrong-footed. Burke objects to mysterious, metaphysical crashlandings from outer space into the organic lives of peoples. For example, ABSOLUTE RIGHTS. His point: just look how these huge, rigid things will fit in, or, rather, will not. I think this Burkean impulse to reject such things can be construed as a serious (if not decisive) objection to, say, Dworkinesque 'taking rights seriously'. But this has nothing whatsoever to do with the case at hand. In the case at hand, there are certain primary attitudes - ABSOLUTE WRONGS, which amount to metaphysical principles at best; biases at worst - against homosexuality, but not gambling, so forth. And you have folk like Andrew Sullivan taking, in effect, the Burkean line. They are saying: look at how all this fits in with the lives of people. Why should that guy, gambling, be worse than me, having sex with other guys. Just think about it; by which he means, not, 'become a completely barking mad metaphysician' but, 'put these forms of life in the context of "the proliferating variety and mystery of human existence."' You will see that it makes no sense to maintain these harsh, humanly hurtful exclusionary principles. And the answer comes back: but we must. These absolute differences came from outer space and crashlanded on our planet long ago. There is no earthly reason to accept them but here they are.

So if Burke supports anyone in this dust-up, it's Andrew Sullivan against those inhabiting a cloud cuckooland of metaphysical pieties about which things are OK to put into which slots, which cranks are OK to pull, which not.

Admittedly, the fact that Sullivan is a Catholic may put him on a different wrong foot, but at least he admits all the time that his attitudes to the Catholic church are sort of a conflicted mess.

At this point it will be said that I am underestimating the arguments on the other side. But ... well, they seem pretty lame. All the stuff about 'society needs to judge the balance,' for example. Kurtz and Goldberg big on that. But if you think that, then you ought to not to be advocating that Hollywood keep it's mouth shut. We live in a society in which we are all up to our orifices in Hollywood all the time It's our culture for more than half a century. Burkean considerations would dictate that you listen to Hollywood. Maybe I'll talk about that tomorrow.
Posted Thursday, May 8
The Rich Are (And are not?) Like You And I?

Oh, I can't resist.

One more, then out the door.

Here's Jonah Goldberg on Radley Balko's argument against Goldberg, which goes: William Bennett's defenders are betraying their 'guardrails' principles, which dictate that elites must set good examples for Eddie Lunchbucket and Suzie Housecoat, who can't afford to do crazy stuff like smoke pot and gamble.

Goldberg sort of budges, then sticks. Let's see where.

I know my implied - and expressed - elitism and anti-populism bothers a lot of people. So be it, I'm always ready to have that argument. I'm sure my position will force me into uncomfortable arguments sometimes, including alas inconsistent ones. But as I've written before consistency is often a red-herring.

No guardrails,eh? Well, it's true. Get rid of logic and you can skid all over the darn place. But isn't this - well, setting a bad example for the poor, if nothing else? I mean: no doubt it's all right for an established pundit to engage in all manner of incoherent moral thought-experimentation. It is hard to see how or why this would get him in trouble. But would it be a good idea if inner city youth started aping their betters, abjuring non-contradiction ('that whack modus ponens shit!') A generation refuted.

I mean, we all commit fallacies in private.

(Milked that one for what it's worth, and then a little extra for the road. On we go.)

Again Bennett gambled too much ... But Bennett didn't flaunt his gambling, he didn't celebrate it, he didn't advocate it for others.

Some sort of a 'don't ask, don't tell' policy I see taking shape?

How ... unconvincing.

Isn't this going to make trouble for the 'but he isn't a hypocrite because he never spoke out against gambling' line of defense (which Goldberg was taking 12 hours earlier). Won't it at least slightly complicate it by making Bennett mildly culpable for failing in his moral duty to be a hypocrite, as elite sinner?

This all seems to me a vast conspiracy against Hollywood - or at least against Woody Harrelson. You can be sure you will always be able to blame them because they will always be honest, however stoned.

OK, I sort of rushed through these terms of my indictment. I think I see what Goldberg would say back - I mean, maybe this isn't all logically watertight. (And if not, that's a bad thing, no matter how fat my bank account.) Gotta go, gotta go.

OK, OK. Gaaaa. Still got a few more minutes. Here's the thing (maybe.) Have you noticed how Bennett's defenders, however stiff and prickly around the edges, have gone all soft at the core. 'Yes, yes, all this that we/he say may be incoherent, or mistaken, or rationally indefensible - e.g. gambling fine, homosexuality evil - but we/he honestly believe it.'

No one (and, no, Stanley Kurtz is not a counter-example) is even trying to make out for the time being that Bennett's moral views make sense and are backed by compelling reasons. But if this is where we are setting the bar - toe height - what is wrong with being, say, an earnest moral relativist who thinks Bush is absolutely evil for invading Iraq. The only problem with that position, as far as I can make out, is that it's dumb and incoherent. Otherwise, it's perfect.

Example one, from that first Goldberg link: Hollywood elites would bother me much, much less if they didn't try to rationalize their personal behavior as good for everybody. Oh, when will these Hollywood Virtucrats cease trying to foist off a rationalized, universal conception of ethics on the world! I've got Bill Bennett, and he's true for me!

Example two, from that Goldberg link:

Imagine I honestly think stealing avocados isn't theft, but I tell the world not to steal other kinds of produce. If I get caught stealing avocados, I would be a thief and an idiot, but I wouldn't be a hypocrite. Being wrong about gambling - if he is wrong - doesn't make Bennett a fraud, it makes him wrong. But for some reason this culture has a real problem saying people are wrong, but thinks it's easy to call people hypocrites.

So: Bennett may be like the guy who thinks stealing avocados isn't theft. (I like the fact that - 'stealing' and 'theft' being synonyms - this belief is logically false, not merely vegetably so.) But the upshot (have I got this right?) is somehow that, because he's not a hypocrite (but see above), it's fine for him to go back now to giving $50,000-a-pop lectures about how stealing avocados isn't theft, advising Presidents about this important state of affairs pertaining to this plant, etc., etc.

Pace Goldberg, I think the real reason people have leapt all over this story is that they think the image of Bill Bennet in a seedy, seamy Casino, thinking he is basically virtuous while sweatily plugging the slot and yanking the crank - again, again, again - goes a long way towards proving that his basic moral views are wrong. (Or at least flawed, skewed, distorted.) He's looking like the guy who likes to say: 'If I like to do it, it's OK; if you like to do it, and I don't like you to do it, it's morally wrong.' But morality isn't about declaring the easiest path to be the right one.

Oh, now I see that Goldberg's got more stuff up about consistency that makes no sense. I'm not even going to touch the asinine thing about attacking Iraq, not North Korea being an example of the virtue of inconsistency. Oh, I can't resist. I have two things. I want one and not the other. An inconsistency? Oh, but wait, one of them is a cookie and the other is a sharp stick in the eye. Inconsistency resolved. Doesn't Goldberg believe we actually did what we did, and didn't do what we did not, for reasons having to do with the properties of the one we invaded, and the one we didn't?

[UPDATE: reread it. I was too quick. Goldberg does admit we had reasons for attacking the one and not the other, although why this leaves critics within their rights to shout 'inconsistency' I am left wondering.]

The problem at the root is that - nothing against the immortal Burke - but Burkean high guff, of which Burke was capable, just so you can end up in the right, is not such high-grade stuff. Goldberg quotes an alleged conservative maxim: "Affection for the proliferating variety and mystery of human existence, as opposed to the narrowing uniformity, egalitarianism, and utilitarian aims of most radical systems." In other words (in the words of the immortal Humpty Hump): "Smell How Ya Like". If a view seems good to you, hold it. If there is an objection to the view, deal with it logically if you can, otherwise feel free to ignore. This really isn't very impressive. (Certainly Emerson and Burke are spinning in their graves tonight.)

I'm out the door. Just like that.
Posted Thursday, May 8
Goin' to Pick the Family Up At the Airport

This is funny. (Via Tom Tomorrow.)
Posted Wednesday, May 7
Suppose One Were A Fish

No, not STANLEY. I'm giving it a rest. (As the immortal William Empson says somewhere: "As a point of conscience, one can always think of something one would rather do than review a book you believe to be bad." Or words to that effect.)

I'm going to alternate positive and negative blogging for a while. Accentuate the positive, then the negative. Yin and Yang. Lawful good, then chaotic evil. (Would it be a good idea if blogs had to have alignments, like D&D characters? Nope.) Actually, my wife and daughter are about to arrive back from their month-plus long sojourn to the Old Country, Ameriky. So I may just switch over to completely positive blogging. Possibly just googly, adoring photoblogging of my 2-year old daughter - woojawoojawooja.jpg - such as would make the world say: compared to John Holbo's love of Zoë, James Lileks' love of Gnat is as naught. No, that wouldn't happen, even though she's apparently been clinging like a barnacle all week; gnat, that is. A barnacle that won't go to bed. Now there's a troublesome entity. Soon - oh, the tales I will tell!

Anyway, as I was saying. Sister, I'm a culture blogger! That is, my nominal excuse for getting so bothered by the excesses of theory is that I think literary criticism and cultural studies and so forth have gone to hell, and it's a damn shame. Whence it would be nice if the stuff came back good.

So do some good stuff already!

Well, that's the idea. One day on, one day off. Here we go. I've been reading Neil Gaiman's novel, Stardust, which is very enjoyable so far. It's one of those slight, in-between the ambitious ones of his works, I should think. It is winning for being just big enough to fill it's small shoes, and dance around in them, and click the heels together. I am liking it better than I liked Coraline, and better than I liked Good Omens, and not quite as well as I liked American Gods nor Neverwhere. (And better than Sandman, which I never liked; which makes me unusual. So scratch that as bad data. I didn't like the art, all right?) It's a Faerie tale. It starts in a little place called Wall, next to Faerie. There's a fair, then a star falls, then the action starts.

Now the thing is: I can tell that Neil Gaiman got the chops to write this story in large part from John Crowley's novel, Little, Big. I am not accusing the man in the slightest. There is nothing the least bit underhanded or concealed, let alone plagiaristic about it. And adding to that, underlining it three times: a month or so back, on his blog, I remember Gaiman was praising Crowley and Little, Big, saying he has read four times and cried each time, bought and given away, pressed upon nervous, uncomprehending complete strangers something like 15 copies, etc., etc. So it isn't like Gaiman is hiding anything, concering this line of influence. Quite the contrary. The point is: Little, Big is simply the best fantasy novel ever written. The most mature, anyway. Best is difficult, what with Mervyn Peake out there. Anyway, not the best popcorn novel, by any means. (I by no means disdain the popcorn genre. There is something a bit popcornish about Gaiman, for example. You finish, and you feel like you ate a big tub of popcorn. Or ate a whole Stephen King novel. No harm in that. All praise. If it weren't for the sense of bloat induced by The Stand and The Shining, my youth would have been a depressing, doesn't-stick-to-your-ribs affair.)

But, getting back to Crowley. There is something so rich and full, something deep and slow-growing (not fast-popping.) You couldn't be a good writer like Gaiman and read it and absorb its greatness without a little of the eldritch sizzle showing through if ever you sat down to write something like Stardust. One of heaven's own like Crowley strikes, and an earthly lightning rod like Gaiman cannot but release an appreciative counter-strike back towards heaven.

Interestingly, Harold Bloom has canonized Little, Big as one of the Great Works of Western Civilization. Not that anyone died and made Yale's prince Hal/Falstaff into King/Pope. But it is significant that this critic who spits phlegmy insults at Tolkien, who has not a good word for the genre of fantasy fiction, cannot resist the conclusion that Little, Big is one of the good ones since, oh, say (checking the calendar) Dante.

So what is is Little, Big about, and like (you ask)? Well, I got my copy from a friend of my wife's who - do you see a pattern forming here? - keeps multiple copies on her shelf so that, if anyone shows the least smidge of interest, one of these is instantly, damply pressed into your palm with a grateful sigh of relief that (yes!) another mortal will read the Tale. Which is only the proper attitude. (Thanks, Sasha, for the copy. Have read it three times now. Is falling apart, as you would wish it to.) It is a Faerie tale to chill you to the bone and make you laugh and leap with joy. It is absolutely incomprehensible - but populated, at geometrically impossible borders and angles, by the humanest humans. Everything true Fairies do should be quite incomprehensible to our kind. And so it is. And yet the Tale is as taut as skin on a drum, when finally you hear the music of the revel.

I'm just going to type out a goodly stretch. Part of a chapter entitled, "Suppose One Were a Fish". That should do it for tonight. Nothing better in the world than fine literature.

The stream that fed the lake fell down a long stony distance like a flight of stairs from a broad pool carved by a tall waterfall high up within the woods.

Spears of moonlight struck the silken surface of that pool, and were bent and shattered in the depths. Stars lay on it, rising and falling with the continual arc of ripples which proceeded from the foamy falls. So it would appear to anyone at the pool's edge. To a fish, a great white trout almost asleep within, it seemed very different.

Asleep? Yes, fish sleep, though they don't cry; their fiercest emotion is panic, the saddest a kind of bitter regret. They sleep wide-eyed, their cold dreams projected on the black and green interior of the water. To Grandfather Trout it seemed that the living water and its familiar geography were being shuttered and revealed to him as sleep came and went; when the pool was shuttered, he saw inward interiors. Fish-dreams are usually about the same water they see when they're awake, but Grandfather Trout's were not. So utterly other than trout-stream were his dreams, yet so constant were the reminders of his watery home before his lidless eyes, that his whole existence became a matter of supposition. Sleepy suppositions supplanted one another with every pant of his gills.

Suppose one were a fish. No finer place to live than this. Falls continually drowning air within the pool so that it was a pleasure simply to breathe. Like (supposing one were not a water-breather) the high, fresh, wind-renewed air of an alpine meadow. Wonderful, and thoughtful of them so to provide for him, supposing that they thought of his or anyone's happiness or comfort. And here were no predators, and few competitors, because (though a fish couldn't be supposed to know it) the stream about was shallow and stony and so was the stream below, so nothing approaching him in size came into the pool to contest with him for the constant fall of bugs from the dense and various woods which overhung. Really, they had thought of everything, supposing they thought of anything.

Yet (supposing that it was not his choice at all to be a swimmer here) how condign and terrible a punishment, bitter an exile. Mounted in liquid glass, unable to breathe, was he to make back-and-forth forever, biting at mosquitoes? He supposed that to a fish that taste was the toothsome matter of his happiest dreams. But of one were not a fish, what a memory, the endless mutliplication of those tiny drops of bitter blood.

Suppose on the other hand (supposing one had hands) that it was all a Tale. That however truly a satisfied fish he might appear to be, or however reluctantly accustomed to it he had become, that once-upon-a-time a fair form would appear looking down into the rainbow depths, and speak words she had wrested from malign secret-keepers at great cost to herself, and with a strangulating rush of waters he would leap - legs flailing and roal robes drenched - he would stand before her panting, restored, the curse lifted, the wicked fairy weeping with frustration. At the thought a sudden picture, a colorted engraving, was projected before him on the water: a bewigged fish in a high-collared coat, a huge letter under his arm, his mouth gaping open. In air. At this nightmare image (from where?) his gills gasped and he awoke momentarily; the shutters shot back. All a dream. For a while he gratefully supposed nothing but sane and moonshot water.

Of course (the shutters began to drift closed again) it was possible to imagine he was one of them, himself a secret-keeper, curse-maker, malign manipulator; an eternal wizard intelligence housed for its own sutble purposes in a common fish. Eternal: suppose it to be so: certainly he has lived forever or nearly, has survived into this present time (supposing (drifting deeper) this to be the present time); he has not expired at a fish's age, or even at a prince's. It seems to him that he extends backwards (or is it forward?) without beginning (or is it end?) and he can't just now remember whether the great tales and plots which he supposes he knows and forever broods on lie in the to-come or lie dead in the has-been. But then suppose that's how secrets are kept, and age-long tales remembered, and unbreakable curses made too . . .

It's a 600-page novel. The mood is sustained. The build-up, tremendous while yet understated and scaled so that all the human threads of the tale can be wound round each other with deliberate fondness. The conclusion: a scattering of leaves, a howl of winter, a breath of spring, an eternal day of summer. And when that's over you can read Crowley's Beasts, Engine Summer, and The Deep, just for starters.

Here's a link to a recent Crowley review. Sort of interesting. (Got the link via Gaiman's blog, if I recall.)
Posted Tuesday, May 6
Argufying II:

I'm picking up the thread where I left off Sunday (just scroll down). The question is: when I diagnose Fish, Zizek, Harpham, et. al. as 'argufiers', and say their problem is that they think 'therefore' is just a punch on the nose, is this anything better than a - rather blunt, therefore probably crude - retread of the oldest philosophy complaint in the book: sophistry and rhetoric are bad?

So far, no. I haven't said anything new, just the old stuff played (rather cleverly, if I do say so) through Empson. Let me fix that. I've just been rereading Plato's Gorgias and the striking thing about the dialogue - perhaps you know it ever so slightly? - is that the initial exchange with Gorgias the sophist is utterly winning, a rarity in Plato. The interlocutor is at once a convincing and an interesting character, says what such a character really ought to say, says it well and intelligently, and gets utterly skewered by thoroughly fair objections. So far so good. Then Socrates lays into 'rhetoric', denouncing it as a irrational, no better than cookery, lying, flattery.

Now it is sort of clear what sorts of paradigm examples Socrates has in mind: political lies, mostly; the sort we abominate today with quite as much vehemence. For example, I see Atrios is laying into Bully Boy Bennett, not just for gambling, but for peddling bogus statistics; then, when exposed - peddling the same damn statistics wearing a slightly different hat. (I am sorely tempted to blog about Bennett, but the ground seems well-covered already. Basically, I had a good line that begins with the thought that our man has been rather hung out to dry by the gambling mafiosi he was counting on to respect his privacy. Fat Tony [voice of Joe Montegna]: "Dat's a nice virtue you got dere. Shame if sumthin' wuz ta happen to it.")

As I was saying, I am assuming Atrios is telling the truth. In which case: we can all agree that it's a terrible, terrible thing. Vile rhetorical strategy, knowingly to use bad data to attempt to win an argument. (We ignore complications about 'noble lies' for the moment. 'Oh, what a tangled web we weave, Mr. Plato.')

As I was saying: but it is rather a stretch to denounce all rhetoric on this basis. (Not to mention that I have nothing against the art of cookery, quite the contrary.) Let me give you a sample of rhetoric - of argufying - due to the estimable Vladimir Nabokov, from a lecture he gave on literature:

Time and space, the colors of the seasons, the movements of muscles and minds, all these are for writers of genius (as far as we can guess and I trust we guess right) not traditional notions which may be borrowed from the circulating library of public truths but a series of unique surprises which master artists have learned to express in their own unique way. To minor authors is left the ornamentation of the commonplace: these do not bother about any reinventing of the world; they merely try to squeeze the best they can out of a given order of things, out of traditional patterns of fiction. The various combinations these minor authors are able to produce within these set limits may be quite amusing in a mild ephemeral way because minor readers like to recognize their own ideas in a pleasing disguise. But the real writer, the fellow who sends planets spinning and models a man asleep and eagerly tampers with the sleeper’s rib, that kind of author has no given values at his disposal: he must create them himself. The art of writing is a very futile business if it does not imply first of all the art of seeing the world as the potentiality of fiction. The material of this world may be real enough (as far as reality goes) but does not exist at all as an accepted entirety: it is chaos, and to this chaos the author says ‘go!’ allowing the world to flicker and to fuse. It is now recombined in its very atoms, not merely in its visible and superficial parts. The writer is the first to map it and to name the natural objects it contains. Those berries there are edible. That speckled creature that bolted across my path might be tamed. That lake between those trees will be called Lake Opal, or, more artistically, Dishwater Lake. That mist is a mountain – and that mountain must be conquered. Up a trackless slope climbs the master artist, and at the top, on a windy ridge, whom do you think he meets? The panting and happy reader, and there they spontaneously embrace and are linked forever if the book lasts forever.

Now - I have made this point at length in a philosophical dialogue, if you care to read it - I think there is not much point in denouncing, let alone analytically anatomizing, all the borderline libelous metaphysical gossip and hearsay about time, space, color and reality contained in this passage. For one thing, I like it. It beguiles me. I admire Nabokov's skills as a writer. For another, even if I didn't, it is clear enough that the metaphysics is epiphenomenal, just an expression of uncontainable personality. If there is something wrong with the personality of the author, Nabokov, or if the claims about authorship and literature that are to follow are unconvincing, dull, whatever, then ... well, we can take it from there.

But just considering the passage on its philosophical merits, Socrates, with his arch-rationalist scolding, will be very ill-positioned to take effective swipes. He will just look ridiculous if he tries to poke little holes, niggling about the 'atoms' Nabokov posits, drawing out absurd consequences when it is clear that the author means no metaphysical consequences to be drawn. Kurt Vonnegut has something somewhere about 'attacking an Ice Cream Sundae with a broadsword.' Trying to show that Nabokov's metaphysics is flawed, by means of shrewd Socratic dialectic, would be like that.

But this passage is classic 'argufying', in Empson's sense. And it's very different than actually sinister political lies. It is, instead, a moderately philosophically undignified, but elegant enough sort of trying to get one's way, perpetrated by Nabokov on behalf of some authors and writings and opinions he likes.

The thing about Fish, Zizek, Harpham, et. al. (now I get to my point) is that literary argufying - which always has an ornamental, secondary quality in writings like Nabokov's - has for them become primary subject-matter. 'Theory' stuff is people trying to argue for and against metaphysical wallpaper, by means of other metapysical wallpaper. Which is a mess. Wallpaper wasn't made to hit other wallpaper with. It's supposed to stay put, for the most part away from where people are moving and working and living and the rest of it.

Historically there was, I think, a shift in two directions at once. The wallpaper got slightly out of hand, and there proved to be a somewhat unhealthily strong market for it - this is the 60's we are talking about; lots of garish stuff on offer all over, but most did no lasting harm. At the same time the traditional subject-matter - tired old stuff, teaching Longfellow to freshmen - never seemed more in need of a shot in the arm. So this incidental thing, this style of aristocratic overbearing with bad metaphysical reasons to get one's way, which has always been a hallmark of good as well as bad writing about culture and literature, got out of hand. And has stayed that way.

But the thing is (this is the second half of my point) it isn't that there is anything so awfully terrible about it at bottom. This is why the traditional line of philosophical criticism - sophistry/rhetoric bad - tends to fall flat, or at least on deaf ears. There is a kernel of correct feeling that there is something all right, even necessary, about argufying. The fact that there is no point getting hot under the collar about Nabokov's metaphysical riffing, per se, shows this instinct is correct. Only ... well, basically, it's all right as long as you ignore its philosophical qualities, while indulging in the quasi-conceptual free associations it invites. It's like a nice suit Nabokov has put on to deliver his lecture in. Treat it as one. That this should be the way has always been more or less an aristocratic given among critics. (As Nietzsche says, aristocrats regard giving reasons as bad manners. Theory folk are aristocrats.)

But, then, to try and start arguing about stuff of this order (of all things), to try and treat Nabokov's metaphysics the same way you treat, say, Kant's metaphysics ... that's just asking for trouble. Which we have got. (One or the other or both types of thing may be bad, but just running them together can't be the answer.)

The reason Fish, Zizek, Harpham, et. al., think philosophy has no consequences - or strange consequences in no way logically derivable from its features - is that it just never occurs to them to treat it all otherwise than as wallpaper. And we live in an age in which it is considered appropriate to pile wads of wallpaper in the middle of the room. There is no accounting for taste, of course. But in other ages, things have been arranged different.
Posted Tuesday, May 6
Esoteric and X-oteric Teachings

Matthew Yglesias thinks Jacob Levy should stop talking about comics books and explain what's up with Straussianism. Hmmm. I'm a U of C grad with Straussian stories to tell myself. But somehow I'd rather talk about ... the X-Men.

Well, OK, haven't seen the movie yet. But I am highly amused by the Fan Boy club Levy is wielding against those who, in their eagerness to bash the movie, haven't bothered to understand the plot. Actually this reminds me a bit of that regrettable 'Rock and Roll the kids are listening to these days' chapter in Bloom's Closing of the American Mind. But I don't want to talk about that. Levy also mentions how Janet Maslin used to be unreliable in this way, and that does open the memory gates. I remember (correct me if I'm wrong) that in her review of the Matrix she made fun of the fact that Morpheus' ship was both a spaceship and a time-machine, which she thought was silly. Well, it suggests the possibility of a funny sort of genre. Pick a movie you like, and then imagine that you were confused into thinking that something in the movie was both a spaceship and a time-machine. Like maybe Marlon Brando's pidgeon coop in On The Waterfront; or Sam's piano in Casablanca; or - a bit more realistic - the tower in Vertigo. All three movies ruined, ruined RUINED because there was a combined space-ship time-machine. Now write your review. Stupid Hollywood.

Of course a Straussian would be more interested in the signal absence of such things from classic movies.
Posted Monday, May 5
I'm Tired

I'll put off what I was going to write about and mostly let others entertain/edify you today. First, via The Poor Man, the best thing written yet about the dogs that haven't barked WMD-wise. I have been rather scornful of those who doubted. I'm still puzzled, as per this post, but I admit to having no response to about 12 different arguments by the aptly-named cogent provocateur. He argues not just that there probably are no WMD's, but that it is impossible that anyone in a position to know ever thought otherwise. Or else they're idiots. Which is rather a strong thesis, whichever tine of the fork you prefer. And then, if intelligence bores or intimidates you - or if you are just not in the mood - there is a thing which the Poor Man, probably correct, identifies as the stupidest thing ever written in a newspaper.

Then there was this big thing by Bill Whittle (I make a point of going to sites where I know there will be funny things written by people whose politics are at odds with my own. Good for the soul.) I thought I could tell where the beginning of that first thing was going. The Florida fooball bit. It was going to be a lead-up to a unusually sympathetic imagining of what it's like to be like those discussed in this piece. (And may I say, the thing I just linked is just tremendous. I'm not sure quite what to make of it. I don't know enough to know.) But that didn't turn out to be Bill's point. And, well ... I'm not sure it's a good idea to try to tell the history of civilization in one essay/post. So I don't know how it ends.

I sort of do agree with Whittle's point that people who constantly use 'fascism' and 'totalitarian' to refer to Republicans end up without a word for fascism or totalitarianism, which produces an odd obliviousness to the possibility of fascism or totalitarianism. I think a pretty good example is this. (Well, to be fair, those involved don't quite perform on command, to confirm Bill's point. But I bet they would if you poked 'em with a stick. They sure are dummies.)

And then, relatedly, there was this letter to Andrew Sullivan (I'm pretending to be conservative today, apparently) by an indignant queer Naderite in San Fran about a bunch of fools leafleting for Castro. The implication seems to be that shameful, tactical moral sacrifices are being made. But I don't think those involved have any tactical notion of why they are supporting Castro. I mean: pandering to whom? Castro himself? Where's the nickel in that? Is he in a position to render aid in the struggle? Like in Red Dawn, when Cuban forces help the Russkies conquer America? But that movie was never really very realistic, if you think about it. Why would you think Castro was an especially good guy if you hadn't just woken up from a 40 year coma? (I'm being generous.) So if you are not that coma patient, but are on the far left, why not just shrug him off as a regrettable failure? The next time around, human rights will be respected. We are sorry comrade Fidel has deviated from the principles of the true revolution. Would an unkind word about Casto break anyone's jaw? (I mean, except for a Cuban dissident's.)

Well, that turned out to be a lot. But mostly I didn't have to think about it. I just wrote it out. Can you tell?
Posted Sunday, May 4
Argufying ... Let's Get Ready to RHUUMMMBLE!.

I quote our text for discussion again. It opens a William Empson essay, entitled "Argufying in Poetry", published in the Listener, 22 August 1963; reprinted in the fine volume of Empson's collected journalism and sundry parerga, aptly entitled Argufying.

I must have had strong feelings about this topic for a considerable time, without recognising them. As a writer of verse myself, I grew up in the height of the vogue for the seventeenth-century poet Donne, and considered that I was imitating him more directly than the others were. We all said we admired him because he was so metaphysical, but I can see now that I really liked him because he argued, whereas the others felt that this side of him needed handling tactfully, because it did not fit the Symbolist theory.

'Argufying' is perhaps a tiresomely playful word, but it makes my thesis more moderate; I do not deny that thoroughly conscientious use of logic could become a distraction from poetry. Argufying is the kind of arguing we do in ordinary life, usually to get our way; I do not mean nagging by it, but just a not specially dignified sort of arguing.

Two threads: arguments in poetry and 'argufying'; and Empson is not initially explicit about how he means to knit them together. The clear hint is that arguments in poetry are typically argufments, which is certainly true. But what of interest follows?

Nominally, Empson is concerned to expose the vices of Symbolist and Imagist poetry, in practice but especially in theory. He veritably buzzes with bonnet bees. See also: "Jam Theory and Imagism", which contains the immortal line: "[the Imagist] thinks of civilised man as like a crab, and he thinks of a crab as like a tin of jam, which only needs the lid taking off; but both ideas are wrong, as the Romantic theory itself would tell him, indeed as he himself shows when he formulates it." (Want to know what that means? Check out Argufying from your local library.)

The cardinal Symbolist/Imagist commandment goes "a poet must never say what he wants to say directly; that would be what is called 'intellectualising' it; he must invent a way of hinting at it by metaphors, which are then called images."

But why? Because Symbolists and Imagists think thinking is done by means of images - which is not true, as Empson points out. But moving right along (and omitting a few crucial, further falsehoods and fallacies): poems that contain material that does not suggest vivid, sensual images are bad. Which gets us to arguments in poetry. Symbolist/Imagists are suspicious of any whiff or soupcon or attaint of argument in the poetic mix. Because what vivid, sensual image corresponds to 'therefore'? Therefore, 'rosy fingers of the dawn' good; 'therefore' bad. Therefore, Donne bad.

There are many problems. Foreseeably, the bulk of logical effort will have to go into holding the Imagist/Symbolist up off the canvas, waggling his arms a bit to make it look like there's decent fight left, slugging him again, catching him again, repeat. So Empson looks around for something interesting to do and hits on the idea that, if it comes to that, lots of poetic 'imagery' is not so much visual as 'muscular'. "You can dream of riding a bicycle without having any picture of your legs." Likewise, much vivid poetry evokes action. But, of course, an argument - at any rate, an argufment - is a species of action. So, speaking of staged fights, we have another piledriver takedown of the already staggered Symbolism/Imagism.

Argufying in poetry is not only mental; it also feels muscular. Saying 'therefore' is like giving the reader a bang on the nose; and though it may be said that 'intellectualised' poetry feels stale and unreal, a bang on the nose does not feel stale and unreal; it is just as fresh the twentieth time as it was the first; that is, if you are granted enough leisure for recovery. The word 'therefore' is no more stale than the word 'dawn', and has just as much imagery about it.

But the best comes in a response to an indignant distinguisher of Symbolism and Imagism who wrote in to the Listener to complain of their derogatory conflation by Empson. Basically, Empson retorts that, of course, the poet-advocates of the respective positions will gesticulate wildly that this is very different than that, but since ... well, just look at the analytical hopelessness ... this lot are clearly argufying ...

Poets would make pronouncements about these Movement in an expansive tone of voice, like that used when offering one another drinks, and as a rule they could look after themselves. But when an earnest logical student takes up this line of talk he gets bogged down very rapidly; I have seen it happen.

So Empson is saying: these arguments against arguments are just argufments, and even if they were arguments, they would be refuted by the fact that the arguments they argue against are just argufments.

But why am I interested as well as amused? I don't care about the Symbolist/Imagist controversy. (Perhaps Empson is unfair to the poor things, I wouldn't know.) I am - as Empson clearly is - fascinated by the category of 'argufment', which the controversy serves, rather incidentally, to foreground. (I take it the term is a contraction of argument + guff, which seems about right.)

In recent days and weeks I've been punching noses of the likes of Fish and Zizek and Harpham, but there is a limit to the utility of this procedure; at any rate, a point of diminishing return despite ongoing muscular satisfaction. A point is reached when Fish gets back up and says, placidly: philosophy has no consequences; or Harpham asserts Zizek's philosophical superiority over all-comers in terms that would be appropriate for wine-tasting, and I can't prove he is wrong in wine-tasting terms, only philosophically. And the question must be asked: why am I so different from them? I mean: I think they are wrong and I am right. They no doubt would have some choice things to say about me. When did we part ways so fundamentally?

There's a funny scene in "The Limey" - nice to see Terence Stamp not playing stiff, Galactic Republic Senators sometimes, don't you find? - in which the titular Limey is baffling a big, mad black LA seargant with a torrent of cockney rhyming slang, amongst other things. The stream comes to an end and the seargant just says (like a punch on the nose): "The only thing I don't understand is every single word that comes out of your mouth!"

I feel like that, reading Fish and Zizek and Harpham and others. What's it all about, hey? Why are they messing with me, pretending to believe stuff they can't possibly, and refusing to answer sensible objections? What's the motivation?

Part of the answer, I think, is that they believe that a philosophical argument is just an argufment. Which makes it hard to start a philosophical argument about whether they are right. But at least one knows where one stands.

If a 'therefore' is only ever a punch in the nose, and you are capable of shrugging it off, then philosophy is the proverbial 97-pound weakling who will only ever get sand kicked in its face. This is the only thought that makes remote sense of Fish's central thesis. If, on the other hand, being overcome by the power of philosophy is like being incapable of shrugging off a punch, then maybe wine-tasting terms can help, to some degree, characterize the stars and tweety-birds that result from cracking the pages of some, not other, philosophy books. (That's a mighty astringent and pertinacious punch you got there, son!) This is the only thought that makes sense of Harpham's approach.

This sounds like not a new answer at all: the old rhetoric/sophistry versus reason/philosophy go-around. But I want to try to impart a new angle of spin to this tired, over-revolving globe. The poetry angle is key. Tomorrow.
Related Links:
My Philosophical Dialogue on This Stuff
My Essay on Zizek
Metaphysically Pathetic; then here
My Big Fish Tale (part 1; part 2) Earlier Fish fulminations: here.
Various indignant Zizek posts: here (and this update); here.