Rushdie has a new book out, a memoir of his life during the world's reaction, particularly the Ayatollah's, to The Satanic Verses.  His timing isn't bad, as the US, and the West, discover anew the unpopularity of its influences in the world of the Middle East.

Kundera, writing in Testaments Betrayed, 1993:  "That is why, in this sad story, the saddest thing is not Khomeini's verdict (which proceeds from a logic that is atrocious but consistent);  rather, it is Europe's incapacity to defend and explain (explain patiently to itself and to others) that most European of arts, the art of the novel;  in other words, to explain and defend its own culture."

Is it a difference of taste in the end, a difference of habit, of 'genes'?  Is the novel a frivolity, something 'satanic' in its calling into question in the scope of its view and sensitivity?  Are complexity and the cultural criticism inherent in a novel not a habit some societies can undertake?

Is it that the West simply caught flat footed in trying to, as the work of the novel asks of us, to understand the complexities on the ground?  Has the West lost its own art, its own sensitivity, and become a victim of its crave for fashion and its own certainties?

Would we want to, could we even imagine to, live in a society that did not allow the novel, that did not allow the play of poetry, poetry in play, in a world so determined by religious law that we were not allowed the luxury of thinking of ourselves, of imagining ourselves, as individuals.  Such imagination does, after all, allow entire industries to flourish, though someone somewhere might regard such as completely 'unholy,' comedy, fine dining, the internet of information's freedom to name a few.

Does it not make for interesting literature when such worlds of different tastes collide?  Perhaps that is a subtle background point in a Tolstoy story, in particular "Prisoner of the Mountains," or in Lermontov, poetry set against repression and imprisonment.

Who knows, maybe some of the finest works were conceived by 'complete degenerates,' people like Shakespeare, far moreso than prudish finger-waggers and 'holy types of impeccable self control.'  Yes, give me the world of Chekhov flawed 'sinful' people in order to find the song of redemption so necessary to life.

Kundera bears rereading, 'The Day Panurge No Longer Makes People Laugh."

It's the pain, somehow vascular, in the legs, that makes the wine taste so good and soothing, if you've done an honest day's work.  Hoofing it.  A meeting of hands.  What else do we call it.  There's one of those Christian terms, I can't think of it...  Can't sleep, valerian doesn't do it, only listening to music, in my case Irish music, Sinead O'Connor singing with the Chieftains, "The Foggy Dew," or, anything MacGowan.

Writing is a symptom of wakefulness.  Irritated by not being able to sleep, you have some math to sketch out on a blackboard.  You have some growing up to write about.

Philip Roth, also found on the internet, in interview with Tina Brown, has a piece of the puzzle, and perhaps has kept the ticking distance of our lackings toward literature and literary forms.  Unless it's stunning and revelatory, salacious, maybe shameful, but true and recognizable, we don't need the parsimoniousness of the novel.  As Roth says, too many screens, television, movie, internet, and this being one of them.

And yet, and yet--the great directors, Fellini, love to say, 'and yet, and yet'--there is something Shakespearean, that strange poetic 'outing' of what must be said, the capturing of voices that hover in our heads.

To skirt upon an issue, maybe it is literary form, literary form in a sense, which we, or another, or a group, or a larger 'truth seeking nationality' would seek to defend.  And if it is literary form we are talking about, then, maybe, what seem to be greater issues can be more pleasantly discussed.  This is why Mr. Roth thinks that the world, quite clearly, will be happier when no one believes in God.  Literary form is, as always, an important, or perhaps, the most important battle ground there is.

So we see this now, as if by coincidence, in the NPR piece of Antietam, the photography of Alexander Gardner, (setting the issues of what the more thoughtful words of the day would be dedicated to.)  We see it Rushdie's new book about what it is like being a marked man of extremist.  The story of Naguib Mahfouz seems to have been forgotten at the current moment (stabbed in the neck almost fatally by a young Egyptian extremist--who then later having finally read him, humbly asked for apology.)

Shakespearean technique might finally be the point, the inclusion of all the voices, mad, sane,  clownish, regal, male, female, deep, shallow, interested, not, musical, atonal, mystic, secular, cynic, saint, cop, what have you.  Which we get now, readily, fragmented, but blitzed at us, if you will.

And we are the ones with our own gyroscopes, compasses, filters, points of interest, tastes.  Important things.  We have our own voices, and that's why, in our DNA, the writer came into being, a being that is a crystallization of what we are, what we are often enough.

Do we riot?  Is that who we are, or do we write a poem?  Can we write a book fairly honest, or is taste something different?  Or then do we misapprehend other people,  and take them to say as being more than what they really are about, which is, after all, and at the end of all days, a matter of literary form, and all that is accepted within literary (mental) forms.

Mr. Roth, for instance, might write about masturbation.  That might not be particulary to your taste, but the form might be, well, not far off from your own.

The screen of my macbook has a big picture of space, many stars, blue, depth, and a universe, one which looks like a vagina, right in the middle.  Is biology physics, or is physics biology?

An attempt at review, on the thought-provoking nature of:

Encounter, Milan Kundera.  Harper Perennial Paperback edition, New York, 2011
The Idyll, the Daughter of Horror
(Marek Bienczyk: Tworki)

He is writing about a book, a book about a place called Tworki, 'a large psychiatric hospital,' 'toward the end of World War II.'   Kundera finds the young people depicted:

     ...modest, shy, awkward, with a naive thirst for morality and for goodness; they live their 'virginal loves,' whose jealousies and disappointments never turn into hatred, in that strange atmosphere of obstinate gentleness.

A pithy and striking passage, a comment on our times that leapt out at this reader (reminding him of the essential--or existential--condition his own book is set in.)  Kundera seems to capture a light that falls upon our own times, as we sort of wait around for what happens next, (and possibly missing the chance to do anything of note.)

Kundera's commentary, speaking personally, as a writer, captures that ever-present sadness, that sort of low-level depression that never leaves but also is never dramatic and palpable enough, never so locatable as to require 'professional treatment,' its promptings for spiritual conversion and insight pointed but similarly intangible.   Maybe this is the beauty of certain Shakespearean moments, never hitting you over the head, always existing in a kind of ambiguous situation, 'signifying nothing,' as when Hamlet mutters 'nothing is but thinking makes it so.'  Of course.  Plays' jobs are to prolong such agony.  Is there ever resolution?

And so we go on living.

To the highest mind, say, that of Buddha, that 'unsatisfactory' nature of things is exactly it.  We don't need to necessarily translate that bit of wisdom as 'suffering,' in a direct dramatic sense (though we probably are in that state too, anyway), but just that low level everyday 'what am I doing, and even asking that is not leading me to anything remotely satisfactory, what is the point of all this?'  Such a condition simply means that the sufferer is on the right track, at least in accordance with the inner logic.

I suppose we can only resolve the matter in asking for a certain recognition of such traits and expressions of that which Kundera, reading, describes above.  An understanding, sympathetic, of such 'madness.'  Is that how the world works?  Probably not, but, can we say, I wonder, that this is, at least some times, who we are?  Or, to ask it another way, where would that get us?  Do we then simply wish to go back to sleep and dream a little more until more worldly duties call upon us?  (Would that the Nazi had been so afflicted.)

Is it not a bit painful to look back on those times of youthful naivety and chaste relationship...  Why do those now seem like such utter catastrophic failures of living, haunting us in their own way?

And yet, how strangely wonderful would it be, if you could capture some of that virginal hidden kindness, like capturing a still of a helpful yoga pose's energy, or the Da Vinci diagram of the man, the human being with his arms outstretched, not sadness, not regret, but beauty?  Or, in sobriety, something akin to the strange other worldly logic of Jesus that we normal humans find ourselves occasionally good at, remarkably enough...

Anyway, to not operate with a bulldozer's sweep in such rare and delicate territory, sensitively, is a task for writer and critic today.

Brooks, who has tried to be moderate all along, and not betray his own views (conservative, deeply), or, for that matter, betray his disappointment with the views he is sympathetic to:  did not get it.  (and called the speeches of the individual candidates themselves a tie!)

Beschloss, the guy from Williams, had only to remark that the President's tack was sermon-like, as in FDR style.  I don't think he got it (though later on he betrayed a certain engagement.)

The other Presidential scholar, Richard Norton Smith, really didn't get it either, not prepared to acknowledge anything out of the ordinary had just happened.

Mark Shields did a plucky job of being 'non partisan.'  Did he get it, even as he was, if anything, too professional?

But, but, but...  It was the crowd, the crowd in the hall, the crowd on television sitting as individuals like me, even those sitting alone, who GOT IT.

And perhaps, to their credit, the news people restrained themselves, if they did get it.  Though really, one wishes otherwise.  And I am surprised that such a great moment was not so 'wow,' seized upon for what it was.  In fact, I think it really odd.  We've been waiting for such a moment, really, for a long time, as the moment was not just in passing, but fulfilled and full, a speech not in a few lines, but in full, perhaps in a form new to the art.  Edward R. Murrow, what would he have done?

But of course, journalists seem obliged to be cynical in modern times, impartial, not betraying their own personal feelings or their humanity.

The President did an absolutely excellent job on top of a real rise to the occasion of all in a convention of superb speakers and performances.  Bill Clinton, Michelle Obama, Joe Biden, Mayor Castro...

And you have waded through the conventions.  You too have seen in Tampa the great insincerity, the lack of authenticity, the agenda related mistruths of the great cynic destructive Scott Walker (whose aim to undermine a progressive liberal mindset) and his friend Paul Ryan, of the Republican National Convention this year in Tampa, the blankness of Gov. Romney with conspicuously little to say.

How proud humanity can be, that the Democrats followed in this time of great national crisis.

Mr. President, you are so right.  "You did that," you said.  "You did that," you said, meaning that it was all of us, all of us Americans, normal rank and file everyday middle class un-rich doing-it-in-the-trenches people, who finally put our foots down and said that we all need fairness as far as health insurance coverage. That's what the National health care act is about, that you can't get denied because of pre existing condition, etc.  It was and is the great national moral conscience that has stood up to keep Americans do what they do best.

"Four years ago...  you made that possible... You are the reason...why selfless soldiers won't be kicked out of the military for who they love..."

Obama offers a quote of Lincoln:  "I have been driven to my knees many times by the overwhelming conviction that was the only place to go."  And it is altogether fitting and proper that we should have that tall and folksy original almost hick American voice coming to us now from the wings of history.  For as a young man, Lincoln once fell into such a state of melancholia, so be-gloomed that his friends, so worried about him, worried that he might do something awful to himself, took him in and nursed and fretted over him, as far as to attempt the crude and awful practices of the day to try and fix his body, through bleedings, etc.  Along with taking care of him, of course.  For weeks.  Until, eventually, he got up, whether or not he had completely recovered.

Yes, things are hard.  The news we find just isn't that good, so rosy.  We must be realistic, realistic almost to the point of comprehending what the Buddha tells us about life in general, that it will indeed appear to us that there is a lot about life that will cause us malaise, that will strike us as suffering and a kind of nakedness where before we thought we had power and control over everything.  Yes, America is after all growing up as a nation, and at a certain point must realize what the nature of reality is.

And the good news is, is that perhaps we've been good, or open to this, all along.  We've been open to the facts of life being suffering for the lot of us, and so we've provided the decent things to each other, freedom, equality of creation, decency itself, education.  We've been good about things like the New Deal when the real nature of existence was before us, close in front of our eyes with hunger and want.  We've been good about setting things up like PBS where the potential of a medium is turned to the good, toward expanding our brain cells' stimulation with art and educational programs on science and history and the humanities, thus giving jobs to people who can provide that sort of educated content (rather than letting them go to waste.)

Yes, Lincoln was brought to his knees more than once in his life, through who he was, and through the horrible circumstances in which he was fated to preside over.  And the sense we are left, appropriately, of him is one of "binding up the nation's wounds..." the great line of the Second Inaugural whose opening line, "there is less occasion then there was at the first," President Obama may have had in his own head.  Indeed, belief seems to make Obama very strong, and therefore positive, seeing the good, where someone else might not be so optimistic.  "Binding up the nation's wounds," one could argue, was the act of saving the auto industry, and of the health care act, and of the beginnings of restraining the deregulations of Wall Street excesses, "playing by the rules," as the President put it.

Yes, Lincoln is the Republican we should be holding before us now, instead of the current ranks, the obstructionists McConnell, Boehner, Cantor, Ryan, the Tea Partiers, whose smug insincerities are enough to make your skin crawl.  And as in his times, we too are at war, of a sort, a war to improve the lives of rank and file Americans who find themselves no longer able to afford housing, health care, education and a secure retirement, and whose numbers are vast.  And tax cuts for the rich, just isn't going to amount to anything but outsource life as we know it, for the sake of the one percent.

One knows a beautiful thing when he/she sees it.  And in politics, in life, in all that follows, economically, nationally, beauty is, through its inspirations, truth.

I have heard the cynics singing, telling us any number of things, that national health care is a bad idea, wrong for business, that we Americans are too selfish to be 'in this together,' that 'job creators' aren't happy and will look elsewhere, that we'll never get out from under our piles of national debt under the current administration's path, etc., etc., etc.  And they are wrong.

Perhaps Michael Beschloss is not off the mark after all, if we were to consider the possibilities of the Obama and the Presidency today, to remember FDR, about what we need to provide the people of our nation.


"I propose to create a civilian conservation corps to be used in simple work...
More important, however, than the material gains will be the moral and spiritual value of such work." 

"No country, however rich, can afford the waste of its human resources.
Demoralization caused by vast unemployment is our greatest extravagance. Morally, it is the greatest menace to our social order." 


And so, does it matter that the jobs we provide are particularly defined, that 'community college' education we speak of as far as gearing up the American worker toward very specific and very competitive ends, high tech stuff, as a politician must propose.  Maybe to keep everyone up and working we don't necessarily have to look at either the education or the aims of it in such a narrow fashion.  What is so terrible about the continuing general education?

Does it all have to be high tech?  Or might we realize the hub of culture, the wine, the local produce, music, local transportation and character, art, the proposition of traditions as far as importance to the human world, as important and an integral part of the job providing economy.  The argument might be made that the economy of a country like Ireland was not well-served attempting to conform to something outside its own strengths.

A new New Deal... it doesn't sound like the worst idea at the moment.

Not only do we have the not-living-in-reality element of the writer's life, a postponement of the decisions of life, there is in the weird twilight a vicious cycle.  There is the stress of jobs, and in a restaurant, with the job of being a wine expert, the calming at the end of shifts leads to the depressive effects felt the next day, that feeling, 'why get up, why do yoga, why even get up and write,' when all you have energy for is the getting ready for work, and then the shift that comes along that night.

You need to eat, and so you have to work.  You'll never get out of the cycle.  This is the backdrop of all intellectual life, and the fact of having done it quite a few years already anyway seem to lock down the lid of it upon you.  The humidity is high today, so what's the point?  Just drag on and go get ready for wine tasting night.  The day after Labor Day will be strange, perhaps, not busy, though you never know.  We only have a few of the bottles we tasting tonight, a rehash of earlier tastings, and no one coming in to help us out tonight.  Last time the boss did this to us, of course it got very busy, lots of tourists around jumping at the idea of free wine in an unfamiliar town.  Will my coworker be hungover as he often is on Tuesday?

Time for a shower.

As with any fledgling writer, timidity arises, whenever you sit down to write.  What will they think?

I wonder, is it my job that makes me, well, sort of bitter, sort of reluctant to participate in the sorts of relationships that people seem to find normal?  Why do I find myself increasingly feigning enthusiasm at social requests, as if, like my job, I am only called upon to be a patient shrink, a good listener, and I've done enough of that all night already (and not got paid for it all that well.)  Am I finally finding that the aspects held as pleasurable don't last as such all that long?  Why would I crave reading and aloneness and the time to write as really quite sustaining?  Do I find myself trusting far fewer people, where I used to trust anyone?

Yes, it seems things go full circle.  The kid who once was very social now is... weird?  Likes his walks on his own?  What's up with that? you ask yourself.  Wasn't life supposed to be about finding the right person to be with?  Do you not trust anyone anymore with your time?  Do there really seem to be so few people who actually get it, (and they too, quiet types, not prone for the spotlight and the jolly meet-ups.)

Some people, I've come to realize, just like all that stuff, the social life.  But I'm not so sure I do.

Well, that's a literary asshole for you, not too long in the fun department.

But yet, if you make some gains toward diminishing the egotistical, maybe you begin to find that extraneous stuff just bounces off of you.  And to judge that as bad would be yet more ego talking.  I wouldn't say I don't feel sad about it all sometimes, but, it has its usefulness, particularly when what you do for a living isn't the same as the task by which you feel you really make a contribution to society and to humanity, though of course how would humanity ever repay you?  Send a check through the mail?  Humanity wouldn't blame you if, in the meanwhile, you did something to keep from hunger.

Yes, assignment:  write a book of some sort.  try not feel like a total asshole for doing so.