Folly in high places: Lews Lapham's Age of Folly

     Lewis Lapham. Age of Folly: America Abandons its Democracy (2016) Lapham’s deep knowledge of literature and the Classics enable him to see below the surface of things as they seem. His writing informs, educates, delights, and annoys. Sometimes it infuriates, as when he recounts his interview with a CIA hiring board of three young Yale  men who asked him about tennis and a well-known debutante. These were the people who messed up the USA’s international politics in the last century, and their heirs are doing a fine job of emulating them in this one.
     Lapham was born into the American aristocracy, which has given him an intimate and personal knowledge of the oligarchy that has come to rule that unhappy land. For example, in chapter 22, Propaganda Mill, he outlines the history of the right-wing conspiracy to shift US politics away from its centre to the right. We live with the results. Will American democracy survive? Right now, I think the odds are against it.
   Much of the book is commentary on the Bush years. 15 to 20 years later, Lapham’s observations have the aura of prophecy.
     No matter what your politics, you will be offended. I think that’s the highest recommendation for a book about contemporary life. ****

Boris Johnson

Britain has becone a Monty Python skit.

Murder in the graveyard: Innocent Grave by Peter Robinson

     Peter Robinson. Innocent Graves (1997) The vicar’s wife, drunk on wine and guilt, talking to the angel on the mausoleum in the graveyard, discovers the body of 16-year-old Deborah Harrison. Owen Pierce, a stranger seen nearby, becomes the prime suspect. Banks’s work is complicated by class and privilege, a status-conscious Chief Constable, witnesses whose personal problems fracture their evidence, the arrival of a new Detective Inspector who has every qualification except a sense of what people are really like. A second murder complicates the case even more. The usual obstacles.
    
     Robinson handles the linked plots with his usual skill. This is a series I’ve been enjoying. I’ve found not quite half of the books here and there, and am reading them in writing order. Well done. ***

Eli Mandel on Literary Criticism

      Eli Mandel Criticism: the Silent Speaking Words (1966) A transcript of eight CBC talks given by Mandel (then a professor in the English Department, University of Alberta, Edmonton). He explores the central problem of literary and other arts criticism: What good is it? Does it have a legitimate purpose? His answer asserts that criticism is as legitimate an intellectual pursuit as any other

     This was a time when English Departments were attempting to reconstruct criticism as an objective analysis of literary works. In 1957 Northrop Frye had published his Anatomy of Criticism,  which argued that literature could be classified in terms of it content or “matter”, and its form or “plot”. Since these are objectively observable aspects of any work, Frye’s analysis liberated criticism from the subjective shackles of biography, sociology, psychology, and so on, which had dominated literary scholarship since the 18th century and had made criticism a matter of opinion and schools of thought.
     Mandel finally agrees with Frye, but takes a long and roundabout route to get there. His agreement is qualified by his admiration for Matthew Arnold and Alfred Tennyson, both of whom urged that literature is speech from one generation to another: that the “silent speaking words” on the page convey to us another mind, a person, and therefore create, preserve, and even enrich relationships with the dead.
     I think that Frye’s anatomy is accurate: it is a theory of literature that can be tested by examining and comparing different works. I think Mandel is also right: a piece of writing is made by a human, and to whatever extent the writer’s honesty and skill can do so, it records that person’s mind, that person’s experience. By reading their words, we encounter that person.
     Or as someone has said: The imagination is the only method we have to understand each other. I would add ... and the world in which we live.
     Eli Mandel was my teacher and then my colleague at U of A, Edmonton. He was man who never let a good idea stop him from exploring another one. I remember him with respect and affection. See the Wiki entry.
    On the Poetry page you’ll find a poem I wrote during and after listening to Eli at a workshop put on for high school teachers in Ontario.
    ***

British pound and US dollar heading towards parity

The Guardian has a story today about sterling's possible parity with the US dollar following a hard Brexit.

Fact is, measured in purchasing power, the pound has been close to parity with the US dollar for years. Any American and Canadian tourist can tell you that British prices in pounds are in the same range as US and Canadian prices in dollars. Which makes the UK an expensive place to visit, and a very expensive place to live. No wonder so many Brits are fed up with their politicians.

So why has the exchange rate exceeded the domestic purchasing power of the pound? The UK's refusal to use the euro is the usually cited culprit. But that isn't a reason, it's a consequence. The root cause is the pound's role as an international currency, along with the US dollar and the Swiss franc. All three currencies are used for money laundering.

Two Cartoon Collections

Bill Stott. The Crazy World of Gardening (1987) Any gardener will enjoy these cartoons, and non-gardeners who read this book will be glad they’ve avoided the pastime. One of my faves: Garden expert to troubled customer: “Yes, it’s a very common condition in plants that have been over-watered and kept in drafts. It’s called ‘dead’”. ***





Gary Larson. Wildlife Preserves (1989) The cover shows why Larson’s cartoons are still considered classics. I pretty sure he’s an acquired taste, though: the mix of logic taken to absurdity, disingenuous literalism, bland suburbanisms applied to non-human animals, allusions to scientific oddities, riffs on old movie cliches, and so on, doesn’t appeal to everyone. It does appeal to me. ****

Larson's Far Side (Gallery 5)

      Gary Larson. Far Side Gallery 5 (1995) I like Gary Larson’s cartoons. The absurdity of logic, the silliness of literalness, the effects of shifts in point of view, visual puns, send-ups of cliches – Larson was master of them all. Reading one of his collections expands your mind, twists it into new shapes, makes you laugh, and gives your imagination the kind of workout that liberates. We have a few of his collections, not nearly enough. More at his website.
****