tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36199351202927834602024-03-04T12:23:21.905-08:00Random JottingsEssays, reviews, etc.Sheldon Goldfarbhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06647831732341673859noreply@blogger.comBlogger72125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3619935120292783460.post-18596990933171888322016-08-07T18:33:00.001-07:002016-08-07T18:33:33.766-07:00DONALD TRUMP, COLUMBINE, AND THE WHOLE MESS OF THE MODERN WORLD<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 36pt; text-align: center; text-indent: -36pt;">
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">I’ve been thinking about Donald Trump lately. It’s been hard not to, what with the
avalanche of commentary about his run for the presidency. And the avalanche has mostly flowed one way:
Trump is horrible, Trump is awful, a menace, a Mussolini, a Hitler. The extremism of it all gets me going a
bit. I don’t like avalanches, though I
know it’s dangerous to get in the way of one.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Not that I like Donald Trump. He
seems like a blustery buffoon, a bully, a nasty guy. I worry even about writing that: maybe he’ll
come after me; maybe he’ll say, You’re fired!
He’s not my type of person at all.
I also don’t like guns, AK-47’s, or whatever the type of gun the kids at
Columbine used. You know, the ones who
shot up their school and killed I don’t know how many classmates because they’d
suffered bullying there.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">I was revolted by the killing, as was everyone, I’m sure, and yet now,
looking back, I think: bullied kids.
What bullied kid doesn’t dream of revenge? I was a bullied kid and I remember
fantasizing about being a high judge presiding over a trial of the
bulliers. In the fantasy, perhaps oddly,
I pardoned the bullies. Not before they
grovelled and apologized, but that was all I needed: go and sin no more, I
said, channelling my inner Jesus or something.
An angry Jesus, but a forgiving one.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">All of which is to say I can understand the impulse of the bullied to
respond to their bullying. Which brings
me back to Donald Trump. How does he fit
into the scenario of bullies, the bullied, and AK-47’s? Well, frankly, I think he’s the AK-47, the
vehicle of revenge, the weapon.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Then who are the bullies and the bullied? This the media has gone into a bit, trying to
trace out the roots of Trump’s appeal.
The roots seem similar to the ones that produced the Brexit revolt in
England: there’s an animus there, an anger against the ruling establishment and
its support for the European Union and for the policies of political
correctness, policies which some fear will threaten their livelihoods or their
way of life. The roots lead us to ordinary working people, usually older, the
ones who remember past days with nostalgia and view the present with
trepidation.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Their opponents call them poor white trash or stupid old bigots or
other unflattering terms. And the
interesting thing about who their opponents are is that they mostly seem to
come from the Left. Progressives. The people who in the last century championed
the People, the Working Class, the Proletariat.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">That was often an odd alliance while it lasted: well-educated radicals
calling themselves the vanguard of the proletariat when in practice the working
class wanted no part of radicalism. The
true nature of things was laid out long ago in the sitcom <i>All in the Family</i>, which portrayed a backward working stiff (Archie
Bunker) doing battle with his radical son-in-law (Meathead), who was a sort of
60’s-era hippie and certainly not a regular working guy.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">I can remember the Left agonizing over this sort of thing in the past,
saying the workers were suffering from “false consciousness,” and if only they
recognized their true interests, they’d support liberal-left policies on
everything ranging from immigration to environmentalism. But is an environmental movement that
threatens to shut down the industry you work in really in your interests? I wonder.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">So what has happened more recently is that the Left has given up all
pretence of speaking for the working class.
The Left has indeed become derisive about the working class (I
exaggerate, of course; I’m sure there are exceptions; there are still people
who call themselves socialists; Bernie Sanders called himself a socialist – but
did he focus much on working-class issues or was he talking about climate change
and free university education?).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">So the working class, never drawn to the Left in the first place (at
least not in North America), looks elsewhere to find someone who will represent
them, and they settle on … Donald Trump, who says all the things no one is
allowed to say anymore and comes across as a racist and a dedicated enemy of
political correctness.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">As a writer, I am no friend of political correctness. There are too many things you’re not allowed
to say these days. I know the creative
spirit that inspires writing gets strangled when the rational brain says, You
can’t say that. I hear that comedians
are unhappy these days for the same reason.
Which is not to say there aren’t nasty things which shouldn’t be
said. But still …<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Trump taps into that, into the discontent against the forces that would
turn us into careful lovers of the environment and the First Nations and
minorities and women. Feminism,
aboriginal rights, climate change, the Palestinians – these are the watchwords
of the Left, and more than the Left, these days, and you oppose them at your
peril. No, what you are supposed to
oppose are Big Business, America, men’s rights groups, and Israel. Oh, and of course, climate change “deniers.” There is a ruling ideology – some associate it with globalization – and if you don’t join in, you can get
ostracized.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">But some don’t want to join in.
Some are so angry about it that they want to revolt. And so they say no to Brexit and yes to
Donald Trump. Just like those bullied
kids who pulled out guns at Columbine and started shooting – well, not exactly,
of course. I don’t meant to make an
exact equation.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">My point, though, is that there can be legitimate grievances and bad
ways to voice them. I hesitate to go
down the path followed by those who see terrorism and say, Well, of course we
can’t condone their means, but you can sympathize with their goals, with their
frustrations. Let’s explore the root
causes: American foreign policy or poverty or whatever. I’m not a big fan of that way of thinking,
and besides, we’ve learned that poverty has not in fact been where most of the
terrorists have come from.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">People fear terrorism these days and look to their leaders to protect
them or do something about the problem.
Some of the support for Trump comes from those who think the current
leadership doesn’t take terrorism seriously enough, thinks climate change is
more important or making sure we don’t wrongly smear a whole group for the
actions of a few.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Now of course we shouldn’t do that (smear the many for the few), but
when that sort of worry becomes more important than defending ourselves: well,
I don’t know how we would have won World War II with that sort of emphasis. Of course, we shouldn’t have interned
Japanese-Canadians, and maybe we shouldn’t have dropped atomic bombs on
Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but we did have to defeat Hirohito’s Japan. Are our leaders really committed to defeating
ISIS? It’s the fear that they’re not
that’s led to support for Trump’s crazy ideas about banning all Muslims.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">As to where we go from here, well, clearly there are a lot of
disaffected people out there. I’ve heard
their problems analyzed, when they’re not being dismissed, but is there
anything that can be done to address them?
Perhaps not. Perhaps we can’t stop
schoolyard bullying either, and then we rightfully are horrified when the
bullies’ victims go ballistic.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">So we’re horrified with Donald Trump, but perhaps it’s time to look at
some of the issues that fuelled his campaign, that have energized his supporters. Perhaps it’s time to stop denigrating those
supporters and the 52% of the British voters who supported Brexit. Perhaps it’s time to do something for
them. And perhaps it’s time to move
beyond political correctness.</span><o:p></o:p></div>
Sheldon Goldfarbhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06647831732341673859noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3619935120292783460.post-83222099848172414202015-11-26T23:49:00.000-08:002015-11-27T08:11:03.351-08:00Yoga, Shlepping, and Cultural Appropriation<div align="CENTER" lang="en-CA" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">My first reaction to the
“yoga as cultural appropriation” story out of the University of
Ottawa was to say this is ridiculous. Political correctness gone
mad. Not that I'm a big fan of political correctness even when it's
sane. Let everyone appropriate, I thought. Let's all borrow from
each other, cross-fertilize, be creative.</span></div>
<div align="LEFT" lang="en-CA" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span lang="en-CA" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> </span></span></span><span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;">But then I listened to a </span></span><span style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Métis</span><span style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: large;"> </span><span style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: large;">woman on a CBC podcast denounce this sort of thing as oppressive,
colonial, insensitive, etc. That didn't convince me. Her political
framework is so different from mine that we speak two different
languages that don't even connect. However, something else she said
did give me pause, making me think, ironically, that she was
appropriating my culture.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">Early
on in the podcast the CBC interviewer was asking some introductory
questions just to set the background and introduce us to the speaker,
who casually remarked that she'd spent the day “shlepping” around
town.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">“<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;">Shlepping?”
I thought. How dare she use the word shlepping? That's a Jewish
word, my people's word.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">Of
course, this brought me up short, caught in an internal bind of
cognitive dissonance. Here I was in theory celebrating cultural
sharing and opposing the notion of cultural appropriation, thinking
let's all share each other's cultures, but then when someone not of
my culture suddenly used something I thought of as mine, watch out.</span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">Isn't
that hypocritical, my non-Jewish girl-friend asked me? Well, yes, I
said, I suppose it is, except of course I don't like to think of
myself as hypocritical, which would suggest I was violating my own
principles. But maybe the principle here is simply don't take my
stuff. If other people are borrowing each other's stuff, I shrug and
say, Whatever. But if you take my stuff, or my people's stuff, well,
that's different.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">Not
that I even speak Yiddish. Not that I even use “shlep” myself,
or “oy vey,” or any of the expressions I heard older generations
use. I grew up in a much more assimilated generation, speaking
English, not Yinglish. Still, it bothers me for some reason when
non-Jews say “oy vey” or “shlep.”</span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">Some
words bother me less, I think, like “shtik” or “kibitz”;
maybe because they've become English. But then for the woman on that
podcast, maybe “shlep” just seemed like an English word too. “Oy
vey” seems a bit different. If a non-Jew uses it, I sense mockery,
which may be quite unfair, but there you go.</span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">Of
course, if someone is indulging in mockery, if their intent is to
ridicule in an anti-Semitic way, then that's obviously bad. But the
woman on the podcast had no such intent, and yet her use of “shlep”
still bothered me, even though in theory it shouldn't bother me at
all if I'm being true to what I thought I believed: that we should
all just share our cultures.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">So
where does that leave us? I don't know. I am left pondering. I
checked online. People do talk about this sort of thing, I mean
whether using Jewish words or wearing the Star of David is
“appropriative” or appreciative. (And I guess the third
possibility is offhand, without even thinking about it.) People
debate it; some say non-Jews shouldn't do or say these things.</span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">I
don't like telling people not to do or say things. I'm against
censorship, I'm not with the recent campaign against so-called
micro-aggressions. As a writer, I find that a very dangerous path,
leading to the shutdown of creativity.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
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<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">And
yet as the member of a group, however assimilated, I feel unsettled
when someone outside the group uses the group's terminology or
symbols. Perhaps it's even because I am so far from my
Yiddish-speaking ancestors that I hold onto this last little
distinction or marker. Perhaps. Who knows? It troubles me.</span></div>
Sheldon Goldfarbhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06647831732341673859noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3619935120292783460.post-90575913354442811262015-07-19T19:14:00.000-07:002015-07-19T19:14:01.978-07:00Sheldon and the Mormons<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">So the other day I was sitting on a bench minding my own business reading a book when two pleasant young women came up to me and the following dialogue ensued.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Pleasant Young Woman 1 (PYW 1): You look very studious.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Sheldon (looking up): Yes ... How can I help you?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">PYW 2: And even taking notes.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Sheldon: Yes. What can I do for you?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">PYW 1 and PYW 2 (in unison): We're missionaries.</span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">"Oh," I said. "What church?"</span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">PYW 2: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">"Oh, the Mormons," I said.</span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">"Yes," said one of them. "Do you know about the Mormons?"</span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">"There was that musical."</span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">"Did you see it?"</span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">"No. The Mormons also play a central role in the first Sherlock Holmes story."</span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">PYW 1: Really?</span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">"Yes. Have you read any Sherlock Holmes stories?"</span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">PYW 1: Yes, but obviously not the first one.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Sheldon: A Study in Scarlet.</span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">PYW 1: Is it any good?</span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">"Oh, very good," I said, though I suddenly thought, Perhaps it doesn't portray Mormons in a very favourable light. They won't like that. Still, at least I was able to tell these Mormons something about themselves that they didn't know before. Performing an act of service, you might call it.</span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Anyway, at this point I got up to leave, saying cheerily (I'd been cheery throughout) that I had to be on my way.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">PYW 1 seemed to accept this, perhaps picking up the signals that I was not good fodder for recruitment despite my cheeriness. PYW 2, however, persisted.</span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">"Would you like to visit our church?" she said. "It's right nearby."</span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">"Thanks," I said, "but I have to be on my way."</span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">And that was Sheldon's encounter with the Mormons.</span></div>
Sheldon Goldfarbhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06647831732341673859noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3619935120292783460.post-68554955292012663812015-05-22T00:47:00.001-07:002015-05-22T00:47:53.898-07:00At the Book Launch<div align="CENTER">
<br /></div>
<div align="LEFT" class="western">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The
other evening I attended the book launch for the last book of poetry
published by Elise Partridge, who died earlier this year.</span></div>
<div align="LEFT" class="western">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div>
<div align="LEFT" class="western">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Elise,
with her husband Steve, was a friend of mine, and so I went, though I
hardly knew anyone there, and the ones I knew I didn't really know;
they were presences when I was in the English Department twenty years
before, so I more knew of them than knew them firsthand, so to speak.
Sometimes this was because they were profs whose courses I hadn't
taken; in fact, whether I'd taken their courses or not wouldn't
really matter because, well, I didn't socialize with the professors
when I was a grad student. </span>
</span></div>
<div align="LEFT" class="western">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div>
<div align="LEFT" class="western">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Then
there was the book launch itself, a series of readings of poems from
the book, some of them very interesting, but the most interesting
moment (not counting the moment when a street person tried to crash
the party and steal the donations money) – the most interesting
moment or reading for me was of an excerpt from something from the
Museum of Natural History about how only 10% of species are even
discovered before they become extinct. (I wonder how we know that,
but the point is, this resonated with me, along with my feeling of
knowing and not-knowing, and along with hearing Elise's poetry, so
that eventually I wrote a poem of my own, and here it is:</span></div>
<div align="CENTER" class="western">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div>
<div align="CENTER" class="western">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: large;">At
the Book Launch</span></div>
<div align="CENTER" class="western">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div>
<div align="LEFT" class="western" style="margin-left: 4.04cm; orphans: 2; page-break-before: auto; widows: 2;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Meeting people I used to not know</span></div>
<div align="LEFT" class="western" style="margin-left: 4.04cm; orphans: 2; widows: 2;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Hello, how are you, who are you again?</span></div>
<div align="LEFT" class="western" style="margin-left: 4.04cm; orphans: 2; widows: 2;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: large;">What are you up to now?</span></div>
<div align="LEFT" class="western" style="margin-left: 4.04cm; orphans: 2; widows: 2;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Not that I knew then.</span></div>
<div align="LEFT" class="western" style="margin-left: 4.04cm; orphans: 2; widows: 2;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: large;">In between</span></div>
<div align="LEFT" class="western" style="margin-left: 4.04cm; orphans: 2; widows: 2;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Where did it go?</span></div>
<div align="LEFT" class="western" style="margin-left: 4.04cm; orphans: 2; widows: 2;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: large;">90% of species exist without ever
being known</span></div>
<div align="LEFT" class="western" style="margin-left: 4.04cm; orphans: 2; widows: 2;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: large;">And then they're gone.</span></div>
Sheldon Goldfarbhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06647831732341673859noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3619935120292783460.post-48764527613822701012015-04-04T07:52:00.001-07:002015-04-04T07:52:19.962-07:00New Poems<div style="background-color: #fdfdfd;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Eight poems inspired by A.A. Milne:</span></div>
<div style="background-color: #fdfdfd;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="background-color: #fdfdfd;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">If I were married to the Queen</span></div>
<div style="background-color: #fdfdfd;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">I think that I would make a scene</span></div>
<div style="background-color: #fdfdfd;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">I'd say this isn't how it's been</span></div>
<div style="background-color: #fdfdfd;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">My enemies are all unclean</span></div>
<div style="background-color: #fdfdfd;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">But after that I'd want to sing</span></div>
<div style="background-color: #fdfdfd;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">If I were married to the Queen.</span></div>
<div style="background-color: #fdfdfd;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="background-color: #fdfdfd;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">-----</span></div>
<div style="background-color: #fdfdfd;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="background-color: #fdfdfd;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">If I had a little boy</span></div>
<div style="background-color: #fdfdfd;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">I think I'd give to him a toy</span></div>
<div style="background-color: #fdfdfd;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Not a little pretty doll</span></div>
<div style="background-color: #fdfdfd;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">That wouldn't suit him, not at all</span></div>
<div style="background-color: #fdfdfd;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">But a toy that spins and flies around</span></div>
<div style="background-color: #fdfdfd;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Though it never leaves the ground</span></div>
<div style="background-color: #fdfdfd;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">That I think would be quite sound</span></div>
<div style="background-color: #fdfdfd;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">That indeed would be quite sound</span></div>
<div style="background-color: #fdfdfd;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="background-color: #fdfdfd;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">-----</span></div>
<div style="background-color: #fdfdfd;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="background-color: #fdfdfd;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">If I were a spider</span></div>
<div style="background-color: #fdfdfd;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">And sat down beside her</span></div>
<div style="background-color: #fdfdfd;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Hoping perhaps I could play</span></div>
<div style="background-color: #fdfdfd;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">I'd be quite disheartened</span></div>
<div style="background-color: #fdfdfd;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">And not really smartened</span></div>
<div style="background-color: #fdfdfd;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">If she were quite frightened away</span></div>
<div style="background-color: #fdfdfd;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="background-color: #fdfdfd;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">-----</span></div>
<div style="background-color: #fdfdfd;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="background-color: #fdfdfd;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">I wish I had an elephant and rode him to the square</span></div>
<div style="background-color: #fdfdfd;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">I wish there were some people who said, What have you there?</span></div>
<div style="background-color: #fdfdfd;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">I do not have an elephant, a tiger, or a drake</span></div>
<div style="background-color: #fdfdfd;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">I only have a tiny little mouse upon a lake.</span></div>
<div style="background-color: #fdfdfd;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="background-color: #fdfdfd;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">-----</span></div>
<div style="background-color: #fdfdfd;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="background-color: #fdfdfd;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">A rabbit came a-wandering along a country lane</span></div>
<div style="background-color: #fdfdfd;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">He held two gloves within his paws and wandered back again</span></div>
<div style="background-color: #fdfdfd;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">O rabbit, I said to him, rabbit my dear,</span></div>
<div style="background-color: #fdfdfd;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Can you explain to us all</span></div>
<div style="background-color: #fdfdfd;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Why there's a fool in a stove top hat</span></div>
<div style="background-color: #fdfdfd;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Waiting for me in the hall?</span></div>
<div style="background-color: #fdfdfd;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="background-color: #fdfdfd;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">-----</span></div>
<div style="background-color: #fdfdfd;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="background-color: #fdfdfd;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">It would be nice to have some spice</span></div>
<div style="background-color: #fdfdfd;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Though it sadly tickles my nose</span></div>
<div style="background-color: #fdfdfd;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">And yet I would try it once or twice</span></div>
<div style="background-color: #fdfdfd;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Just to see how it goes</span></div>
<div style="background-color: #fdfdfd;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="background-color: #fdfdfd;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">-----</span></div>
<div style="background-color: #fdfdfd;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="background-color: #fdfdfd;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">You can hear the sea if you stand quite still*</span></div>
<div style="background-color: #fdfdfd;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">You can listen and know upon a hill</span></div>
<div style="background-color: #fdfdfd;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">There's all of the world wrapped up in the sea</span></div>
<div style="background-color: #fdfdfd;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">And maybe there's more of the world to see</span></div>
<div style="background-color: #fdfdfd;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Or maybe the world is waiting to be.</span></div>
<div style="background-color: #fdfdfd;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="background-color: #fdfdfd;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">*An actual line from "Come Out with Me."</span></div>
<div style="background-color: #fdfdfd;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">A single line of plagiary.</span></div>
<div style="background-color: #fdfdfd;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="background-color: #fdfdfd;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">-----</span></div>
<div style="background-color: #fdfdfd;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="background-color: #fdfdfd;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">A poet shouldn't explain his poems</span></div>
<div style="background-color: #fdfdfd;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">For one thing it might get very long</span></div>
<div style="background-color: #fdfdfd;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">And worse than that, he might be wrong</span></div>
<div style="background-color: #fdfdfd;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">And anyway if he tells them through</span></div>
<div style="background-color: #fdfdfd;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">There isn't much for others to do.</span></div>
Sheldon Goldfarbhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06647831732341673859noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3619935120292783460.post-57857855932561535512014-11-22T16:08:00.003-08:002014-11-22T16:08:51.415-08:00Transformational Grammar<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Well, actually I know nothing about
transformational grammar, except that it has something to do with
Noam Chomsky, and I don't think it has anything to do with what I
want to talk about, which is the transformation I have noticed in
recent years in the way educated people, or at least young educated
people, speak.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">I work for the student society at the
University of British Columbia. I don't hang out with the students,
but I interact with them a fair bit. Also, my colleagues tend to be
of a younger demographic, and it was one of these colleagues who
first shocked me back in the late 90's when he talked about some
meeting he was going to, saying: “Her and I will talk about tuition
tomorrow.”</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Actually, I don't remember what he said
they would talk about; what I do remember is his use of “her and
I.” Now, I was brought up to learn a certain sort of grammar in
which subjective case was distinguished from objective case. The
pronouns I, he, she, they<i>
</i>were to be used when they were the subject of a sentence; me,
him, her, them was for when these pronouns were used as
objects.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Everyone still follows that distinction
when there's only one subject or one object, I think. I don't think
I've heard people say, “Her will talk to us about tuition tomorrow”
or “Me want to go fishing.” (Well, maybe infant would-be
fishermen say the latter.)</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The change has happened with compound
subjects and objects. I would have said, “She and I will meet
about tuition” or “John and I will talk about tuition.” But
now people will say “Her and I.” I confess that I hear that
phrase so much that “She and I” has come to sound a tad precious
to my ears, a little stuffy, like something out of a book or out of
another century (which of course it is, just like me).</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">I think I have heard “Me and John
will talk about tuition”; I hesitate I suppose because I can't
believe that's what people say now, but I'm in fact pretty sure
that's what university students and the others I encounter at the
student society do say.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Some people would be appalled. In some
moods, I'm appalled. It's the fault of the elementary schools,
teaching self-esteem and creativity instead of grammar rules, they
say. And maybe it is. But I'm not sure fault is the right word.
The language always changes. The authors of <i>Beowulf</i>
would have been shocked at the way we talk: you use the same word for
“the” all the time? Whether it's a subject, an object, an
indirect object, a plural, a masculine, or a feminine?</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">(Yes, Old English
had masculine and feminine grammatical forms, like French. In fact,
it had a neuter form too, like German, which is not that surprising,
since it was German, the German dialect of those Angles and Saxons
who travelled from Germany to take over Britain from King Arthur's
hardy Celts. But that's another story.)</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">We have lost the
feminine, masculine, neuter distinctions. We have lost the 16
different ways to say “the.” We have lost the distinction
between subject and object for nouns; we have retained it only for
pronouns (I versus me, he versus him, etc.) -- and now even that may
be going.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">I wonder if one day
“she” will disappear, and we will only have “her.” As
between “me” and “I,” that's a tougher one. Though “me”
seems to be ousting “I” in “Me and John will discuss tuition,”
in places where I was trained to use “me,” “I” has taken
over. “That's between John and I,” people say. Or “He gave
that to John and I.” There you have “I” used where traditional
grammar would say you have to use the objective case (“me”).</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">So what do we have
now (acknowledging that we may be in transition):</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<b><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Traditional
20th-century grammar:</span></b></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">She and I will meet
tomorrow.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">John and I will
meet tomorrow.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">That's between me
and John.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">He gave that to me
and John.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<b><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Young People's 21st-century grammar:</span></b></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Her and I will meet
tomorrow.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Me and John will
meet tomorrow.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">That's between John
and I.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">
He gave that to John and I.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Except the last two sentences may be
more common in a slightly older demographic, among people who
remember being corrected for using “me” with another pronoun (“Me
and John are going out to play”) and deduced that “I” is always
to be used when there's another noun or pronoun.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Now I'm not sure how the younger
demographic would say those last two sentences. One thing I am sure
about is that pronoun cases are interchanged much more readily these
days, prompting some to call for a return to the basics in the
schools.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">“Her and I” is not what I was
taught, but I wonder if it's the way of the future, and if one day
“she and I” will sound as archaic as the sixteen ways to say
“the” or words like “forsooth.” The language moves in
mysterious ways.
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
Sheldon Goldfarbhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06647831732341673859noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3619935120292783460.post-75127993919223285842014-08-16T12:58:00.003-07:002014-08-16T12:58:28.875-07:00Robin Williams and Modern Life
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: large;">I
made a comment on Facebook the other day about how after all of us
had been feeling sad over Robin Williams, now a water bottle was
trending on Downton Abbey: someone had left a modern-day water bottle
in a picture for the show, and this historical inaccuracy was now the
latest thing among Facebook people. It felt wrong somehow, I said.</span></div>
<span style="font-size: large;">
</span><div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
</div>
<span style="font-size: large;">
</span><div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Not
that I necessarily wanted to wallow in Robin Williams stories for a
week, and I especially was not interested in details of his death.
His hilarious comedy routines, yes, but not how he took his life.
Even that, though, I wouldn't want to go on forever. I'm not sure
what I would have wanted, actually. My girl-friend said it was just
the contrast that bothered me: the death of a great comic juxtaposed
with an unimportant mistake on a TV show.</span></div>
<span style="font-size: large;">
</span><div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
</div>
<span style="font-size: large;">
</span><div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Perhaps.
Perhaps I just wanted a little space after Robin. But space is what
the modern world doesn't give us. It was bad enough in the old days,
when newspapers had to fill their pages with something, anything, but
now it's all the social media all the time, bringing us information,
games, jokes, quizzes, whatever.</span></div>
<span style="font-size: large;">
</span><div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
</div>
<span style="font-size: large;">
</span><div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: large;">A
recent book talks about how we've lost boredom. There used to be a
time when people could get bored, but now there's no chance of that:
now every minute is filled somehow, at work, at play, everywhere.
There are emails and Tweets and Facebook posts and I don't know what.</span></div>
<span style="font-size: large;">
</span><div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
</div>
<span style="font-size: large;">
</span><div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: large;">And
the thing is, I don't particularly have a solution to any of this,
nor do I particularly want someone to come up with one. Another
aspect of modern life, perhaps, is that we complain about it. So
there it is, my complaint. Though complaint sounds too harsh a word.
A sigh perhaps, just a sigh. A sigh over I don't know what. Life.</span></div>
<span style="font-size: large;">
</span><div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
</div>
<span style="font-size: large;">
</span><div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: large;">One
time not so long ago, Craig Ferguson, my favourite late night talk
show host (now soon to depart, alas), received an email in his
email-reading segment asking about the Jonas Brothers. Whatever
happened to them, the email asked? And Craig just shrugged a bit and
said, “Well ...”</span></div>
<span style="font-size: large;">
</span><div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
</div>
<span style="font-size: large;">
</span><div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Time
passes, things move on, the current big story gives way to the next
big story (or the next trivial story), and then ... well, who knows?
We are but a moment's sunshine.</span></div>
Sheldon Goldfarbhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06647831732341673859noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3619935120292783460.post-38120450801638035152014-06-26T00:36:00.000-07:002014-06-26T00:36:01.920-07:00Free to Go<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">I was watching a TV crime drama tonight, a rerun of Boston
Legal actually, so drama may not be the right word: it’s too full of comedy and
romance, but basically drama, and I was struck by a typical dramatic moment,
typical for courtroom dramas, I mean.<span>
</span>The jury comes back, declares the defendant Not Guilty, and the judge
says, “You are free to go.”</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Free to go, yes, but go where?<span> </span>For days or weeks the defendant has been
caught up in this drama, this challenge, this struggle: how much it defines
her, how it gives meaning to this segment of her life, and then suddenly the
struggle is over, the game is won, and she can go home.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">I guess that will be where she goes: home.<span> </span>But we haven’t even seen her at home; we’ve
just seen her at her trial; that’s been her whole life, and now it’s over.<span> </span>It’s a bit like working, and then
retiring.<span> </span>Or if not as dramatic as that,
like finishing some major project and not knowing what to do next.<span> </span>Where does one go when one is free to
go?<span> </span>Is freedom what we really want?<span> </span>Maybe we want the opposite of freedom, maybe
we want to have to struggle.<span> </span>What is
life without struggle?</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">I read a letter to the editor earlier today opposing
euthanasia as the easy way out and arguing for suffering: suffering is what
makes us human, the letter writer argued, and I wasn’t entirely convinced, but
maybe …<span> </span>Suffering may be going too far,
but you want a little struggle in your life.<span>
</span>If you play a game, you want to play against someone who could beat you:
you try to make sure they can’t, but if you actually know they can’t, where’s
the fun in that?<span> </span>To win without risk is
to triumph without glory, as someone once said.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">It’s the free to go part that makes me nervous.<span> </span>After the trial, after the game, what then?<span> </span>Wandering in a wasteland of freedom, without
purpose, without direction …<span> </span>Let us be
bound by something and struggle to be free, and if we get free, let us struggle
again.</span></span></div>
Sheldon Goldfarbhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06647831732341673859noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3619935120292783460.post-29689927583682381512014-06-07T00:09:00.004-07:002014-06-07T00:09:36.585-07:00Partial Truths and Errors<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Following up on my last post, I was thinking today about an
incident a couple of evenings ago, when my girl-friend came to pick me up on
campus.<span> </span>“I’m in a little roundabout in
front of a construction site,” she said.<span>
</span>Oh, that’s the New SUB, I replied, and headed off for it.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">It wasn’t the New SUB, though; it was the Alumni Centre
(another new construction).<span> </span>But not to
worry, the two new buildings are right beside each other, so it was easy to
find her.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">I pondered this later.<span>
</span>Error had led me not astray, but to the right place.<span> </span>A little learning is a dangerous thing, Pope
once said, so perhaps a little error is useful?<span>
</span>I’m not sure that’s what he had in mind; I fear he was one of the
devotees of System and warned against partial knowledge in the hopes of
bringing people to Full Knowledge, Complete Learning, or whatever.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">I certainly agree that a little learning can be
dangerous.<span> </span>I once told this to a class
of mine and when they asked for an example thought of my situation arriving in
a city where traffic was allowed to turn right on a red light.<span> </span>Having been raised in a city where red meant
stop, period, I suddenly was in a state of partial and thus dangerous
knowledge.<span> </span>I needed to learn that in Toronto cars might be
turning on me even when I thought I had the right of way.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">So I’m all for fuller knowledge (and not being run over),
and I know the dangers of thinking you know before you know, but you can never
know all; there are always things to learn; one shouldn’t think there will be a
time when your knowledge will be complete.<span>
</span>And sometimes a little error can lead you in the right direction.</span></span></div>
Sheldon Goldfarbhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06647831732341673859noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3619935120292783460.post-71190368437210058192014-06-06T23:57:00.000-07:002014-06-06T23:57:09.307-07:00Skepticism and Belief<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">I took an interesting course on Greek philosophy this week,
with a little Buddhism thrown in as a fillip, and what we learned was that
there are all sorts of approaches to happiness (the theme of the course),
leading one of the students to ask the instructor, “But which approach to
happiness do you follow?”</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">To which the instructor, a young thirty-something type half
the age of most of the students, replied, “Aristotle says that’s the sort of
thing you shouldn’t ask a young man.”</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">(Instructors are so much younger nowadays.)</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Another student raised the issue of post-modernism.<span> </span>She’s taking a course on that too, and
learning of its onslaught on absolutes and its claim that everything is
relative.<span> </span>“What can young people believe
today if they are bereft of fundamental beliefs?”<span> </span>(I paraphrase.)</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">To which the instructor replied that his young students do
still seek belief, even if there is no longer a unified foundation like
medieval Christianity to rely on.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Which I would agree with.<span>
</span>We seem to be in the midst of developing a new world view, at least in
the West or on university campuses in the West: a world view based on
environmentalism, science, identity politics, and political correctness.<span> </span>There are good guys and bad guys, angels and
demons, in a way reminiscent of earlier philosophies and religions (more the
religions than the philosophies, I’d say).</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">It’s a development that makes me uneasy, because just as my
ancestors didn’t fit with the dominant world view in Christian Europe, so I
fear I don’t fit with the believers in climate change and the evils of “white
male privilege.”<span> </span>But more than that,
more than not fitting in with the contents of the latest beliefs, I fear I
don’t fit in with the culture of belief per se – which might make me sound like
a post-modernist, only I don’t believe in them either.<span> </span>I’m a skeptic perhaps – or perhaps I’m an
eclectic.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">The upshot of our final discussion was that people today are
more eclectic.<span> </span>Given all the
philosophies out there, people pick and choose.<span>
</span>I think this is true too, though it is in opposition to the drive I’ve
just outlined, the drive for the one Pure Belief, the true cause.<span> </span>Perhaps after this period of eclecticism, we
will end (though I shouldn’t say “end”) with One Big Belief again, a new
anti-religion Religion.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">It’s not where I want to go, but it may be where we’re
heading.</span></span></div>
Sheldon Goldfarbhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06647831732341673859noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3619935120292783460.post-85459858915415632162014-05-13T23:03:00.003-07:002014-05-14T00:06:16.942-07:00Literary Lives<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">I wrote a letter to the <i>London
Review of Books</i> today.<span> </span>Don’t know if
they’ll print it.<span> </span>I once came close to
getting published in them.<span> </span>They wrote
saying a letter of mine was being considered for publication – but it never
appeared.<span> </span>Perhaps it was too late.<span> </span>In those days I was months behind in my
reading, so they may have felt my comments were no longer timely (referring as
they did to something months old).</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: -9pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">That didn’t stop the <i>Times Literary Supplement</i> years before
when I published my most famous letter, the one that got me in <i>People </i>magazine.<span> </span>You were mentioned in <i>People</i>, some people would ask?<span>
</span>They didn’t believe it.<span> </span>One
didn’t even believe it when I showed her a copy of the magazine.<span> </span>It must be some other Sheldon Goldfarb, she
said.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Uh huh.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Anyway, this time I wrote as part of my campaign to get the <i>LRB</i> to return to its tradition of
reviewing literary biographies.<span> </span>And by
reviewing I mean publishing long, leisurely review-essays which present the
biography themselves, so you don’t even have to read the book – and who wants
to read hundreds of pages of minutiae about anyone, even a writer – and I do
like reading about writers, but in bite-sized format, a few thousand words, not
a few hundred pages, just enough to get the essence of the life.<span> </span>I relish those.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">But the <i>LRB </i>(and
the <i>New York</i><i> Review of Books</i> too, alas) have turned from this.<span> </span>Perhaps it is the “death of the author” craze
that swept academia decades ago finally percolating into the more general
public journals.<span> </span>Or a distrust of
“essentialism,” of believing you can sum up anyone’s life in an essay, which of
course you can’t really – but you can try.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">The <i>LRB</i> and the <i>NYRB</i> have given up trying, at least for
writers; they do seem to publish review-essay biographies of non-writers
occasionally, but it’s not the same – and I should note that the <i>NYRB</i> may have reversed itself recently,
so I have resubscribed.<span> </span>One lives in
hope.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Many years ago when I expressed an interest in writers’
lives, a literature professor of mine reacted dismissively.<span> </span>“You’re interested in gossip?” he said.<span> </span>I felt cowed.<span>
</span>But I’m thinking now, “No, not gossip, humanity.<span> </span>I’m interested in people’s lives – though not
all people’s lives – reviews of painters leave me cold.<span> </span>Reviews of anyone not a writer leave me not
entirely satisfied.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Now, I don’t mean I want literary criticism.<span> </span>I’ve read my fair share of literary criticism
for various graduate degrees.<span> </span>It’s
useful but seldom entertaining or enthralling.<span>
</span>No, what I want is to follow some writer’s life, to learn where they
were born, to see them grow up, to see them become a writer, to learn how they
functioned in the world.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">In a way, it’s the same story over and over.<span> </span>The lonely, disaffected creative person
finding their voice.<span> </span>Yet I love to read about
them, the more the better.<span> </span>It’s like
when I was ten years old and had to read a new Superman comic every week, or
reading yet another Agatha Christie mystery, or watching another Mentalist
episode (well, they’ve gone off, so I don’t do that anymore).<span> </span>It’s the pleasure of routine.<span> </span>The new that is yet the same.<span> </span>And I wish the <i>LRB</i> would give it back to me.</span></span></div>
Sheldon Goldfarbhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06647831732341673859noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3619935120292783460.post-65935303533144966132014-04-27T15:04:00.002-07:002014-04-27T15:04:35.049-07:00Substitutes<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">I misplaced my pen today on the bus.<span> </span>You may remember pens: those pre-online
writing instruments that people who haven’t joined the smartphone generation
still use on occasion.<span> </span>I use them to
make notes on books I’m reading (and you may remember books too).</span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Anyway, I misplaced my pen and had a moment’s angst, but
then I remembered the back-up pen I carry with me just for these
emergencies.<span> </span>It’s a different type of
pen; I don’t even know the brand: you push its top down to get it to write, and
write it did, and very nicely.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">So nicely that when I found the misplaced pen, I almost
regretted returning the substitute to its emergency compartment in my sports
bag (I was writing while on my way home from playing hockey; this way I can be
both intellectual and athletic all on the same day).</span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Anyway, I almost regretted returning to my regular pen;
wasn’t the substitute actually better?<span>
</span>Are all substitutes better?<span>
</span>Substitute teachers, back-up quarterbacks?<span> </span>Well, maybe not.<span> </span>But sometimes a change adds a little
zest.<span> </span>Who was it who said that it’s
easier to be a lover than a husband because the lover only has to dazzle
briefly and occasionally while the husband you’re stuck with all the time?</span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Okay, I looked it up; it was Balzac (that’s the wonder of Google),
and he said it much more elegantly, but my point is that there may be something
in novelty.<span> </span>If the lover becomes the
husband, though, where’s the novelty in that?<span>
</span>The same for the substitute teacher.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Maybe this is why it’s good to go on vacation, but also good
to come back.<span> </span>Which makes me think of
Jung and Joseph Campbell, the hero with a thousand faces, the hero’s journey:
good to get away and go slay dragons, but you shouldn’t get stuck doing that.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Well, this seems a long way from a misplaced pen, but for
some reason the poor little pen has inspired me to muse about larger
meanings.<span> </span>Maybe it’s the grass is always
greener effect.<span> </span>When I was a child and
visited my aunt’s house and had a grand time playing games with my cousin, I
sometimes thought, Wouldn’t it be nice to live here full-time?<span> </span>But maybe it wouldn’t have been at all, maybe
it was only the change of pace that appealed to me, though who’s to say?</span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">And of course I was only seeing the relatives on their best
behaviour.<span> </span>Out in public almost everyone
seems nice and appealing, but who knows what goes on at home when the visitors
are gone?</span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Ah, well … I have put away the emergency pen, and now must
return to my regular routine.</span></span></div>
Sheldon Goldfarbhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06647831732341673859noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3619935120292783460.post-59425007508382317052014-04-07T19:41:00.002-07:002014-04-07T19:41:17.521-07:00Sentimental Pieties and the F-word<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Justin Trudeau’s use of the F-word the other day led one of
our national newspapers to ask its readers what they thought of that.<span> </span>Many of them criticized him for a variety of
reasons, but the reason that struck me, and stuck in my craw, you might say,
was the claim that people who use obscenities have limited vocabularies.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">On the contrary, I argued in a letter I wrote back, doesn’t
it show the exact opposite?<span> </span>Their
vocabularies are unlimited, by good taste, decorum, whatever.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Of course, there are no doubt uneducated people out there
who resort to obscenity because they know little else, but Justin Trudeau?<span> </span>Or his even more famous father, who let off
an F-bomb in the House of Commons of all places?<span> </span>You can criticize the Trudeaus for many
things, but I doubt that a limited vocabulary is one of them.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">But it was not just this week’s letter-writers who conjured
up this argument.<span> </span>I’ve heard it many
times before, and I wonder at its longevity.<span>
</span>Why do people believe that those who swear know few other words?<span> </span>Perhaps they would just like to believe
it.<span> </span>Perhaps they are directing one of
the strongest insults they can at the users of obscenity, calling them in
effect uneducated and illiterate.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">(As strong insults go, this is not much perhaps, but if you
deny yourself the use of obscenities, you are perhaps limited when it comes
time to express outrage.<span> </span>Who indeed has
the more limited vocabulary?)</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Now, none of this is to advocate obscenity.<span> </span>I am quite restrained in using it myself, but
that doesn’t mean we should resort to falsehoods when opposing it.<span> </span>And I don’t really oppose it either.<span> </span>I can swear, perhaps not with the best of
them, but just because I do doesn’t mean my vocabulary is limited.<span> </span>It may, as I wrote originally, be just the
opposite.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">I wonder, then, where the argument originates about
obscenity users having limited vocabularies.<span>
</span>Perhaps it’s meant to cow the educated and abash the rest.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">It reminds me for some reason of another sentimental piety:
about inner beauty being the true beauty.<span>
</span>It reminds me in particular of the scene in the movie Liar, Liar when
the little boy voices that sentiment to his father (played by Jim Carrey).<span> </span>Carrey responds, “That’s just something ugly
people say.”</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">There are things we perhaps want to believe; perhaps we
think we can be superior to those who have scared us by using swear words when
we tell them that this shows their vocabulary is limited.<span> </span>We, of course, have much fuller vocabularies
and would never be forced to resort to four letter words.<span> </span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Well, it is perhaps a comforting belief, like the belief
that the 9-11 terrorists were cowards.<span>
</span>For questioning that piety, Bill Maher lost his job, so I’ll be careful
what I say, but it seems to me that attitudes and opinions based on
wish-fulfillment are not the best guides to the truth.<span> </span>We may not like the truth, but perhaps we
should face it.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
Sheldon Goldfarbhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06647831732341673859noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3619935120292783460.post-71457740889542430182014-02-28T08:34:00.002-08:002014-02-28T08:34:51.336-08:00On Not Being the Vice-President<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Long ago, in Grade 9 English, a district superintendent or
some such official came to look in on us and help with a story we were
studying.<span> </span>I can’t remember what story it
was, but there was a scene in a park with picnickers carrying their
grandfathers.<span> </span>And there were
samovars.<span> </span>Maybe it was a Russian
story.<span> </span></span></span>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">The superintendent asked us if anything struck us as odd in
the scene.<span> </span>Someone ventured, “The
samovars?”<span> </span>“No, no,” said the
superintendent, or maybe our regular English teacher, who was also there.<span> </span>“That’s just a Russian teapot.”<span> </span>It was the people carrying their
grandfathers, which I think had struck me as odd, but too odd even to ask about.<span> </span>It’s hard to raise a question when you hardly
even understand something – except that’s the very thing to ask about, I
learned that day.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">And maybe I also learned to enjoy analyzing stories from
that and also to think that it’s better to do something hands-on like analyzing
a story than to be some distant superintendent, a manager supervising others
who get to do the hands-on work.<span> </span>I felt
sorry for the District Superintendent, if not then, at least in retrospect: he
was someone who knew how to get to the root of a story, making it come alive
for students, but mostly his job must have been just overseeing others.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">In some fields, of course, management is the prize people
aim for, and some people must like managing others, but to me it’s a bit like
being the coach instead of Wayne Gretzky.<span>
</span>You could say, of course, that an athlete, even a star athlete, or a
creative writer or a comedian is doing mere grunt work.<span> </span>Better to be the Vice-President in charge of
whatever instead of some lowly pencil-pusher, but if pencil-pushing is somehow
creative, if the work is something like Gretzky behind the net or Graham Greene
producing a new novel, who wouldn’t rather be that than mired in management?</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">The Talent, not the manager, the literary critic, not the
district superintendent.<span> </span>But everyone is
different, I suppose, and I suppose we need those Vice-Presidents.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">…</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">When I read the first part of this blog to my girl-friend,
she paused and said, “I’m a Vice-President.”</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Uh oh, I said.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">So let me say that I have nothing against vice-presidents,
and as my girl-friend went on to tell me, sometimes she likes to do the
hands-on work, but not always.<span> </span>Maybe the
District Superintendent was happy not to have to teach an English class every
day; maybe it was nice just to do it once in a while.<span> </span>I published a novel once, but haven’t since,
and when I think of someone like Agatha Christie or even, yes, Graham Greene,
maybe even creative work could seem tedious if you had to keep churning it out
year after year.<span> </span>So there you go … </span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
Sheldon Goldfarbhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06647831732341673859noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3619935120292783460.post-74716791969826114412014-02-11T00:06:00.000-08:002014-02-12T08:25:54.283-08:00Making all the Stops<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">I was thinking of a Seinfeld episode the other day, the one
where Kramer tells the story of how he was on a hijacked bus and had to fight
the hijacker off, ending up driving the bus himself.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">(It’s interesting, by the way, how this violates the old bit
of writerly advice to show, not tell.<span>
</span>And it’s not the only time <i>Seinfeld</i>
does this.<span> </span>What to me was their most
glorious episode is the one where George tells how he saved the beached whale
by removing a golf ball from its blowhole.<span>
</span>We don’t see this at all, except for George in rolled-up pants wading
out from shore.<span> </span>There’s a sort of
discretion in that, a cutting away from the action, another way to write not
encompassed by the old writing rules.)</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">But I digress.<span> </span>In the
episode, Kramer explains how he has to grab the steering wheel because the
driver has passed out, and meanwhile he’s having to fight off the hijacker, or
mugger, while steering and also preserving a severed toe that he’s trying to
get to the hospital.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Eventually, he explains, he was able to kick the mugger off
the bus at one of the stops, to which Jerry replies, “You kept making all the
stops?”<span> </span>Well, says Kramer, people kept
ringing the bell.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">I was thinking, well, that’s life, or maybe heroism: you’re
in a life-and-death struggle, you’ve got a 20-ton vehicle to control, you’re
worrying about a severed toe, and yet you keep making all the stops.<span> </span>Life goes on, there are things to do, so
despite your headaches or heartaches or whatever else crosses your path, there
are stops to make, people who keep ringing the bell and expecting you to do
your job.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">It reminds me of Robert Frost’s famous poem about the woods
so lovely, dark, and deep, so tempting, but not tempting enough to divert the
rider from keeping his promises.<span> </span>To be
an honourable man, says Confucius, keep your word, do your duty.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Man’s lot?<span> </span>Woman’s
too, of course.<span> </span>We have to keep making
all the stops.<span> </span>It’s hard sometimes,
though.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">P.S. February 12:</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">It occurs to me, waking up this morning, that sometimes in
times of stress, making all the stops is actually a lifeline.</span></span></div>
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</span></span>Sheldon Goldfarbhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06647831732341673859noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3619935120292783460.post-60231251996147129152014-01-30T23:06:00.000-08:002014-01-30T23:06:11.710-08:00Remembering Pete Seeger<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">I met Pete Seeger once.<span>
</span>It was in Montreal
at a concert when I was maybe 14.<span> </span>The
whole family went, and afterwards we went backstage, and there he was.<span> </span>I remember virtually nothing about it, except
that I was still able to wear my bar mitzvah suit (people dressed up for
concerts in those days) and I was in the presence of a famous man.
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Not that he spoke to me or anything, but still …</span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">We were raised on Pete Seeger in our household.<span> </span>When we weren’t listening to classical music
(none of those decadent Beatles for us), it was left-wing folk singers: Paul
Robeson, Peter, Paul and Mary, Pete …</span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">And I still have a soft spot for the music even though my
politics are no longer left-wing.<span> </span>Music
can rise above politics, and there was something about Pete Seeger in
particular.<span> </span>Not strident, said an
obituary this week, and that’s very much a part of it.<span> </span>Upbeat.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Of course, in those days the Left was upbeat, resolutely
optimistic, not preaching gloom and doom and global warming.<span> </span>Gloom and doom was for Spenglerian
reactionaries and the Population Bombers.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">But he didn’t seem locked into dogmatic optimism
either.<span> </span>In fact, one of his most famous
songs bothered me, the dogmatic leftist, for that very reason.<span> </span>“Turn! Turn! Turn!” as he liked to say, was
based on the Book of Ecclesiastes, the Bible.<span>
</span>The Bible!<span> </span>How can you be
progressive and quote the Bible!</span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">But the Party Line was to revere Pete and if Pete was doing
this, it must be okay.<span> </span>But the
message!<span> </span>It wasn’t about the triumph of
the people or a lament for the oppressed.<span>
</span>It was all about birth and dying, being happy and sad, fighting and
reconciling.<span> </span>About real life, in other
words, not some ideological prism.<span> </span>It
made me uneasy … then.<span> </span>Now it seems very
touching and real, except for the last line swearing it’s not too late (for
peace), the one ideological moment in the song (and the only line, except for
the Turn! Turn! Turn! refrain, not taken from the Bible). ...</span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">There was something gentle about Pete, like a kindly uncle,
as one of the obituaries put it.<span> </span>Oh, he
could call for freedom and so on, but mostly he seemed gentle and puckish, sly,
and friendly, reaching out to his audience, famous for getting them to sing
along.<span> </span>Let’s all be just one happy
family, and that’s a pleasant notion.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Not a radical at all, said one of my co-workers this
week.<span> </span>But he was in the Communist Party,
I said.<span> </span>Oh, they weren’t radical, he
said.<span> </span>And maybe they weren’t.<span> </span>Not in North America,
where Communism meant summer camps and singing Solidarity Forever.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">And he could be plaintive in his Flowers song.<span> </span>Where Have all the Flowers Gone?<span> </span>Where are the snows of yesteryear?</span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">But in Turn! Turn! Turn! he was beyond all of that, joining
with the author of Ecclesiastes in simultaneously celebrating and mourning the
human condition.<span> </span>To everything there is
a season.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Rest in peace, Pete.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WdCnMM9B6QQ">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WdCnMM9B6QQ</a></span></span>
</div>
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s1_vSbQf5vI">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s1_vSbQf5vI</a></span></span>
</div>
Sheldon Goldfarbhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06647831732341673859noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3619935120292783460.post-15091311796603542502013-12-27T22:02:00.000-08:002013-12-27T22:02:42.566-08:00Irritability and Its Discontents<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Sometimes I feel I’m too irritable.
I was thinking this at the airport this morning as I made my way through
Security and the passenger behind me let her tray slide down the rollers and
bang into mine. Or rather I was irritable
then; I only thought about my irritation (meta-irritation?) later, resolving to
try and be less irritable.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Instead of muttering to myself, I thought (at least I didn’t mutter
loudly enough to be heard), I could have said something light-hearted, like
“It’s just like bumper cars here.” Maybe
this would have provoked a fist fight.
But more likely a smile, even a conversation. But I was silent and irritable.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">I was less irritable on the plane itself, though the situation was much
more dire. Well, okay, not dire. But the plane was full, the carry-on luggage
that I foolishly kept with me at my seat so filled the space in front of me
that there was no room to stretch my legs, and my knee hurt.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">And yet I did not feel irritable – more philosophical, impelled not to
mutter but to draft this blog post. Is
it because there was nothing that could be done? Do I get irritable only at avoidable
irritations? An interesting notion, but
I am wary of such sweeping generalizations.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">In any case, the main thing is to deal with this irritability when it
does strike. It can’t be good for me; it
probably will lead to an ulcer or something – except we’ve learned now that
ulcers are caused by bacteria (or was it viruses?). Still, probably not good. Cheerful people who can say, “Oh, bumper
cars” when somebody bangs into them are surely in a better frame of mind, which
conceivably could affect one’s health.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">I’m fear I’m getting too utilitarian.
Irritability seems bad in itself, never mind its potentially bad effects
on one’s health. So what to do about it?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">I will ponder this …<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Some years ago I heard someone interviewed on the radio (back when I listened
to the radio) who advised against complaining.
Complaining is just a way of being irritable, I think, so it’s applicable
here. He advised wearing an elastic band
on one’s wrist and shifting it to the other wrist whenever you made a
complaint. The idea was to see if you
could go 21 days without complaining.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">I did this for a while. It even
seemed to work. It didn’t get me to the
stage of saying, “Oh, bumper cars,” but it did stop me muttering. The only problem was that at the time I was
in a relationship with someone who didn’t buy into this technique. Since she kept on complaining (even while
praising me for not: “You’re a rock,” she said), I eventually fell back into
complaining too.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">But perhaps I should have persevered.
Perhaps I should find myself an elastic band. Don’t see one on the plane, though.</span><o:p></o:p></div>
Sheldon Goldfarbhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06647831732341673859noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3619935120292783460.post-49982088544584156062013-12-08T14:47:00.004-08:002013-12-08T14:47:23.315-08:00Crying and The Little Drummer Boy<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Not many things make me cry.<span>
</span>Boys don’t cry after all.<span> </span>When I
was a toddler, of course, but you learn after a while …<span> </span>So in real life, generally no.<span> </span>But songs and movies – art can make me cry as
reality can’t.<span> </span>When the frozen people
come back to life in <i>Awakenings</i>,
having lost so many years to Parkinson’s, that made me cry.<span> </span>Interesting that it should be the awakening
that gets me going rather than the suffering that preceded it.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">It is with crying perhaps like revolutions.<span> </span>It’s at the moment of reform that people see
the waste and suffering that has gone before, and they revolt – or cry.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Are crying and revolution just too different sorts of
responses to the same thing?</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">But I am here to talk about The Little Drummer Boy.<span> </span>It’s associated with something that isn’t my
holiday, but it’s a nice holiday.<span> </span>I
don’t mind it.<span> </span>Not like Easter, full of
death and passion, transmuted in centuries past into revenge upon my
people.<span> </span>Which is odd in a way because
it’s done in the name of a member of my people.<span>
</span>But that’s another story.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Christmas is a friendly holiday, full of tidings of joy, and
very nice Christmas carols.<span> </span>Growing up
in a Christian country, even if you’re not a Christian, it’s impossible not to
hear the Christmas carols.<span> </span>In fact, I
even sang Christmas carols: in our school, our Protestant school, which is
where little Jewish children would go in my day (it’s a long story).<span> </span>We sang Hark the Herald Angels and Silent
Night and Little Town of Bethlehem.<span> </span>Very
nice songs.<span> </span>Not like the modern
commercial stuff.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">The Little Drummer Boy I don’t think was one of those we
sang in school.<span> </span>It’s not actually a
traditional carol; it’s from 1941.<span> </span>But
it has the air of a carol, though in fact it hardly seems to be about Christmas
at all.<span> </span>Yes, the baby Jesus is in it,
but almost as a secondary character.<span> </span>As
its title indicates, the song is really about The Little Drummer Boy, a poor
boy who seems to think of himself as inadequate, who thinks he has no gift to
offer to the newborn King.<span> </span>But he’s
urged to go along anyway; if he has no gift, then he can play his drum.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">I envisage the whole scene, the little drummer boy feeling
bad, saying, “I can’t go.<span> </span>I have nothing
to bring.”<span> </span>But hesitantly and more
confidently, after Mary nods at him and the animals help him out, he goes
on.<span> </span>Does what he can – and the baby
smiles at him.<span> </span>It’s all worthwhile, it
all works out, he offers the talent he has, and it’s accepted.<span> </span>It makes me cry.<span> </span>Cry for a world where people are accepted for
what they are, for what they have to offer, and not judged for their
shortcomings.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">My girl-friend says this is the message of Christianity, but
I don’t see it in a Christian guise.<span>
</span>It’s a story about being allowed to do what you do.<span> </span>Even if you can’t throw the touchdown pass or
run the big company, that’s all right.<span>
</span>Everyone has their own talent, and if only they can get a chance to use
it …</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Anyway, it’s a nice song, a haunting song, and it always
brings tears to my eyes.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Here’s a nice version of it:</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DT1fA59oH7Q">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DT1fA59oH7Q</a></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
Sheldon Goldfarbhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06647831732341673859noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3619935120292783460.post-11632464079249191712013-11-25T11:09:00.002-08:002013-11-25T11:09:35.316-08:00 The Book Thief and the Holocaust<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">One of the reviews I read about <i>The Book Thief</i> before I saw it said it just rehashed the standard
Holocaust ideas and thus was nothing new or special.<span> </span>I went to see it anyway, not because I
particularly enjoy Holocaust movies, but because the trailers portrayed a
sympathetic little girl heroine helping hide an endangered Jew in Nazi Germany
with the help of a sympathetic foster father (played by Geoffrey Rush, who does
a marvellous job).
</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">But this was not a typical Holocaust movie at all.<span> </span>The protection of the endangered Jew (Max)
was almost secondary.<span> </span>The treatment of
the Jews was in general secondary.<span> </span>The
sufferers here were the family and friends of the little girl (Liesel), all
Germans, mostly good Germans, ordinary Germans, not heroes, not primarily
devoted to saving Jews, but mostly worrying over their own poverty and then,
when the war begins, dodging bombs – Allied bombs, bombs dropped by those
fighting the Nazis.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">History is complex, of course.<span> </span>People fighting Nazis can do awful things of
their own – fire-bombing<span> </span>Dresden,
preparing to drop a nuclear bomb, mistreating German POW’s – and yet, and yet …</span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">I was brought up with the following story: the Germans
slaughtered 6 million of us.<span> </span>You must
never forget – or even forgive.<span> </span>Maybe my
children can forgive their children, the iconic Jewish-Canadian writer,
Mordecai Richler, once said, and even that seemed dubious.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">A few years ago I flew to continental Europe for the first
time, on a trip to Greece.<span> </span>The plane stopped in Frankfurt; we had hours
to kill; my girl-friend at the time went into Frankfurt
to see the sights.<span> </span>I pleaded a bad back
and stayed on board.<span> </span>I did have a bad
back, but also I felt qualms about truly setting foot on German soil.<span> </span>My girl-friend came back with tales of some
museum dedicated to Goethe or Schiller or the like, and I thought, I have
nothing against Goethe or Schiller, but still I stayed on the plane.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Today I have a different girl-friend who is of partial
German descent.<span> </span>The story she learned
was different.<span> </span>The slaughter was done by
the Nazis.<span> </span>Not the Germans as a whole.<span> </span>The Nazis.<span>
</span>The Nazis were horrible people, or did horrible things, but most Germans
were not Nazis.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
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<br /></div>
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</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><i>The Book Thief</i>
certainly expresses that view.<span> </span>There’s
an awful Adolf Hitler somewhere who you mustn’t say bad things about.<span> </span>Occasionally, some Nazi Party men show
up.<span> </span>At one point some nasty German
soldiers escort a party of Jews to God knows where.<span> </span>But for the most part these are ordinary
Germans just trying to lead their lives, and they even hide the Jewish Max and
nurse him back to health.<span> </span>Also, Liesel,
after a book burning (in which most of the village cheerfully joins in) goes
and rescues a book.<span> </span>And she becomes very
close to Max and declares she hates Hitler because he has taken her mother (a
Communist) and forced Max to flee.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
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<br /></div>
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">But it’s all strangely personal.<span> </span>There’s no sense of opposition to Nazi
policies against Jews, freedom, and democracy.<span>
</span>Quite the contrary.<span> </span>There’s one
chilling scene in which a choir of cherubic children sing a song celebrating
German freedom and attacking non-Germanic people and Jews and their corruption
of freedom.<span> </span>No one particularly
objects.<span> </span>It was unclear what people in
the movie audience thought.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">By the end of the film members of the movie audience were
crying for poor Liesel and her friends and family.<span> </span>I didn’t cry, except a bit, almost, when she
tried to kiss a dead friend back to life.<span>
</span>Death cannot be defeated that way, no matter how much you try – that was
sad.<span> </span>But in general my response was
flattened because about halfway through the movie I realized, This isn’t a
Holocaust movie, or even a movie about nasty Nazis.<span> </span>It’s just about ordinary Germans coping
during the war.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">I remember another movie along these lines, <i>Das Boot</i>, in which we follow a German
submarine crew and identify and sympathize with them even though they’re, well,
the enemy.<span> </span>But there was no mention of
the Holocaust in that film.<span> </span>In <i>The Book Thief </i>there’s an odd scene in
which Liesel smuggles a newspaper to Max, the Jew in hiding, who exclaims in
disbelief when he reads that Germany
is attacking Russia.<span> </span>“But aren’t we winning the war?” says Liesel.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">And I thought, Who is this “we”?<span> </span>Max just shrugs.<span> </span>Liesel might want her country to win, but
could Max want that?<span> </span>Can we?<span> </span>Sometimes you can put your larger beliefs
aside and just sympathize with individuals.<span>
</span>I wrote about that sort of sympathy, in me, for the terrorist leader in <i>Captain Phillips</i>, but this felt
different.<span> </span>At least for me.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">When the Holocaust got mentioned, but in such a secondary
way, it made me feel odd.<span> </span>It conjured up
powerful Us versus Them feelings, only to have those feelings absorbed into
more general sympathy for us all.<span> </span>We all
die, as Death the Narrator says.<span> </span>Which
is of course true.<span> </span>But some died in
concentration camps at the hands of others.<span>
</span>Is it all really the same?</span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">But those others who ran the concentration camps are not the
ones who are portrayed in this movie.<span>
</span>These are just Germans who go along, or sometimes don’t go along.<span> </span>But even when they don’t go along, when they
hide the threatened Jew or rescue a burning book, it’s because they like books
or feel a responsibility for this particular Jew.<span> </span>There’s no sense of opposition to book
burnings or singing songs against Jews.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Does that matter?<span> </span>I
don’t know.<span> </span>There were no doubt lots of
ordinary people just trying to get along in Nazi Germany, like at any other
time.<span> </span>Should we demand more of them than
of others in other times?<span> </span>Is it right to
hold a whole nation collectively responsible for the Holocaust?</span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Probably not.<span> </span>Isn’t
that what the Nazis themselves, and other persecutors of minorities, do?<span> </span>Hold whole groups responsible.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">I suppose.<span> </span>And yet if
I ever land in Frankfurt again, I’m still not
sure I’ll be able to get off the plane.</span></span></div>
Sheldon Goldfarbhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06647831732341673859noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3619935120292783460.post-74853308167731326332013-11-19T22:00:00.004-08:002013-11-19T22:00:42.319-08:00Thackeray Today<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Once upon a time there were just two authors: Dickens and
Thackeray.<span> </span>Well, maybe three.<span> </span>There was also Douglas Jerrold.<span> </span>The three form a triad, a noted critic of the
time once said, the time being mid-Victorian England, the critic David Masson.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Who on earth is Douglas Jerrold, I hear you say?<span> </span>Indeed.<span>
</span>For that matter who was David Masson?<span>
</span>Sigh.<span> </span>Where are the Jonas
Brothers of yesterday?</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Though I specialized in Victorian literature for my PhD, I
confess to never having read Douglas Jerrold and not really knowing much about
David Masson.<span> </span>I do know quite a lot
about William Makepeace Thackeray, but sometimes I fear he is on his way to
becoming the third Jonas brother.<span> </span>He is
certainly no longer ranked up there with Dickens, fighting it out at the top of
the tree, as he himself once put it.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Nowadays if I tell someone I specialized in Thackeray, the
common reaction is, Who?<span> </span>And I tend to
explain by saying, “The same time as Dickens, another Victorian novelist.”<span> </span>And they nod sagely, and I talk about the
work I did on Thackeray’s <i>Catherine</i>,
which we both know they’ll never read.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Maybe they’ll read <i>Vanity
Fair</i>.<span> </span>Or they will at least have
heard of it (though there may be some confusion with the magazine of that
name).<span> </span>Thackeray has become,
essentially, a one book author.<span> </span>And it’s
a very good book, full of insight into human foibles and with an intriguing,
fascinating, frustrating heroine (Becky Sharp), who over the years has sparked
much critical debate.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">I am not here to sell you on the merits of Thackeray’s other
work – well, except maybe <i>Catherine</i>.<span> </span>I’ve spent a lot of my life working on <i>Catherine</i>, producing an edition of it,
hoping to get that edition reissued in paperback (so far a not yet attained
goal), and just generally promoting it.<span>
</span>I even wrote a screenplay based on it (not that anyone was interested in
turning it into a movie).</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Why should we care about <i>Catherine?</i><span> </span>Well, I’m not sure we <i>should</i>.<span> </span>But I do like it; it
to me is a bit of a forerunner of <i>Vanity
Fair</i> – it’s his first novel (novella, some would say; “story,” its own
subtitle calls it), a decade before his masterpiece, and it shares some of its
characteristics: the wry commentary on human ways, the roguish heroine (anti-heroine?).<span> </span>For those not ready to tackle the 900 pages
of <i>Vanity Fair</i>, or most other
Victorian classics, it’s an easy introduction at 150 pages or so.<span> </span>Like <i>The
Hobbit </i>to <i>Lord of the Rings</i> (not
that I’ve ever read <i>The Hobbit</i> …
hmm).</span></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Part of the struggle with promoting <i>Catherine</i> is that Thackeray himself thought it wasn’t very good
(but what do authors know?).<span> </span>Too gory,
apparently (and it does have a nasty murder and a graphically described
execution at the end, lifted almost verbatim from the eighteenth-century sources
Thackeray was drawing on).<span> </span>Later editors
tended to cut out the gore, so many of the editions (including those online)
are expurgated.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Also he feared he had become too friendly to his heroine,
who really was supposed to be an anti-heroine.<span>
</span>Thackeray’s stated aim when he started out was to write a response to
the Newgate school of fiction of that time.<span>
</span>You may know the opening line of one of its exemplars: “It was a dark
and stormy night” (from Bulwer-Lytton’s <i>Paul
Clifford</i>).<span> </span>Thackeray thought
Bulwer-Lytton (whom he hated generally), along with Harrison Ainsworth (yes, I
know, another Jonas Brother) and even Dickens (for his Artful Dodger in <i>Oliver Twist</i>) were glorifying criminals.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">He would set that right, though; he’d find the nastiest
crime he could, out of the <i>Newgate
Calendar</i> of true life crimes, and write fiction based on that, to show what
criminals were like.<span> </span>But as he told his
mother at the end, he developed a “sneaking kindness” for Catherine, his
anti-heroine, based on the real-life husband-murderer, Catherine Hayes, from
1726.<span> </span>He turned her and her companions
into charming rogues rather than vicious killers – which is a good thing,
actually.<span> </span>I’d much rather read about
charming rogues than vicious killers.<span>
</span>But Thackeray thought he’d made a mess of things, and kept the work out
of his <i>Miscellanies</i>, the collection
of his works issued in his own lifetime.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">For a long time <i>Catherine</i>
languished in the pages of <i>Fraser’s
Magazine</i>, where it had appeared in serial installments, until after
Thackeray’s death it finally made it into one of the last volumes of his
collected works put out by Smith, Elder, his publishers at the end.<span> </span>It languished there too (in expurgated form,
as I have mentioned).<span> </span>It languishes
still.<span> </span>But I do think it’s worth a read,
though I agree that the gory plagiarized ending is rather a mess (and maybe
deserved to be expurgated: it’s there in all its glory in my edition, though).</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Perhaps it is a cautionary tale, and not in the way
Thackeray intended.<span> </span>The leading figures
of one age can vanish almost completely in the next (or the next after
that).<span> </span>Dickens alone remains, as he has
been from the start, at the top of the tree of Victorian novelists – maybe of
the tree of all novelists.<span> </span>And why
should that be?</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">I have no good answer, and perhaps am the wrong person to
ask.<span> </span>It would be a bit like asking fans
of some almost forgotten mystery writer why Sherlock Holmes is still at the top
of his tree.<span> </span>Dickens was in some ways
the mirror image of Thackeray.<span> </span>Nowadays,
as is the fashion, you can read biographical studies of Dickens revealing that
he wasn’t very nice to his children or his wife.<span> </span>In real life the man whose novels exuded
kindness and compassion really wasn’t so kind and compassionate, it seems.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Thackeray, on the other hand, was a writer whose works exude
cynicism and satire, mocking everyone and everything (most of the time, at
least, and especially in his early works), but in real life he was the generous
one, devoted to his daughters and his mad wife – though of course, as is the
style, you can find negative portrayals of him too in modern biography.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">And of course I oversimplify, but it’s almost as if you have
a certain amount of kindness and compassion, and it either goes into your works
or into your life.<span> </span>There’s not enough
for both.<span> </span>And does this mean we’d rather
read kind and compassionate literature (and then find out that their creator
didn’t live up to his fictional image) rather than indulge in the slings and
arrows of a satirist hurling Greek fire (I paraphrase Charlotte Brontë)?<span> </span>Even if the hurler of Greek fire turns out to
be a big teddy bear?</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">
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<br /></div>
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</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">(Thackeray was a big man, 6 foot 3; he sprouted in his youth
after an illness, and when asked if others were astonished to see how tall he
had become, answered, “I don’t know.<span> </span>My <i>coats</i> looked astonished.”<span> </span>Carlyle called him a “<i>big,</i> fierce, weeping, hungry man; not a strong one.”)</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">
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<br /></div>
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</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">There were other differences.<span> </span>Dickens came from the lower middle class;
Thackeray from the upper.<span> </span>Their milieus
were different; you don’t get lords and ladies in Dickens. <span> </span>Not that Thackeray wrote “silver fork novels”
(he satirized those, of course); he wrote as a sort of oppositional figure from
within the upper middle class, reflecting the point of view of someone excluded
from the best circles, as he felt he had been, in part because he’d lost his
fortune and had to “write for his life,” descending into journalism, costing
himself status.</span></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">But who can say why one writer lasts and another
doesn’t?<span> </span>Perhaps Dickens is simply
better than Thackeray?<span> </span>Thackeray would
sometimes say so, at least in public.<span>
</span>“There’s no writing against [that],” he said after reading the depiction
of the death of little Paul Dombey.<span> </span>But
this was when Thackeray’s own <i>Vanity Fair</i>
was just appearing and winning him vast acclaim.<span> </span>And aren’t there some who would prefer to
read clever satires about the aristocracy rather than gritty, tearful
depictions of the unfortunate?</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Or maybe not.<span> </span>Maybe
there’s something more serious and more timeless about gritty misfortune.<span> </span>Maybe Thackeray is too much of his age, and
Dickens somehow passes beyond it.<span> </span>And
yet Thackeray’s commentary about human foibles is not really just about Victorian
aristocrats; it lays bare human hypocrisy, selfishness, greed …<span> </span>But again, perhaps that is less appealing in
the long run than generous-minded support for the downtrodden, complete with
more or less happy endings.<span> </span>You don’t
get a happy ending in <i>Vanity Fair</i> or <i>Catherine</i>.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Oddly, though, when Thackeray begins to go in for happier
endings, in his later works, in his mellower later years after success had
eased the pain of exclusion, he ends up often with something much too syrupy or
just somehow odd.<span> </span>Who cares about Henry
Esmond finding happiness with the mother of the girl he thought he was in love
with?<span> </span>And isn’t it rather odd?<span> </span>Maybe Dickens had just the right touch for
that sort of thing, and Thackeray should have stuck to his satire.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Still, if you’re in the mood for satirical barbs (at you the
reader, among others) you can do worse than sit down with <i>Vanity Fair</i>.<span> </span>And if you want
a bite-sized introduction to Thackeray (and Victorian fiction generally) you
can have a go at <i>Catherine</i>.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
Sheldon Goldfarbhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06647831732341673859noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3619935120292783460.post-31370688963552014052013-11-10T18:50:00.000-08:002013-12-14T09:38:43.529-08:00Audience Stockholm Syndrome<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">So I went to see Captain Phillips last night, with Tom
Hanks, whom I quite like, and the movie’s quite good, and all that, maybe not
his best, like, say, Beethoven’s 8<sup>th</sup>.<span> </span>What I was most enjoying about it was the
strange bond that seemed to develop between his character and the character of
the pirate captain/kidnapper.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">“Irish,” the pirate called him, and they were clearly at
odds, but sort of in the way that lead characters are at odds at the beginning
of some buddy movie (the by-the-book cop and the rebel, that sort of thing),
and by the end they’re close.<span> </span>East is
East, and West is West, but they do meet …</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Or like in Catch Me If You Can, where the Hanks character in
effect bonds with Leonardo di Caprio, even though one is the cop and one is the
criminal.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">But okay in this case it’s a nefarious pirate; you shouldn’t
sympathize with him, I suppose, and if I did, then I suppose that’s the
Stockholm Syndrome at work.<span> </span>Or maybe the
film set things up that way, only at the end to … [Spoiler Alert] pull the plug
on the poor pirate.<span> </span>They should have
just sailed their separate ways, tipping their caps, but no …</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Maybe I’m just too suggestible or susceptible.<span> </span>I always take the side of whoever’s story I’m
reading.<span> </span>I remember reading The Johnny
Unitas Story as a kid and wanting Baltimore to
win that game, though when I put the book down I thought, I don’t cheer for Baltimore.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">It’s possible, of course, for an author to write from a
certain character’s point of view and make you distrust or even dislike that
character.<span> </span>It even became popular in
critical circles a few decades back to see this everywhere.<span> </span>The Unreliable Narrator was all the rage, and
there are certainly examples: the Duke in My Last Duchess and so forth.<span> </span>But really I think it’s a bit rare.<span> </span>If you’re with a character, then you’re with
a character.<span> </span>It’s hard to be against the
one you’re with: maybe that <i>is </i>the
Stockholm Syndrome in a nutshell.<span> </span>In
confined space with your captor, even if he is your captor, well, you’re close
to him, you identify with him, you become his Patty Hearst.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">So I liked the pirate leader in Captain Phillips and was sad
to see what happened to him and his buddies, even though of course piracy is
wrong, blah blah blah.<span> </span>The movie itself
seemed to me to go downhill at the end when deprived of the interesting
Hanks-Pirate Chief chemistry.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Just before the end there’s an interesting bonding scene
when, in explaining why he can’t just let Hanks go or take the small amount
being offered, the Pirate Chief (his name is Muse) says, “I’ve got
bosses.”<span> </span>To which Hanks replies, “We’ve
all got bosses.”<span> </span>“In America it’s
different,” says Muse.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">It’s touching, but then it is snatched away.<span> </span>Is there something especially touching about
connecting with an enemy?<span> </span>Maybe that’s
the appeal of the whole John Le Carre Tinker, Tailor series.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">In any case it all seems to connect to the notion that if
you can’t be with the one you love, you’ll love the one you’re with.<span> </span>Even if it’s your enemy.</span></span></div>
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<![endif]-->Sheldon Goldfarbhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06647831732341673859noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3619935120292783460.post-51931181077415750162013-11-03T15:04:00.004-08:002013-11-03T15:04:54.601-08:00On Being Lost<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">I was just getting into the train on the Canada Line, the
line I take all the time to get around town, taking my usual Sunday morning
route into east Vancouver,
when for some reason I felt far away.<span> </span>A
person talking on a cellphone caught my attention, and as I glanced over at
them, maybe it was the angle of observation, maybe they reminded me of
something – whatever the reason, I thought, This is like Chicago, or no, maybe
Washington, taking the train there, in a strange city unknown to me.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">When you know your route, your routine, there’s a certain
feeling that comes over you.<span>
</span>Familiarity?<span> </span>Something.<span> </span>It’s different from being in a strange city,
not being sure where you’re going.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">On my familiar route the last thing I need is the calling out
of stops and the intrusive announcements from the transit company.<span> </span>In a strange city, though, they can be a
lifeline.<span> </span>Even I suppose in your own
city if you are going somewhere different.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">I remember in Athens
once trying to get to the airport.<span> </span>I was
going in a hurry.<span> </span>I was under stress.<span> </span>I was going without the person who’d usually
guided me around, and I felt near to panic.<span>
</span>Not only was this a strange city to me, but I couldn’t even read the
language.<span> </span>Never mind the language, the
very alphabet.<span> </span>And the people didn’t
speak my language either.<span> </span>I was in
despair.<span> </span>“Airport,” I said helplessly,
hopelessly, or maybe hopefully.<span> </span>And
somebody did understand and pointed me in the right direction, and I got to the
airport after all, despite the foreignness of it all (not to mention my general
lack of a sense of direction).</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Such a bad sense of direction I have that when, the next
day, having decided not to flee the country after all, I tried to make my way
to my hotel, I decided to walk from the station – and walked and walked and
walked – in the direction I thought my hotel was in, only to find after half an
hour that I was back where I’d started, at the station.<span> </span>I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.<span> </span>Was it a Kafkaesque horror story or a
cartoon?<span> </span>But I took a cab and got to the
hotel.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">The night before, at the airport, deciding whether to stay
or leave, and stuck either way overnight, the airport began to become familiar
to me.<span> </span>I got used to the regular
announcements about not leaving my bags unattended.<span> </span>I found the McDonald’s and the Internet
café.<span> </span>I was beginning to settle into a
routine.<span> </span>It doesn’t take very long after
all, but until it happens you’re lost at sea – and even after you get your sea
legs and generally feel comfortable where you are, sometimes, inexplicably, you
can feel the horror of being lost.</span></span></div>
Sheldon Goldfarbhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06647831732341673859noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3619935120292783460.post-51303747096617518762013-10-17T17:29:00.005-07:002013-10-17T18:27:01.296-07:00Antiques, Capitalism, Irony, and Fitting In<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></span><br />
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</xml><![endif]--><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">I was watching the Antiques Roadshow program the other day,
and was struck by how monetized it was.<span>
</span>Everyone was wondering how much their knick-knack was worth – by which
they didn’t mean how pretty it was or historically significant or how much
pleasure it might give you to contemplate it in the quiet of your own
home.<span> </span>Why ask anyone else about that,
after all?
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">No, they wanted to know its money value – and there were
some astonishing values.<span> </span>A paperweight
worth $5,000, a sculpture worth 20 …<span> </span>I
couldn’t believe it.<span> </span>My girl-friend said
it just reflected the nature of our society.<span>
</span>Capitalism, yes, I get it – though it seems to me there was a time when
we cared less about what hockey players made and more about how many goals they
scored.<span> </span>And Shakespeare – do we care
whether he died rich or poor?<span> </span>Does it
matter?<span> </span>To whom?<span> </span>He wrote some wonderful plays.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">And I wonder about going to others for validation.<span> </span>Oh, please, Mr. Expert, tell me that this old
artifact of mine is precious.<span> </span>And the
experts were very impressive, I admit that; they knew their Louis Quatorze from
their Early American.<span> </span>But why do we need
such external validation?</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Human nature, I suppose.<span>
</span>We’re social animals.<span> </span>We want to
fit in.<span> </span>Or perhaps stand out.<span> </span>Stand out while fitting in, if at all
possible.<span> </span>If I like pictures of dogs
playing poker, though, I better keep it to myself, at least in the circles I
move in …</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Fashions change, of course.<span>
</span>I was noticing some self-consciously clever ad in the washroom yesterday
– the very fact that there are ads in washrooms, let alone self-consciously
clever ones, tells you something about the world we live in, a capitalist
society gone postmodern perhaps.<span> </span>But at
the height of capitalism who would have advertised in washrooms?<span> </span>Has our decorum vanished?<span> </span>Is nothing sacred?<span> </span><span> </span>The
answer to that is probably no; hence the self-conscious cleverness.<span> </span>It is the style of the time.<span> </span>Irony.<span>
</span>As if we have all become Oscar Wilde.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Except we haven’t.<span>
</span>That self-consciously clever washroom ad didn’t actually work; it wasn’t
funny (at least not to me); it didn’t even convey a clear message.<span> </span>Once upon a time if you sounded like Oscar
Wilde, you were Oscar Wilde – a lone genius.<span>
</span>But there aren’t very many geniuses – and if irony is simply the
fashion, you’ll get a lot of people trying to be clever and witty who just
aren’t.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">In essence this is no different from the 1950’s.<span> </span>Back then the fashion was for
earnestness.<span> </span>Ties and suits.<span> </span>Presumably, there were geniuses at that too,
but the vast majority were just conforming, getting along, trying to fit
in.<span> </span>Now to fit in you’re supposed to be
witty and clever, but it doesn’t really mean anything; it’s no sign of genius.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">The other day when I discovered something new (and what a
joy that is), discovered that in the Muslim tradition it was Ishmael not Isaac
whom Abraham almost sacrificed, someone commented, Who cares about these fairy
tales?<span> </span>But I care.<span> </span>I’m not sure why.<span> </span>I care about the stories people tell, about
what they value.<span> </span>Is it the look of a
paperweight or the price it commands?<span> </span>Of
course, I suppose it could be both; people can care about money and art.<span> </span>I suppose.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">So today we care about making money, or having it, and being
cleverly ironic.<span> </span>Post-modern post-capitalism.<span> </span>Or something.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
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<![endif]-->Sheldon Goldfarbhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06647831732341673859noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3619935120292783460.post-58227225523696785632013-10-08T23:38:00.000-07:002013-10-09T08:45:40.917-07:00Snapping Back<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">I’ve been watching the McLaughlin Group for many years, at
least as far back as 1989, that year of tremendous upheaval, with the end of Soviet rule in Eastern Europe and the student uprising in Tiananmen Square.
Politics was interesting then, or I was more interested in politics, and
McLaughlin’s Group was a lively bunch, interrupting each other, shouting out
their views. It was both educational and
entertaining.
</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
</span></span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Sometimes the interrupting would get a bit much, though;
sometimes you couldn’t even hear what people were saying; and sometimes,
especially in recent years, the panelists themselves would get frustrated. The most frustrated of them all in recent
years is Eleanor Clift. Or I shouldn’t
really say frustrated, perhaps rather faux frustrated. It’s the others who are truly frustrated, for
Eleanor keeps saying, “Let me finish, let me finish,” as if the others are
bullying her, when of course the truth is the other way around.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
</span></span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
</span></span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Maybe it’s because for a long while she was the only woman
on the panel and had to fight against the dominant males, but in fact the men
tend to be rather gentlemanly. They
almost always back down when Eleanor complains, and when she herself does what
she complains of, they usually say nothing – at least until this week.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
</span></span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
</span></span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">For Eleanor perpetually interrupts others and normally they
say nothing. But let someone interrupt
her, and, Wow, she has at them. Until
this week. Mort Zuckerman, one of the
courtly gentlemen on the panel, who actually tends to be on Eleanor’s side, on
the Democrats’ side, against the neo- and paleo- conservatives – Mort was
criticizing the Democrats for not reaching out to the Republicans in this time
of deadlock. This raised Eleanor’s ire,
for she is nothing if not pro-Democrat, pro-Obama, pro-party line. She interrupted him, rudely, as she often
does, but this time Mort did not give way.
He said, “Wait a minute!” Loudly.
Angrily.
And finished his thought while Eleanor laughed nervously.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
</span></span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
</span></span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">The camera pulled away as if embarrassed. It was as if some unwritten rule had been
broken: don’t shout at the lady. Later
when Eleanor interrupted him again, Mort much more mildly said, “Excuse me a
second.” First a minute, then just a
second. First a blast from the bellows,
like a bear, then the polite gentleman again.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
</span></span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
</span></span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">But that’s what happens when you give way to bullies over
and over. Eventually one day you snap
and become a bear and people are astonished.
It will be interesting to see if the dynamics of the show change as a
result. Will Eleanor interrupt as
much? Will she still complain if others
interrupt her? Will Mort or others
complain about Eleanor? Will everything
just go back to the way it was? Will the
moderator finally step in and moderate, as he did a little more than usual
after Mort’s outburst?</span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
</span></span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
</span></span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Tune in next week and see.</span></span></div>
Sheldon Goldfarbhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06647831732341673859noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3619935120292783460.post-27484064046883775412013-08-07T20:48:00.000-07:002013-08-07T20:48:32.368-07:00Hats Falling Down<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">I heard a three-year-old today complain to his mother that
his hat had falled down.<span> </span>It was an
epiphany.<span> </span>Now I understand what drives
the usage mavens and letter-writers to say things like “25 words or fewer.”</span></span><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">I once read an article on how children learn language.<span> </span>First they copy what they hear and so say
things like, “My hat fell down.”</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Then they learn RULES.<span>
</span>They learn that the past tense is formed by adding “-ed.”<span> </span>Simple.<span> </span>Except English is not simple.<span> </span>English is full of exceptions, and the
so-called rules don’t begin to encompass it.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">One year in school they taught us “<i>i</i> before <i>e</i> except after <i>c</i>,” but that rule is violated all the
time, which made me scratch my head because in those days I liked to follow
rules, and yet I knew how to spell “weigh” and “neighbour.”</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">A friend of mine one time recited an extended version of the
rule, which said, “<i>i </i>before <i>e</i> except after <i>c</i>, or when sounded like <i>a</i>,
as in neighbour and sleigh.”</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">But that still doesn’t account for “weird” and “seize” and I
believe a lot of others.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Nowadays the language experts and those they have cowed into
submission go around saying that you must use “fewer” with all countable
nouns.<span> </span>So you have to say “fewer books”
(sounds natural), “fewer than three books” (sounds barely okay, but a bit
prissy), “three books or fewer” (who would say that if they didn’t think they
were supposed to?), and “one fewer book” (oh God no, save us).</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">They have forgotten that the English language is full of
exceptions.<span> </span>The rule, or really just a
rule of thumb, was to use “fewer” with countable nouns EXCEPT when mentioning a
specific number.<span> </span>So standard English
would be “less than three books,” “three books or less,” and of course “one
less book.”</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Now that I’ve read <i>Moby
Dick</i> I have one less book to read on my list of classics.<span> </span>But sigh … the three-year-olds have taken
over, and they want us to read one fewer book.<span>
</span>Soon they will want us to say we falled down or runned away.<span> </span>After all, the rule says to use “-ed” to form
the past tense.<span> </span>Every three-year-old
knows that.<span> </span>Sigh.<br />
</span></span><br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
</div>
Sheldon Goldfarbhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06647831732341673859noreply@blogger.com0