J.L. Wall

Is There Conservative Art?

by J.L. Wall on February 13, 2012

In a post at American Times, E.D. writes:

It’s the same in politics: conservatives aren’t so much interested with their own ideas about governance as they are about responding to and obstructing the ideas of their opponents.

And perhaps that’s the crux of the issue. Conservative art mimics conservative politics rather than the other way around. And so it can never really be art.

Now, mind you, the painting he leads with is pretty atrocious.  But I do, nevertheless, think that there are conservative works of art being produced today.  The problem with conservative art isn’t that it’s too overtly conservative—it’s that it’s not overtly political enough to be acknowledged as conservative by today’s left or claimed as such by today’s right.

Consider two of the best novels of the past decade, Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead and Home.  At their core, these are conservative works: they detail family, faith, and community as they crash against the realities of post-war American culture–and against the natural frailties of human being.  Regardless of her political preferences, her worldview, in its starkly Calvinist way, and insofar as it’s expressed in those novels and Absence of Mind, is conservative in a way that goes far beyond the political.  One might even say that it, in fact, is not even concerned with the political.  But she still misses civilization, and wants it back.

One could also look toward the New Formalists in poetry for a group that tends to be skeptical of and pessimistic about (post)modernity and contemporary culture.  In this, and in their tendency to look toward the distant past for a literary/cultural model, they are reminiscent of the literary conservatives of the early twentieth century.  I don’t know how A.E. Stallings and Adam Kirsch would describe their politics — I’m certainly not trying to claim them for monarchism or fascism! — but their poetry, like Robinson’s prose, strikes me as conservative in a basic, pre- and post-political sense.

And there’s always the poetry, essays, and fiction of Wendell Berry—the New Deal Democrat who is the patron saint of Front Porch Republicans.  Or the turn toward neoconservatism in the novels of Saul Bellow, beginning with Mr. Sammler’s Planet and continuing through Ravelstein.

But because these texts aren’t overtly political in their conservatism, that aspect is easily overlooked—after all, a truly “conservative” mindset has to focus on Obama and contemporary issues.  A concern with the more fundamental, mundane concerns and decisions of daily life couldn’t possibly be of interest.  So while the problem E.D. points to does, to some extent, exist, I’d say it’s bound up with Conor Friedersdorf’s “Electric Kool-Aid Conservatism” thesis more than anything else.

Until then, I’ll leave you, dear readers, with Leonard Cohen’s overt skepticism of abortion:

Destroy another fetus now
We don’t like children anyhow
I’ve seen the future, baby:
it is murder.


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The Third Tribe

by J.L. Wall on January 31, 2012

Maybe this would be otherwise if I’d followed the discussions around here of Charles Murray’s Coming Apart thesis a little more closely, but I was struck by the math in David Brooks’ column* today: [click to continue…]

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Butchery and Burial (or, Sympathy for McClellan)

by J.L. Wall on January 29, 2012

I wrote, some time ago, that Grant becomes the hero of Shelby Foote’s Civil War because “he fights, unlike his colleagues on either side, who dilly-dally, blundering into and through battle and prolonging the war, and he fights for the Union.”  The war, in this telling, is tragic in the root sense of the word

not [because] it had to be fought at all, but that it continues without an end at hand while terrain, technology, and the incompetence and “honor” of the so-called great-men lead to increasing casualty rolls.

While I haven’t changed my mind about the perspective of Foote’s Narrative on Grant and Sherman compared to their lesser colleagues on both sides of battle, Foote himself presents a condemnation of McClellan (among others) that is too free of context.  The Civil War, we’re often told, was fought with modern technology but archaic strategies—leading to its overwhelming bloodiness.  This was, as Drew Gilpin Faust notes, not just a challenge to emotions—it was a logistical nightmare for which neither side was prepared.

Meade after Gettysburg and McClellan after Antietam are still criticized for not pouncing on the retreating Lee; instead, they sat to “lick their wounds,” or some such formulation.  But these were two of the bloodiest battles of the war—and the victorious generals were suddenly left with a field littered with the dead and wounded of both sides.  Faust writes, in This Republic of Suffering:

More often delay [in burial] resulted from the failure to mobilize necessary manpower and resources for the task.  The Battle of Antietam, September 17, 1862, the bloodiest single day of combat in American history, left both Union and Confederate armies staggering.  Lee slowly limped southward, leaving the field—and the dead of both sides—to the Union army.  McClellan appeared to be paralyzed by the magnitude of the engagement and failed to take strategic advantage of his victory by pursuing the Confederate army.  A similar paralysis seemed to grip his troops as they confronted the devastation before them. Twenty-three thousand men and untold numbers of horses and mules lay killed or wounded.

And at Gettysburg, Meade faced an even greater task:

By July 4, an estimated six million pounds of human flesh and animal carcasses lay strewn across the field in the summer heat, and a town of 2,400 grappled with 22,000 wounded who remained alive but in desperate condition.

“Responsibility for the dead,” she reminds us, “usually fell to the victor, for it was his army that held the field.”  By the time of Gettysburg, generals had begun to delegate that responsibility to the townspeople; Grant, both from a desire to demoralize his enemy and for the sake of timing, refused to take it on at all—even in the midst of a stalemate.  The sight of thousands dead does not, of course, absolve a commander of the need to strike a final blow to his enemy if it presents itself—as it did after Antietam and Gettysburg.  But there was another responsibility there—the responsibility to the dead, either to be fulfilled or put off for a time.  The inability to decisively reconcile or choose between these claims indicates a failure of generalship—but it was a very human failure, and its origins are to be found in something other than mere incompetence.

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As Old As The World

by J.L. Wall on January 22, 2012

Rhetoric can reveal an unconscious trope moving — or maybe just stirring itself awake — within a society without attributing conscious malice to the individual speaker.  Thus the key line in Adam Kirsch’s consideration, five years later, of The Israel Lobby has nothing to do with Mearsheimer or Walt in particular: “So the floodgates were opened: What we have witnessed in the five years since is a blithe recuperation of dangerous, vicious imagery and ideas, with no apparent compunction about their origins or consequences.”  This is not to say that The Protocols of the Elders of Zion has become normalized discourse.  But it is to say something far stronger than that criticism of American policy toward Israel has become increasingly common and increasingly accepted.  What has been troublingly normalized is the notion “that it takes unusual courage to oppose the Jews, since they use their power to ruthlessly suppress dissent in both the political world and the media.”  Of course, as Phoebe Maltz points out, the objection is the obvious:

Never mind that not all Jews support the Republican approach when it comes to Israel policy. Never mind that most Jews don’t even vote Republican. Never mind that, by this calculus, Jews who go on having the left-leaning politics Jews have always had are in fact heroically sticking it to The Jews. Once this notion is accepted, it becomes impervious to reason.

For a long time now, Andrew Sullivan’s tone-deaf earnestness on Israel policy has made me cringe—not the substance so much as the particularly careless ways he chooses his words.  The past week has left me thoroughly troubled, particularly this declaration:

It’s important to understand that the Israeli prime minister is engaged in a full-on political campaign – against the re-election of the president of the US.

This because Sheldon Adelson’s Israeli newspaper quoted a Netanyahu advisor as calling Obama “naive.”  Never mind that when two heads of state—Nicolas Sarkozy and, yes, Barack Obama—were caught calling Netanyahu unbearable and a “liar,” this was not politicking against another government’s leader, but “tell[ing] the truth on an open mic.”

Adelson, for a five million dollar donation, is “Newt’s Sugar Daddy”; part of a Republican conspiracy that “know[s] something we don’t”; and, in referencing Connie Bruck’s New Yorker blog post, wants to be the puppet-master of two national governments.

Bruck’s post clearly sees Adelson as a nefarious, wealthy, power-hungry conspirator with a track record of controlling the deeds of governments:  “Several years ago, Sheldon Adelson . . . decided that he wanted to oust the Israeli Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, and install Bibi Netanyahu in his place.”  Never mind that Olmert was mired in a corruption scandal that had destroyed his approval ratings before the Annapolis Conference.  Never mind that the leading Kadima officials had hardly endeared themselves to the Israeli public with their botched military campaigns in Lebanon and Gaza.  Never mind that, despite this, Kadima won more votes than Netanyahu’s Likud.  Never mind that Netanyahu only became Prime Minister after Tzipi Livni could not form a coalition.  He’s done it once before, Bruck warns us, and he’s up to it again.  In America, no less: “Now, Adelson is determined to use his money to oust President Barack Obama.” [click to continue…]

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Fiction’s Ethos

by J.L. Wall on January 19, 2012

At Literary Commentary, D.G. Myers engages Victor Davis Hanson’s question: Why read fiction anymore?  He agrees it teaches one self-mastery, and contrasts this with a more common self-affirming method of reading.

I was wary of this answer, at first—not because I don’t agree with the idea of fiction leading toward self-mastery, or reading toward betterment of self, but because I’m skeptical of the need to find a “use” for reading, for literature, or for art.  This is not to say that I don’t believe art and literature are goods and work, with their audience, toward the betterment of society (through the betterment of individuals, typically).  I do.  But when defenses of literature, or reading, or art fall back on the utilitarian, they’re in trouble: art as a societal good is not, I suspect and worry, a particularly effective argument from that framework.

Myers, however, elaborates on the idea of fiction as an ethical and social good as well as I could hope to:

Hence reading is self-mastery, because the self (and its affirmations) are held in check while the author (and his structures of thought) are fully attended to. True diversity in literature would be to read authors in circumstances as different from our own as possible, because we might then imagine ourselves as different than we are — not the creature of circumstances, but their master. Reading is fundamental, all right: to a person’s ethical development.

Literature offers, in Marilynne Robinson’s words, “the illusion of ghostly proximity to other human souls.”  It is a turning toward and standing silent—listening—the act of allowing another subjective individual to take, even temporarily, priority over oneself.

But if you’re interested, I encourage you to read all of Myers’ piece.

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The Novelist and the Civil War

by J.L. Wall on January 13, 2012

Because I’m behind the times (the Internet times, that is—they move so fast and I’m already stuck at least a decade ago), I’ve just now gotten around to reading Ta-Nehisi Coates’ long-form article on the Civil War and tragedy.  I don’t want to belabor quibbles over the definition of “tragedy” any more than other and I already have, so I’ll just send you toward Freddie’s list of caveats (for present purposes, those about the article itself). [Clarification: I really only meant the qualms about any war's necessity, not the personal parts.  It's also not quite a "list of caveats." -- JLW.]   However, I do think that Coates’ larger point, about the Civil War as part of an American narrative that is not (frequently) joined by African-Americans, is worthwhile.  So while I’m speaking vaguely, I can’t disagree that a re-imagining in this regard, historical and otherwise, might well lead us toward a fuller (but not a full—never a full!) understanding of the event—and, therefore, our own history and ourselves.

What I want to point out, though, is a problem with the way he uses Shelby Foote and William Faulkner.  (Including another de-contextualized shot at Faulkner yesterday.)  Perhaps this is because they’re writers near and dear to my heart, but I think it also points at a difference between the novelist’s investigation of truth and the historian’s.  Foote and Faulkner were, above all, the former.  Even Foote’s opus shouldn’t allow us to mislead ourselves.  I’m not going to comment on the long quotation from Faulkner that Coates focuses on because I haven’t read Intruder in the Dust, except to say that its usage consistently conflates the voices of character and author.

Faulkner’s oeuvre repeatedly and consistently makes the case that Southern—and American—history and society simply cannot be understood in a way that treat the categories of “White” and “Black” separately.  If you don’t feel like slogging through Absalom, Absalom! or wandering through the Biblical retelling of Mississippi from Creation through Moses of Go Down, Moses, just take a quick look at the family tree of the latter’s McCaslins. While Faulkner may or may not have fully worked himself out of what Coates critiques among Southern whites, his writing certainly strove to—but when his novels are introduced as an historical, rather than literary document, the broader framing of a character’s statement is lost, and the novelist (erroneously) appears to romanticize the past which, in fact, is the truest antagonist of his novels.  Romanticizing the past, in Faulkner’s world, can kill you—but only after destroying all that was once dear in your life. [click to continue…]

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The Biblical Renaissance and English Poetry

by J.L. Wall on January 5, 2012

Not long ago, David Cameron delivered a speech extolling the continuing cultural relevance of the King James Bible (h/t Joe Carter).  It stands as a fairly strong encapsulation of much of what has been said—especially in its just closed 400th anniversary year—about the translation:

Along with Shakespeare, the King James Bible is a high point of the English language…creating arresting phrases that move, challenge and inspire. [...] I feel the power is lost in some more literal translations. The New International Version says: “Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror” The Good News Bible: “What we see now is like a dim image in a mirror” They feel not just a bit less special but dry and cold, and don’t quite have the same magic and meaning. Like Shakespeare, the King James translation dates from a period when the written word was intended to be read aloud. And this helps to give it a poetic power and sheer resonance that in my view is not matched by any subsequent translation.

There’s no need to challenge his assertions about the importance of the KJV to the history of English-language literature—but what does frequently go unmentioned is that the King James Bible itself sprang from a pre-existing store of literary fecundity, one created, in large part, by the very present 16th century task of bringing the Bible into English.  This larger translation project, not the KJV, prepared the soil from which the likes of Shakespeare, John Donne, George Herbert, Philip Sidney, Andrew Marvell, and others worked.

Perhaps the most purely “literary” of these attempts is the Psalms of Philip and Mary Sidney.  Philip began the project, completing the first 44 before dying of wounds received while fighting the Catholic Spanish in Denmark; his sister, Mary (also known by her married name, Mary Herbert, Countess of Pembroke) took it upon herself to complete the task.*  They were circulated only in manuscript form, and, by the end of the 19th century, fewer than ten still existed.  The scarcity of the Sidney Psalms belied both their influence and innovation.**

Translation in this period was rife with theological implications—indeed, the act itself was both theological and political.  On the one hand, vernacular prayer was itself a new innovation, and England, as Sidney began his task, was still in the midst of the Catholic-Protestant uncertainty of the Tudor and Stuart dynasties.  On the other, however, were the sentiments of some radical Puritans that an elegant or aesthetic translation was antithetical to true Christian ends.  The Sidney Psalms were, in essence, the fulfillment of the aesthetic theory Philip laid out in his Defense of Poesy—an aesthetic with both political and theological implications.  His defense of poetry and aestheticism depends, to great extent, on the existence of poetry and aesthetic qualities in the Bible.  The Psalms of David were a “divine poem”—and if art is present in the Bible, then how can one claim that it cannot be put to good human use?  Not only is it not improper to write poetry in the English language, but it may well be necessary: English alone, he asserts, is capable of utilizing and mastering the quantitative verse of Classical/Biblical languages and the stressed verse of modern tongues.  In this, he implies (but never states outright) the national language of Sidney and his critics is superior even to the sacred tongues. [click to continue…]

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The Influence of Influence

by J.L. Wall on January 1, 2012

Marilynne Robinson, doing what she does [NYT], talks about books, writing, and the Bible — as well as writing one of the politest harsh critiques of contemporary literature possible: [click to continue…]

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So “Was It Worth It?”: The Funny Pages and Rock Songs Get Their Say

by J.L. Wall on December 21, 2011

"Doonesbury" strip Dec. 10, 2011

"Doonesbury" strip Dec. 19, 2011

As part of two weeks of strips about the wind-down of American troops in Iraq, Garry Trudeau has used Doonesbury to present veterans confronting the inevitable “Was it worth it?” question.  The second strip settles for a TSA joke (because B.D. and Ray—or at least Trudeau—don’t know how to defend their position), but in the first, Mel’s response points out something a little … unseemly about the way the question is likely to be asked.  What, exactly, does one get at by asking whether it was worthwhile, or stating simply that it wasn’t—not generally, but to that segment which has actually sacrificed for the war?

I’ve been thinking about this while listening to the Drive-by Truckers lately, and planning to write about it when I found the time.  DBT was, inevitably, going to have to address contemporary veterans and wars—their storytelling purview is the working-class South.  On 2008’s Brighter Than Creation’s Dark, they present a kind of wartime trilogy with “That Man I Shot,” “The Purgatory Line,” and “The Home Front.”  (The middle track, admittedly, is not necessarily about war orIraq—it only takes on shades of that meaning from its position on the album.  If you listen carefully, you can hear that it rises from the final notes of “That Man I Shot”—the bass notes of one turning into those of the other—and flows into “The Home Front.”)

The first and the third of these songs are based on letters from fans who were serving or had served.  “That Man I Shot” gives its voice to a veteran trying to grapple with his memories of killing.  Patterson Hood writes in the online notes to the album:

The man in That Man I Shot probably doesn’t agree with a lot of my viewpoints, but I tried to be true to what he said and how he said it. You don’t have to agree with someone to respect them and that seemed to run both ways with us. As a writer, it’s not my job to agree or disagree and certainly not to judge. It is my job to be as true to the character’s voice as humanly possible and to tell the story accordingly.

What this leads to is the wholly unironical plea, “I was trying to do good / I just don’t understand.”  The lack of irony is one of two features that define their treatment of veterans.  They’re allowed to be sincere in a way that does not lapse into the kitsch of, for example, country radio.

“The Home Front,” as its title suggests, focuses on a wife and (infant?) son of a soldier. The song, and the attitude toward “Was it worth it?” questions, turn on the following lines:

Now they’re saying on the flatscreen
They ain’t found a reason yet
We’re all bogged down in a quagmire
And there ain’t no end to it
No 9-11 or uranium
To pin the bullshit on
She’s left standing on the homefront
The two of them alone

Blame and anger toward those who fabricated reasons for going to war in the first place are certainly present.  But there is also a critique of those who make grand declarations about the nature and meaning of war from the relative safety and sterility of a cable news studio.  For the wife and child, the war has very little to do with nuclear weapons or terrorists—it is defined by the fact that “She can’t even get to sleep / Since Tony went to war.”  War as a part of everyday, domestic life is of an entirely different kind than war as a part of national life.  And this quality is what demands an ethics, rather than a decorum, or a method of questioning. [click to continue…]

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News Comes in Threes

by J.L. Wall on December 18, 2011

Though I’m somewhat more moved by the loss of Paula Hyman, an historian with a different, but no less real type of bravery, and wonder whether we shouldn’t already be moving on to the Vaclav Havel memorial posts, I’ll briefly add my one thought to the ongoing internet Hitchens memorial ceremony.  If there is one sentence that I will always associate with him, it is the following:

Well, call me old-fashioned if you will, but I have always taken the view that swastika symbols exist for one purpose only—to be defaced.

Perhaps his definition of swastika symbols was, at times, too broad (speaking figuratively, of course); perhaps he was somewhat foolhardy in his willingness to risk harm to others to deface a single poster; but there is something admirable about brash commitment to the truth one sees — especially when it is done, always, while “flourish[ing] my trusty felt-tip.”

You could say, in fact, that some variation on this summarizes the contributions of Havel and Hyman as well as — if not, in fact, more than — Hitchens.

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A Song fer Thanksgivin’

by J.L. Wall November 23, 2011

I just spent six and a half hours driving — the sun somehow in my face while heading south — with a vacuum cleaner in the trunk, a sick tortoise in the backseat, and a pile of clothes, sack of library books, and half-written paper on Louis Zukofsky riding shotgun.  This is my life.  It’s [...]

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Please Don’t Pass Me By (A Disgrace)

by J.L. Wall November 10, 2011

  Now I know that you’re sitting there deep in your velvet seats and you’re thinking “Uh, he’s up there saying something that he thinks about, but I’ll never have to sing that song.” But I promise you friends, that you’re going to be singing this song: it may not be tonight, it may not [...]

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There’s No Good Way to Translate “Poluphloisboio”

by J.L. Wall November 6, 2011

Daniel Mendelsohn offers commentary on the problems and practice of translation not unrelated to the discussion held here a few weeks back:

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Anti-Heroics with a Side of Boredom

by J.L. Wall October 30, 2011

William Brafford wonders about the meaning behind the rise of the anti-hero in the television shows favored by certain audiences (and, not to point the finger at myself too much, by a certain writer).  He concludes: There are two motions here: there’s a larger structure of judgment, within which the characters’ bad choices are shown [...]

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Whose Translation Is It, Anyway?

by J.L. Wall October 23, 2011

“Which translation do you prefer?” has spent the past half-decade climbing my list of least-favorite questions.  While still somewhere behind “Favorite book/author/album – Go!” it is somewhat more mendacious in that it’s hard to explain quickly why I find it so difficult to say anything other than, “All of them.” By this, of course, I [...]

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Vengeance is Clean; Vengeance is Cruel

by J.L. Wall October 19, 2011

Ta-Nehisi writes: When I think of Django Unchained all I see are rape scenes and scowling dudes. One of the problems, at least for me, is that I don’t actually hunger for a revenge flick about slavery. I understand why Jews might hunger for a some cathartic revenge in terms of the Holocaust. There’s a certainly clarity [...]

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Reading Leonard Cohen on Yom Kippur

by J.L. Wall October 9, 2011

Spending too much time in synagogue on a given day (or in a given week) sets your mind off on tangents.  (Like: will they ever turn the air conditioning up?  Who is this guy with dreadlocks and tzitzit I’ve never seen before?  Dear Lord this melody is painfully slow!)  In my case, toward Leonard Cohen.  [...]

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Don Draper Studies II: Mad Men as Western

by J.L. Wall September 23, 2011

(This post contains spoilers for various seasons of Mad Men.  Read at your own risk, but, I mean, it’s on DVD already, so go ahead and help out the Postal Service and that artist formerly known as Netflix.) Forget the Madison Avenue setting, the dapper suits, the blue-blooded heirs, and the Long Island suburbs.  Mad [...]

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That Fine Line Between Correlation and Coincidence

by J.L. Wall September 19, 2011

Via Andrew, a new Way-Too-Soon general election snapshot: Obama now leads Texas Governor Rick Perry, the frontrunner in the GOP contest, 46% to 39%. Perry’s chief rival for the nomination, former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney , holds a narrow 43% to 40% lead over the president. I also want to put forth this tidbit, from another write-up of [...]

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Do People Still Listen to Books on Tape?

by J.L. Wall September 16, 2011

If so, then perhaps this recording of Flannery O’Connor reading “A Good Man Is Hard To Find” at Vanderbilt, some fifty-two years ago, should be queued up for your next trip.  Or maybe just a chilly evening around the fireplace with your loved ones.  (Via – which also links to recordings of Yeats, Larkin, and others.)

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Thinking in Song

by J.L. Wall September 13, 2011

At FPR, Gregory Butler has written a nice discussion of Bruce Springsteen’s The Rising.  This album has been one to which I’ve returned with time, and my opinion of it has grown, slowly but steadily — it may well be the Boss’ best.  The reason for this is not that it successfully eulogizes September 11, [...]

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A man there was in the Land of Uz

by J.L. Wall September 10, 2011

Jonathan Safran Foer’s second novel, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close, closes with a flip-book sequence of one of the falling men from the World Trade Center.  The order of the images are reversed, so that he begins at the bottom of the page, part-way down a tower, and rises until he disappears above the top [...]

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Don Draper Studies I: Shoring Fragments Against Ruins

by J.L. Wall September 7, 2011

(This post talks about all of Season 4 of Mad Men.  Read at your own risk, but, I mean, it’s on DVD already, so go ahead and help out Netflix and the Postal Service.) Over at Postmodern Conservative, Jason Joseph offers brief comments on Don Draper’s development in Season 4 of Mad Men.  Unfortunately—and I say [...]

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David Brooks, Expertise, and the Fetishization of Happiness

by J.L. Wall August 31, 2011

People have been giving attention to David Brooks’ latest column.  This is good, because I have a soft spot for the incorporation of Yiddish into daily life, particularly the word “bagel,” and especially on those mornings when cream cheese is nearby.  He talks about heimish, homeyness, in a sense; from his experience it comes from [...]

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The Polis in Post-Modernity III: Constitutions Written and Oral, Living and Dead

by J.L. Wall August 29, 2011

(Note: This post began as a comment to Tim’s post this morning, grew into a full-fledged response, then developed into a sort of continuation of this series.  But elements of all three are mingled. You’re warned) Several months ago, I was drinking my morning coffee and reading a paper on halakhic legal/ethical categories via a [...]

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Presidential Fictions

by J.L. Wall August 24, 2011

Perhaps the strangest reaction to President Obama’s summer-reading list came from Mickey Kaus (emphasis his): Obama’s just-released “summer reading list” doesn’t offer a lot of evidence even for the “reads very widely” thesis. It’s heavy on the wrenching stories of migrant experiences, something the President already knows quite a bit about.  … Maybe the release [...]

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Poking My Head Up From Behind the Box-Fort

by J.L. Wall August 24, 2011

I know that this is not a problem limited to Commentary, or to today’s right-of-center magazines, but since Commentary is the establishment-conservative publication I read most regularly, it gets the blame.  The best part about writing this statement is that you get to have both the present and past tenses of “read” in the preceding, because while I attempt to [...]

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Crucifixion and Archaeology

by J.L. Wall August 12, 2011

A detailed discussion of one of the few victims of crucifixion to be discovered, here.  Less on the gore and pain of how the death-torture physically worked than trying to glean historical facts and possibilities (about methods, victims, attitudes) from an archaeology find — and certainly worth your time.

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The Polis in Post-Modernity (II): Scale and the City

by J.L. Wall August 11, 2011

In a comment to my previous post, Art Deco offers several statistics in support of his counter-argument that “Mobility is not so novel.”  He is right—and especially, I would say, in America.  Huck Finn sets out down the Mississippi; we are continually a nation of immigrants; while Augie March may be exhausted by 1953, but what [...]

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The Polis in Post-Modernity (I): Migration and New Media

by J.L. Wall August 10, 2011

In the summer issue of National Affairs, Marc Dunkelman offers a diagnosis of the American polity via America’s communities: Over the past few decades, technological, social, cultural, and economic changes have revolutionized the structure of American community. Globalization, the information revolution, and the emerging pre-eminence of the service economy have begun to undo the bonds [...]

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(Civil) War and Tragedy, Cont’d

by J.L. Wall August 7, 2011

Tossed off almost like an aside, and one of those lines I had to go back and listen to multiple times while somewhere on I-65 in the northern half of Indiana, Eric Foner speculates momentarily that if McClellan’s 1862 campaign on Richmond had succeeded and the war ended shortly thereafter, slavery would have emerged as [...]

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“The Harrow and the Harvest”: Silver Dagger

by J.L. Wall July 29, 2011

(I’m writing about Gillian Welch’s The Harrow and the Harvest until I feel like stopping.  But really, you should listen to the music more than you should pay attention to me.) More commented on in reviews than the links between “Hard Times” and Stephen Foster’s songs is the connection between Welch’s “Silver Dagger” and the 60s folk standard of [...]

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Quote for the Week

by J.L. Wall July 28, 2011

In a pine grove on the southwest cusp of the interstate cloverleaf 5 P.M. / JULY 4 Now in these dread latter days of the old violent beloved U.S.A and of the Christ-forgetting Christ-haunted death-dealing Western world I came to myself in a grove of young pines and the question came to me: has it [...]

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A Quick Question

by J.L. Wall July 27, 2011

Since I’m beginning the hunt for a new laptop: Does anyone have experience with/opinions about non-Word word processors?  I view a laptop pretty much as a glorified typewriter, and if I’m going to have to pay for Office anyway… Consider this an open thread on that subject, and, hell, anything else.

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The Tragedy of War is the Tragedy of Men

by J.L. Wall July 26, 2011

Ta-Nehisi Coates continues to wonder about the relationships between and among war, tragedy, and justice: There’s a hazy line between my posts arguing that the Civil War wasn’t tragic, and my posts on the 30 Years War. The key dilemma I’m trying to wrestle with is how we should think about war, given its consistency throughout history, its horrible consequences, and the [...]

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Department of Meaningless Historical Analogies: Civil War Edition (or, Racists Galore!)

by J.L. Wall July 25, 2011

Because I find less wrong with supporting John McCain in 2008 than seceding in order to protect the peculiar institution, I think that Andrew Sullivan’s statement Recall that the map of the 2008 presidential election was almost identical to the map of the states in the Civil War, with now Northern-infiltrated Virginia, North Carolina, and [...]

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“The Harrow and the Harvest”: Weep No More My Lady

by J.L. Wall July 22, 2011

(I’m writing about Gillian Welch’s The Harrow and the Harvest until I feel like stopping.  But really, you should listen to the music more than you should pay attention to me.) Bob Dylan isn’t the only thematic influence on The Harrow and the Harvest: “Hard Times” riffs on the songs and world of Stephen Foster, re-imagined a century and [...]

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“The Harrow and the Harvest”: Dylan in the Doorway Cryin’

by J.L. Wall July 19, 2011

(I’m going to take a page out of William Brafford’s book and write about Gillian Welch’s The Harrow and the Harvest until I feel like stopping.  But really, you should listen to the music more than you should pay attention to me.) The final song on the album, “The Way the Whole Thing Ends,” was [...]

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“The Kids Are All Right” and the Obligation of “Third-Party Parents”

by J.L. Wall July 18, 2011

Because I’m at least a year behind when it comes to movies, I did not watch Harry Potter this weekend.  I’ll probably wait until this time next year, when the crowds have died down a little.  Instead, I saw The Kids are All Right.  (Just as a warning, this post will discuss the plot, but [...]

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Life Imitating Fiction Watch

by J.L. Wall July 14, 2011

Given that Aaron Sorkin successfully predicted the major party candidates in 2008, Rahm Emanuel’s rise to Chief of Staff, the negation of an electoral rival by making them Secretary of State, presidential nicotine habits, and the way Eric Cantor has always weirdly reminded me of Speaker Haffley, my gut tells me that this is how [...]

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Homer without the Gods (or, the Nihilism of Cormac McCarthy)

by J.L. Wall July 6, 2011

The man therefore who does what he ought moves steadily towards his fate and his death.  It is defeat and not victory that lies at the end.  To understand this is itself a virtue; indeed it is a necessary part of courage to understand this.  But what is involved in such understanding?  What would have [...]

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One More Note on Israel

by J.L. Wall June 24, 2011

Andrew Sullivan, responding to Jeffrey Goldberg, writes: If no American Jew can conceive of a situation in which they would walk away from Israel, then there is no leverage at all to persuade Israel to act responsibly to save Zionism’s soul, or to behave as a constructive ally of the United States. But I can’t [...]

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Notes on the Wicked Son

by J.L. Wall June 23, 2011

The reasons why people initially cared about Allison Benedikt’s essay on … something to do with changing her mind about Israel remain mysterious to me.  Its sentiments were anything but new to this world; that the Village Voice film critic changed her mind about Israel is only slightly more notable than if I changed my [...]

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Opportunity Costs

by J.L. Wall June 21, 2011

Ezra Klein offers a strong response to the right-place, right-time, right-attitude argument about George Washington’s greatness.  As president, he points out, Washington did have a variety of choices about how to proceed and opportunities abounded to shape the presidency, and to a great extent, the nation, in the image he chose.  Here, contrary to my [...]

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Well The Midnight Gang’s Assembled…

by J.L. Wall June 18, 2011

The Big Man comes on at about 4 minutes in. Strange to think of Clarence Clemons and his saxophone in the past tense — I always kind of thought he’d disappear into back into the same thunderstorm from which he first burst forth.

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