cognitive dissident

Lewis Lapham opens the latest issue of his Quarterly (Ways of Learning) with one of my favorite quotes:

"The mind is not a vessel to be filled by a fire to be kindled." (Plutarch)

This rather less poetic translation was the closest I could find:

"The correct analogy for the mind is not a vessel that needs filling, but wood that needs igniting -- no more -- and then it motivates one towards originality and instills the desire for truth." ("On Listening," from Robin Waterfield's 1992 translation in Plutarch: Essays, p. 50)

As always, I come away from each issue of LQ with a list of essays and books that I either haven't yet read or am inspired to re-read; this issue is no exception. My list this time includes Frederick Douglass (Life and Times of Frederick Douglass), Helen Keller (The Story of My Life), and Seneca (Letter LXXXVIII, Letters from a Stoic, pp. 151-4)

So many books...

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Marsalis, Wynton. Moving to Higher Ground: How Jazz Can Change Your Life (New York: Random House, 2008)

I've read each of Wynton Marsalis' previous books, and have been looking forward to Moving to Higher Ground since it was announced several years ago; it was not a disappointment. Marsalis begins with this declaration of purpose, as bold a statement as any:

In this book I hope to deliver the positive message of America's greatest music: how great musicians demonstrate a mutual respect and trust on the bandstand that can alter your outlook on the world and enrich every aspect of your life--from individual creativity and personal relationships to the way you conduct business and understand what it means to be a global citizen in the most modern sense. [...] I'd like to demystify listening to jazz and show you how the underlying ideas of this music can change your life. (p. xv, Introduction)

Chapter six, Lessons from the Masters, was the highlight of the book for me. Marsalis discusses thirteen of jazz's most accomplished musicians, and relates some tales of their attitudes and artistry that are liberally leavened with humor and humility. This one, about Marsalis' first encounter with fellow trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie, is revealing:

I first met Dizzy when I was about fifteen years old at a club called Rosie's on Tchoupitoulas Street in New Orleans. My dad said, "This is my son. He plays trumpet." Dizzy was standing near the dressing room doorway. He handed me his horn and said, "Play me something, man." He had a real small mouthpiece. I wasn't used to playing that--poooot. He didn't know what to say with my daddy standing there, so he said, "Yeaaah"--really drawn out, as I the length of it could help ease the awkwardness of the moment. And then he leaned down close to me and said, "Practice, motherfucker." (p. 136)

Far from being discouraged by such admonishment, Marsalis emphasizes the deep compassion in jazz musicians' interactions with each other:

For all of that hard, profane talk, there was an unusual type of gentleness in the way they treated one another. Always a hug upon greeting and--from even the most venerated musicians--sometimes a kiss on the cheek. A natural ease with those teetering on the edge of sanity. A way of admonishing but not alienating those who might have drug problems. Always the feeling that things in our country, in our culture, in our souls, in the world, would get better. And beyond that, the feeling that this mysterious music would someday help people see how things fit together: segregation and integration, men and women, the political process, even the stock market. (p. 5)

Whatever one's opinion of Marsalis' neoclassicism or his seemingly reactionary tendencies--he loathes much modern urban music--his vantage point gives him much to say about jazz. In Moving to Higher Ground he says it powerfully, and well. If I had but a single passage to summarize this book, I would choose this one:

It [jazz] is an endless road of discovery leading to more maturity and acceptance of personal responsibility, a greater respect for cultures around the world, an invigorating playfulness, an excitement about change, and an appetite for the unpredictable. It gives you a historical perspective, a spiritual acceptance of necessary opposites, an undying optimism born of the blues--and a pile of good listening. (pp. 10-11)

links:
Amazon's interview with Marsalis is here

Chapter one is online here

[typo fixed]

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Frank, Anne. The Diary of a Young Girl: The Definitive Edition (New York: Doubleday, 1995)

In honor of Banned Books Week this year (9/27-10/4), I've read Anne Frank's Diary of a Young Girl. (Last year, I read a selection of Beat books; this year, I'm so far behind on my reading that I only had time for a single volume.)

If there truly are people who need no introduction, then Anne Frank is one of them. The words of her diary have outlived her by decades, and I suspect will do so for centuries--if not millennia--to come. After tackling other Holocaust books over the past few years, I felt it was finally time to read Anne Frank's book in full. I settled on the Definitive Edition, which is nearly a third longer than the 1947 original, and restores passages that Anne's father Otto--the only Annex resident to survive the Holocaust--edited out as unflattering or excessively personal.

It seems voyeuristic at times to become so engrossed in the innermost thoughts of a teenage girl who suffered such a gruesome fate in the months following her family's extradition to the Nazi death camps, but the value of Ms Frank's diary is inestimable. She began her diary (which she called "Kitty) on 12 June 1942, moved to the Annex on 5 July 1942, and was captured by the Nazis over two years later on 4 August 1944. One of her first entries begins:

Writing in a diary is a really strange experience for someone like me. Not only because I've never written anything before, but also because it seems to me that later on neither I nor anyone else will be interested in the musings of a thirteen-year-old schoolgirl. (p. 6, 20 June 1942)

One can scarcely see a trace of trepidation in her diary, which is written in a confident and assured tone despite both her age and the horrific situation in which she found herself. It is humbling to read of her continual devotion to learning

I must do my schoolwork to keep from being ignorant, to get on in life, to become a journalist, because that's what I want! I know can write. A few of my stories are good, my descriptions of the Secret Annex are humorous, much of my diary is vivid and alive, but...it remains to be seen whether I really have talent. (p. 250, 5 April 1944)

You've known for a long time that my greatest wish is to be a journalist, and later on, a famous writer. We'll have to wait and see if these grand illusions (or delusions!) will ever come true, but up to now I've had no lack of topics. In any case, after the war I'd like to publish a book called The Secret Annex. It remains to be seen whether I'll succeed, but my diary can serve as the basis. (pp. 295-6, 11 May 1944)

despite the knowledge of the fate that hung oppressively over their heads:

Today I have nothing but dismal and depressing news to report. Our many Jewish friends and acquaintances are being taken away in droves. The Gestapo is treating them very roughly and transporting them in cattle cars to Westerbork, the big camp in Drenthe to which they're sending all the Jews. [...] If it's that bad in Holland, what must it be like in those faraway and uncivilized places where the Germans are sending them? We assume that most of them are being murdered. The English radio says they're being gassed. Perhaps that's the quickest way to die. (p. 54, 9 October 1942)

After considering all of her words--haunting and harrowing by turns--I keep coming back to this observation:

It's a wonder I haven't abandoned all my ideals, they seem so absurd and impractical. Yet I cling to them because I still believe, in spite of everything, that people are truly good at heart. (p. 333, 15 July 1944)

Youth can sometimes express the wisdom of the ages.

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Bernstein, Leonard. The Joy of Music (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1959)

I had expected, based on the title, that Leonard Bernstein's 1959 classic The Joy of Music would discuss some confluence of, well, joy and music. There's plenty of music in this book, but surprisingly little joy. Bernstein, well-known for his ecstatic exuberance on the podium, should have had many insights to share on the subject of joyous music-making, but the book delivers something else entirely.

Ever the teacher, Bernstein begins this book with a selection of Socratic-style dialogues to open the reader's mind about music. The second (much larger) section consists of seven television scripts, which will be rough going for non-musicians due to the number of musical examples provided. (Readers with either strong sight-reading skills or access to the works being discussed will fare much better, of course.)

The second of these scripts, discussing jazz, suffers less than the others by virtue of having an audio recording available. Although Bernstein's narration on this disc is often dated and somewhat stilted, listening to his words is still preferable to reading them--at least in the examples printed here.

The Joy of Music is a book worth reading--especially for Bernstein fans--but go into it with the right expectations to avoid disappointment.

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Alex (The Rest Is Noise) Ross has been awarded a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship, commonly known as a "genius" grant (h/t: Jason Gross of PopMatters). Fishbowl NY has a brief Q&A with Ross, where he says:

When I get around to writing my next big book, this award will allow me to take some time off here and there, travel to do research, and otherwise explore the subject in depth. I wrote my last book in coffeeshops between assignments, in the middle of the night when other work was done, and whenever else I could squeeze in the time. The MacArthur will give my a lot more breathing room. I would also like to use the award to build up my website and pursue related multimedia projects. And I'm hoping to launch some home improvements, so I no longer have hundreds of books and CDs piled on the floor or in closets. Basically, I am hoping for less chaos and more time to think.

Ross is planning to begin that new book in the Spring...I can't wait!

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Overblown stories of Palin's book-banning desires are circulating, and it's time to set the record straight:

Sarah Palin never officially ordered that any books be removed from libraries, although she did fire a librarian who was not sufficiently enthusiastic about Palin's "hypothetical" censorship questions. (The librarian was reinstated after public outcry proved too embarrassing for Palin.)

An interesting incident is revealed in this NYT article about Palin's penchant for secrecy and rampant cronyism in office:

For years, social conservatives had pressed the library director to remove books they considered immoral.

"People would bring books back censored," recalled former Mayor John Stein, Ms. Palin's predecessor. "Pages would get marked up or torn out."

Witnesses and contemporary news accounts say Ms. Palin asked the librarian about removing books from the shelves. The McCain-Palin presidential campaign says Ms. Palin never advocated censorship.

But in 1995, Ms. Palin, then a city councilwoman, told colleagues that she had noticed the book "Daddy's Roommate" on the shelves and that it did not belong there, according to Ms. Chase [Palin's campaign manager] and Mr. Stein. Ms. Chase read the book, which helps children understand homosexuality, and said it was inoffensive; she suggested that Ms. Palin read it.

"Sarah said she didn't need to read that stuff," Ms. Chase said. "It was disturbing that someone would be willing to remove a book from the library and she didn't even read it."

Palin's attitude is all-too-typical of the Right's animus toward books: learning is scorned, ignorance is preferred to curiosity, and dogma is exalted over knowledge.

Look, I know we liberals badly want to win this election, but let's not start acting like Republicans by circulating bogus emails. We don't need to lie to win, because the truth is more damaging to McCain and Palin than anything else.

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Hamilton, Edith. The Greek Way (New York: WW Norton, 1964)

First published in 1930 and revised in 1943, Edith Hamilton's The Greek Way is a classic of its genre. In just over 200 pages, she covers Pindar, Aristophanes, Herodotus, Thucydides, Xenophon, Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides in a most engaging fashion. Hamilton's comparisons of Aristophanes to Gilbert & Sullivan and Aeschylus to Shakespeare are thought-provoking, and her comparison of the three versions of Electra (Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides) made me want to delve right into the original texts.

Cahill, Thomas. Sailing the Wine-Dark Sea: Why the Greeks Matter (New York: Doubleday, 2003)

Somewhat shallower than Hamilton's The Greek Way--but significantly broader--is Thomas Cahill's Sailing the Wine-Dark Sea, which covers epic poetry (Homer's Iliad and Odyssey), lyric poetry (Sappho's fragments), Solon and the origins of Athenian democracy, the pre-Socratic philosophers, Plato's Symposium and Republic, and Pericles' entire funeral oration. Cahill's ten-page section on "Notes and Sources" delves--briefly, but very well--into the translations he used and the references upon which he relied. His application of ancient Greek wisdom to contemporary problems resonated strongly, particularly this example:

He [Pisistratus] made a sensational return in a golden chariot accompanied by an extraordinarily tall and beautiful young woman dressed in full battle armor, who he announced was the goddess Athena come to restore order to her city. Simple people knelt along Pisistratus's parade, raised their arms, and gave thanks in the streets. Though only the most credulous members of the Assembly could be counted on to swallow such nonsense, there were, as there often are, quite enough of them to ensure initial political victory to an unscrupulous liar who piously invoked the powers of heaven. Only later, when the damage is done, do such dodos of democracy regret allowing themselves to be so easily taken in. (pp. 112-3)

Bertman, Stephen. The Eight Pillars of Greek Wisdom: What You Can Learn from Classical Myth and History (New York: Barnes & Noble, 2007)

In The Eight Pillars of Greek Wisdom, Stephen Bertman also illustrates the eternal applicability of Greek thought, relying mainly on mythology to illuminate the following principles:

Humanism: "Be proud of your human abilities and believe in your capacity to achieve great things."
The Pursuit of Excellence: "Try to be more today than you were yesterday, more tomorrow than you were today."
The Practice of Moderation: "Beware of going to extremes, because in them lies danger."
Self-Knowledge: "Identify and understand your weaknesses and strengths."
Rationalism: "Search for the truth by using the power of your mind."
Restless Curiosity: "Seek to know what things really are, not merely what they seem to be."
The Love of Freedom: "Only if we are free can we find fulfillment."
Individualism: "Take pride in who you are as a unique individual." (pp. 7-8)

Bertram spends the most time on his third chapter, Moderation, weaving in many of the examples that enliven his book. (This chapter is, in fact, so good that it makes several of the others--especially the first two--seem rushed and perfunctory by comparison.) His book concludes with a primer on the Greek-to-Roman transition, along with other nearby myths from the story of Gilgamesh to the Egyptian traditions.

Reading three books that largely tread the same terrain can be an exercise in repetition, but the overlap between Hamilton, Cahill, and Bertram is surprisingly slight. One example is this praise for not just the creators of ancient Greek culture, but also its audience; here are two examples:

There is no other proof so convincing of the general level of intelligence and cultivated understanding in Athens as the fact that Sophocles was the popular playwright. But however great and sad the difference between the taste of the theatre public then and now, in one respect they are the same: general popularity always means warmth of human sympathy. (The Greek Way, p. 161)

It is a testament to the intellectual level of the ancient Athenians that these plays were attended not only by an elite coterie of theater-goers, but also by a city-wide public that packed the seats of Dionysus's theater at festival time. (The Eight Pillars of Greek Wisdom, p. 32)

Under capitalism, we get the culture we deserve--as determined by the expenditure of our dollars in the marketplace. That axiom teaches a somewhat painful truth about our values and ourselves, but it is for precisely that reason that it must not be ignored.

Reading these three volumes has increased my book-lust for Penguin's Complete Greeks and Romans collection (102 volumes, $800), although my disposable income and free time are not keeping pace. With an ample supply of the latter two, I would enroll in a "Great Books" program (such as the one at St John's College, with their swoon-inducing reading list) quickly enough to make your head spin, but--barring any miracles--I'll just have to muddle along a little bit at a time.

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Vonnegut, Kurt. Cat's Cradle (New York: Dell, 1998)

Vonnegut's novel Cat's Cradle couldn't have been a better inaugural choice for the Atheist Nexus monthly book club. His science-fiction concept of ice-nine (a configuration of water molecules that is solid at room temperature) engages the imagination, but it's the religion of Bokononism that makes this book a classic. Indeed, Vonnegut's riffs on Bokonon and his religious writings make me wonder why I took so long to finally read Cat's Cradle.

Vonnegut deftly sets up the ice-nine threat in the first 50 pages, and then gradually adds layer upon layer of intrigue to the situation until < spoiler alert > catastrophe strikes in the last 50 pages. < end spoiler > (Unfortunately, I can't excerpt the narrator's religious asides in a way that would do Vonnegut's literary craft any sort of justice.) As the narrative takes its course, Vonnegut makes observations about war, religion, and humanity's other lunacies are as trenchant as ever. Here's his take on military pomp and pageantry:

"Perhaps, when we remember wars, we should take off our clothes and paint ourselves blue and go on all fours all day long and grunt like pigs. That would surely be more appropriate than noble oratory and shows of flags and well-oiled guns." (p. 254)

This is often a humorous book--not laugh-out-loud funny, but spiced with Vonnegutian touches: the black humor that suffuses its pages and animates its characters is his instantly recognizable style. Vonnegut skewers human pretentiousness with a caustic delight; since his passing last year, this book is a reminder of how unique his voice was.

Cat's Cradle is often mentioned as the Vonnegut novel to read after Slaughterhouse-Five; now I'm wondering which one to read next. Any suggestions?

links:
Wikipedia article on Cat's Cradle
The Books of Bokonon

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Church, Forrest. Lifecraft: The Art of Meaning in the Everyday (Boston: Beacon Press, 2000)

Church, Forrest. Love & Death: My Journey through the Valley of the Shadow (Boston: Beacon Press, 2008)

Historian and minister Forrest Church is the author of many religious/political books: God and Other Famous Liberals, The Jefferson Bible, and The Separation of Church & State. Drawing on his ministerial experience, Church has also written several other books on the big issues of life, love, and death; I am here examining Lifecraft and Love & Death. Like the late Randy Pausch (who was also a Unitarian), Forrest Church assembled the latter book after being diagnosed with terminal cancer; unlike Pausch, Church is happily still with us.

I use the word "assembled" rather than "written" as Love & Death is largely a collection of sermons and other reminiscences that discuss--not surprisingly--the subject of death and how it informs the ways we live our lives. Some of the stories he tells in Love & Death overlap with Lifecraft, but that is to be expected; I read them together because they cover similar terrain, and because Church tells his stories well.

Not surprisingly for a Unitarian, Church's theology is a liberal one; also not surprisingly for a (lapsed) Unitarian, I found myself largely in agreement with him except when his frequent mentions of god distracted from rather than enhanced his message. As Church wrote in Lifecraft, "You cannot expect to pick up a book by a preacher that doesn't have at least a little bit of preaching in it." (p. 92) His harmoniously common-sense stances only veered into jarring dissonance on rare occasion, as in this passage:

At their dying moment, no one wishes that they had spent more time in the office, made more money, read more books, or become a better squash player. (Lifecraft, p. 117)

As someone who has a to-be-read list exceeding 4000 volumes--which is continually growing--I will doubtlessly prove unable to read them all in my remaining years. My regret over those losses will be mitigated by other (greater) joys related to family and friends, but the regret will likely exist nonetheless. (I don't care for squash, but I may well wish I had become a better racquetball player.)

Of everything Church wrote in these two books, this passage was perhaps the most off-key:

If your neighbor disagrees with your personal theology, short of changing your mind--a prospect that may not delight you--you have only four options. You can convert, destroy, ignore, or respect her. Fundamentalists of the right usually attempt conversion, but sometimes, as we know firsthand from recent experience, they chose to destroy in God's name. Fundamentalists of the left tend to ignore such disagreements as irrelevant, but they, too, may choose destruction. One need witness only the gulags and crematoria to recognize that religious zealots alone have not cornered the market on muting the exercise of religious and political freedom by resorting to mass murder. (Love & Death, p. 81)

Church's mention of "crematoria"--clearly a reference to the (Christian) Nazi regime--turns this passage from mildly bothersome to severely disappointing. He should have known better than to ignore the Christian roots of Nazi anti-Semitism.

Also, as someone who overcame a drinking problem, Church has surely heard the term "dry drunk," which is an alcoholic who has stopped drinking but not yet made the other behavioral changes necessary for a full recovery. Giving up alcohol is necessary but not sufficient for recovery, and I would use this analogy for the Soviet Union's tyranny: a "dry drunk" partial recovery from Czarist totalitarianism. They had discarded the religious trappings, but the blind submission and other aspects of the authoritarian mindset were not purged. As their horrific experience demonstrates, secularism is a necessary precondition for a free society, but it is clearly not a sufficient one.

When writing later about William Blake's angelic visions, Church asks,

Does that mean angels really exist? Who knows. It is impossible to prove the existence of angels without leaving their realm. Like God, angels are beyond proof. Once we start arguing about whether or not angels exist, we have already missed the point. (Love & Death, p. 129)

The point is this: since the existence of angels--like gods--cannot be proven, it is not nearly as pointless to argue about them as it is to believe in them. Aren't there enough real things to argue about without inventing other bones of contention?

Depending on your tolerance for god gibberish and other religious fluff, you may get less out of Church's books than I did, but I can still recommend them as aids toward considering some deep questions:

The answers we arrive at may not be religious answers, but the questions death forces us to ask are, at heart, religious questions: Where did I come from? Who am I? Where am I going? What is life's purpose? What does this all signify? (Love & Death, p. x)

Those are philosophical questions--not merely religious ones, as Church claims--but that's an argument for another time. Here's to hoping that he's around to write a sequel...

< digression >

When Church went into his riff on the movie Titanic, I couldn't help but remember these two scenes, (which I have mentioned before) that take place after the ship's musicians had been assembled to soothe the passengers' savage breasts [typos fixed]:

The band finishes the waltz. Wallace Hartley looks at the orchestra members.

HARTLEY

Right, that's it then.

They leave him, walking forward along the deck. Hartley puts his violin to his chin and bows the first notes of "Nearer My God to Thee". One by one the band members turn, hearing the lonely melody.

Without a word they walk back and take their places. They join in with Hartley, filling out the sound so that it reaches all over the ship on this still night. The vocalist begins: "If in my dreams I be, nearer my God to thee..."

[...]

WALLACE HARTLEY sees the water rolling rapidly up the deck toward them. He holds the last note of the hymn in a sustain, and then lowers his violin.

HARTLEY

Gentlemen, it has been a privilege playing with you tonight.

The rest of Titanic was a overwrought mess, but that episode spoke to me in ways that the rest of the film did not: about the power of art even--or especially--in the face of death.

< /digression >

links:
Forrest Church
William Congreve

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Carlin, John, et al. Masters of American Comics (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2005)

Masters of American Comics is the catalog of an exhibition (from UCLA's Hammer Museum, LA's Museum of Contemporary Art, Milwaukee Art Museum, The Jewish Museum, and The Newark Museum), and it sits quite nicely alongside other overviews of the field such as the three Smithsonian volumes (The Smithsonian Collection of Newspaper Comics, A Smithsonian Book of Comic-Book Comics, and The New Smithsonian Book of Comic Book Stories) and the recent anthology from Ivan Brunetti.

The master artists selected for this book are:

• Winsor McCay (Little Nemo)
• Lyonel Feininger (Kin-der-Kids)
• George Herriman (Krazy Kat)
• E.C. Segar (Popeye)
• Frank King (Walt and Skeezix)
• Chester Gould (Dick Tracy)
• Milton Caniff (Terry and the Pirates, Steve Canyon)
• Charles Schulz (Peanuts)
• Will Eisner (The Spirit)
• Jack Kirby (everything)
• Harvey Kurtzman (Mad)
• Robert Crumb (Zap, Mr. Natural, Fritz the Cat)
• Art Spiegelman (Raw, Maus)
• Gary Panter (Jimbo)
• Chris Ware (Acme Novelty Library, Jimmy Corrigan)

The only choice I question is the inclusion of Gary Panter. While I don't wish to slight either Panter or his art, I can think of many artists--Cliff Sterrett, Burne Hogarth, Hal Foster, Carl Barks, Walt Kelly, Alex Toth, Steve Ditko, Jim Steranko, Neal Adams, Barry Windsor-Smith, Vaughn Bodē, Craig Russell (my personal favorite), Dave Sim, Frank Miller, or Bill Watterson--who are far more deserving of the title "master." (In fact, those are fifteen masters whose work could easily fill a sequel to this book.) The Atlas Comics list of "The Top 100 Artists of American Comic Books"--which omits foreign artists, underground artists, and comic strip artists--gives an idea of the breadth yet to be covered by future exhibitions and their catalogs. (Alex Raymond, Al Capp, Jack Cole, CC Beck, Wally Wood, Gil Kane, Joe Kubert, Garry Trudeau, Michael Gilbert, Bill Sienkiewicz, Mike Mignola, Gilbert and Jaime Hernandez, Joe Sacco, and Adrian Tomine would be good choices for a third volume...)

The first half of the book is devoted to John Carlin's essay covering all fifteen artists; the second half consists of essays by other writers covering each artist in turn. The entire volume is well-illustrated throughout, with selections ranging from preliminary sketches to finished art to the published works. Some of the Little Nemo strips still seem cramped at full-page size--slightly more than 9"x12"--and would have benefited from being printed on fold-out pages; McCay's artwork is so detailed that anything less than tabloid size is an unfortunate compromise.

This 328-page large-format hardcover book was $48 when it first hit bookstores three years ago, but can now be found in remainder bins for $10. If you're at all interested in graphic fiction, go out and pick up a copy right now! I might not recommend this book for a comics neophyte, but it's a great coffee-table book that could start some conversations. Regardless of the artistic sensibilities of your house-guests, there should be something in here to catch an eye and spark a thought. This image from Art Spiegelman is one of many such potential conversation-starters:

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Ross, Alex. The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007)

Alex Ross' The Rest Is Noise seemed to be a good choice to fill in the gaps from the Aaron Copland and Julius Jacobson books I've read recently; Ross delivered a stellar book that exceeds the praise it has received so far. Geoff Dyer's NYT review called The Rest Is Noise "a work of immense scope and ambition" and "a great achievement." David Schiff's Nation review called the book "engaging" and asked "Who would have thought that a 600-page history of music that few people love could be such a page turner?" Joseph Kerman's TNR review praises Ross' New Yorker pieces, says that he "writes very well about classical music," and notes:

That he never shies away from technical language gives him cred (as he might say) with his musician readers and bothers not at all the non-musicians, who seem happy to skim over the C-sharps and the minor triads rooted a tritone apart, knowing these will always lead to something interesting and even breathtaking.

For Ross is one of very few music critics who somehow create the illusion that you grasp the music they write about even if you have not heard it. This a rare gift.

Ross' narrative effortlessly places composers, works, and performances placed into their historical and cultural settings to aid the reader's understanding, and never fails to maintain interest. He explains the tonality-to-atonality transition, twelve-tone serialism, the avant-garde movement, experiments with chance and collage, minimalism, and then sketches the way forward:

At the beginning of the twenty-first century, the impulse to put classical music against pop culture no longer makes intellectual or emotional sense. Young composers have grown up with pop music ringing in their ears, and they make use of it or ignore it as the occasion demands. They are seeking the middle ground between the life of the mind and the noise of the street. (p. 541)

Part I kicks off with the 1906 premiere of Richard Strauss' Salome; and Part II with Shostakovich's Lady Macbeth in 1936, which leads into the well-known story of his immortal Fifth Symphony; Part III continues the tale from the end of World War II to the present. The middle section is the book's highlight, and Ross does a spectacular job of explaining and dramatizing Shostakovich's relationship with Stalin's totalitarian terror. I was unaware of the harrowing story of his Seventh Symphony, titled "Leningrad," which Ross brings to life here:

Against his own wishes, he [Shostakovich] was evacuated from the city on October 1 [1941], and spent the winter in Kuybyshev, formerly Samara, in the Volga region. [...] Besieged Leningrad heard the [Seventh] symphony on August 9, 1942, under the most dramatic circumstances imaginable. The score was flown in by military aircraft in June, and a severely depleted Leningrad Radio Orchestra began learning it. After a mere fifteen musicians showed up for the initial rehearsal, the commanding general ordered all competent musicians to report from the front lines. The players would break from the rehearsals to return to their duties, which sometimes included the digging of mass graves for victims of the siege. Three members of the orchestra died of starvation before the premiere took place. [...] An array of loudspeakers then broadcast the Leningrad into the silence of no-man's-land. Never in history had a musical composition entered the thick of battle in quite this way: the symphony become a tactical strike against German morale. (p. 246)

That is the sort of dramatic story that would be nearly unbelievable if it came from the pen of a Hollywood scriptwriter; the fact that it actually happened gives me shivers, and showcases Ross' ability to tell his story exceedingly well.

When Ross notes that Lenin "regarded [music] as a bourgeois placebo that covered up the sufferings of mankind" (p. 218), this struck me as a deliberate echo of Marx's "opiate of the masses" remark regarding religion; it is to Ross' credit that he assumes such historical familiarity on the part of his audience. His assumptions about musical knowledge may be less warranted, however. Readers who have never studied music theory may want to do some reading on intervals and modes to help understand Ross' detailed musical descriptions.

Don't be put off by the musical minutiae, because Ross has penned the best book I've yet read on music. His enticing explanations of the music have inspired me to take note of pieces I've not yet heard, in order to broaden my listening habits. (As encyclopedic as Ross was in The Rest Is Noise, his mentions of microtonality didn't include jazz trumpeter Don Ellis, who performed on a quarter-tone trumpet. A reference to the Modern Jazz Quartet in Ross' discussion of Gunther Schuller and Third Stream music wouldn't have been out of place, either.) Those minor details aren't much of a fault, as including every minor tidbit of information would surely have ballooned the book to over a thousand pages.

Ross constructs his narrative wisely, and has written the sort of book that I can't recommend highly enough. Avid music listeners should put The Rest Is Noise at the top of their reading lists.

links:
Alex Ross' New Yorker columns
his book's website and bibliography
Wikipedia's article on "20th-Century Classical Music"

[typo fixed]

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Jacobson, Julius. The Classical Music Experience, Second Edition (Naperville, IL: Sourcebooks, 2008)

I was premature in writing of Copland's What to Listen for in Music that "I can't think of another volume so accessible for an orchestral neophyte," as The Classical Music Experience is indeed more appropriate for that audience. Unfortunately, I found it to be a little too light-and-fluffy for the rest of us; Jacobson sometimes tries too hard to be endearing, as when he writes such biographical asides as, "I think you will agree with me that Bach was quite a fellow, twenty children and all." (p. 25) Additionally, the author (an MD by trade) inserts far too many surgery-related digressions into the text, which adds little if anything to understanding and appreciating the music. I would have appreciated fewer biographical details on the composers and a correspondingly larger emphasis on their music.

One highlight of this book is access to more than forty hours of streaming audio from the Naxos website. (It's annoying to have to login again after each piece finishes playing; one wonders if this is a deliberate inconvenience designed to sell more CDs.) The book's previous edition (2005) included a pair of CDs, but they could barely scratch the topic's surface. Forty hours of music is a vast improvement, but it's still a long way from comprehensive; I suppose that one can only expect so much for $40.

Several passages that were apparently carried over unedited from previous editions really should have been updated, such as Jacobson's occasional references to the Schwann Opus catalog. The Schwann website disappeared at the end of 2003 after being acquired by Alliance Entertainment, and the Opus catalog appears to have gone missing in the process. (The Gramophone or Penguin guides would appear to be adequate replacements.)

Jacobson's omission of some composers is occasionally bothersome--there are no chapters on Ginastera, Holst, Khachaturian, or Respighi, for example--but it is in the last fifty years where the gaps become especially glaring. After a nice chapter on Schoenberg, there are no modernist composers. Adams, Cage, Glass, Ligeti, Reich, Riley, and Stockhausen--at least--deserved chapters of their own (or, failing that, a single chapter on modern music as a whole). For listeners whose idea of classical music doesn't end with Bernstein, these absences are a serious drawback.

There are several (non-musical) comments that grated on me, such as Jacobson's parallel to AIDS when discussing Smetana's death (at age 60) from syphilis:

"It is sobering to think about biographies of future artistic greats where AIDS may well replace syphilis and cut off productivity at even younger ages." (p. 129)

AIDS has, of course, already affected far too many lives, and the issue of AIDS in the artistic community has been well-discussed (e.g., Newsweek's "AIDS and the Arts: A Lost Generation" cover story from 18 January 1993, pp. 16-20; Andrea Vaucher's 1993 book Muses from Chaos and Ash: AIDS, Artists, and Art.). As Wikipedia notes, medical advances are enabling HIV-positive individuals to live longer and more productive lives than they were able to in decades past:

In areas where it is widely available, the development of HAART as effective therapy for HIV infection and AIDS reduced the death rate from this disease by 80%, and raised the life expectancy for a newly-diagnosed HIV-infected person to about 20 years.

In light of safer-sex education, more comprehensive healthcare responses to AIDS, and improved longevity for HIV-positive artists, Jacobson's comment seems rather outdated in addition to being a digression.

"Commercial sex worker is a term I learned recently at an AIDS conference held at the Harvard School of Public Health. At first I chuckled, thinking that a prissy professor was trying to avoid the use of offensive words in public. But as I thought about it further, I realized it as a better term than the usual synonyms because, particularly in the context of AIDS, it can refer to either sex." (p. 162)

Without doing extensive research, I found that the phrase "sex worker" has been in use for three decades; I agree with Jacobson that it is superior to the common vulgarities, but his entire anecdote was a waste of space.

"There is a new computer language named Apache, amusingly so because as it matured, so many program patches were added to it." (p. 265)

First, Apache is a web server, not a language. Second, it is hardly new--at least not in Internet years: Apache has been the most popular web server almost constantly since its first release in 1995. (See Wikipedia for more information.)

Jacobson's second edition of The Classical Music Experience is a useful primer on the subject, but hardly an essential acquisition for the home library. I would suggest that classical tyros borrow this book from a local library instead--along with a stack of the recordings that Jacobson mentions in the text but were not included in the online selections.

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Miller, Frank & Jim Lee. All-Star Batman and Robin, Volume 1 (New York: DC Comics, 2008)

For a more modern take on Batman than that of the Moore/Bolland tale The Killing Joke, I checked out the first collection (issues #1-9) of the Frank Miller/Jim Lee All-Star Batman & Robin series. Miller has taken his perspective on the beginning and end of Batman's career (Year One and Dark Knight, respectively) and applied it to his nascent partnership with Robin. The series begins about a year after Year One, just before the murder of Dick Grayson's parents, and shows us how Batman befriends the young orphan and begins transforming him from an grief-stricken gymnast into a costumed crimefighter. William Gatevackes reviewed issues #1-3 for PopMatters, and faulted Miller's characters:

"The book is filled to the brim with one negative character after another, which wouldn't be a problem if they were developed more and written better. But instead of being hard-boiled, they're half-baked."

I have to give some weight to his complaint, because Miller's characterization is pretty thin even after a half-dozen more issues (although the denouement after issue #9's tussle with Green Lantern is a good omen). His scripts give us a cocky and borderline out-of-control Batman, who often seems as dangerous and unbalanced as his opponents. He's almost a caricature of the Dark Knight Batman, as this much-publicized (and mocked) exchange from issue #2 shows:

Perhaps because this particular usage garnered so much attention, "goddamn" was re-used many times later in the series; here is the funniest example (from issue #7):

It's as good an illustration as any that Miller doesn't take the series so seriously that he omits levity from his script. The humor--such as Wonder Woman's over-the-top imperiousness, for example--clashes somewhat with Miller's noir-ish narration, which works less well here than in his previous books. The typographic and color changes between characters serve to differentiate the changes in narration adequately, but the characters themselves are still far less fleshed-out that they should be by this point in the series.

Despite penciller Jim Lee's superstar reputation, the art doesn't grab me the way it apparently does so many comics fans; it's well-finished by Scott Williams and sublimely colored by Alex Sinclair, but it strikes me as rather sterile. (Not that the pools of blood from Dick's parents--or the numerous flying teeth and broken bones from the many fight scenes--are sterile, but most of the art just doesn't involve me emotionally in the story.) Van Jensen's review at ComicMix echoes my assessment:

The biggest problem here really is the creative team, as Lee's art represents the superhero norm. His clean, highly detailed and gregarious style evokes the action-heavy, reader-friendly adventure comics. There is nothing dark or edgy about his work, and so paired with Miller's script it creates a sense of cognitive dissonance. These two do not match.

I can only wonder if Miller's script would be more effective paired with his art, all harsh lines and heavy contrasts. His successes have all come in books that he's either drawn himself or teamed with a similarly gritty artist.

Despite my complaints about the book, I'll still be queued up to buy the second volume as soon as it's released. Miller and Lee haven't created the perfect Batman story in All-Star Batman and Robin, but it's compelling enough to command one's attention.

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Copland, Aaron: What to Listen for in Music (New York: Signet Classic/Penguin, 2002)

What to Listen for in Music, a 1957 revision of the 1939 original, is Copland's attempt at making serious music more accessible to the lay person. While sometimes idiosyncratic, Copland does an impressive job at remaining impartial about what music is being listened to while being quite sympathetic to contemporary classical music:

Most people seem to resent the controversial in music; they don't want their listening habits disturbed. They use music as a couch; they want to be pillowed on it, relaxed and consoled for the stress of daily living. But serious music was never meant to be used as a soporific. Contemporary music, especially, is created to wake you up, not put you to sleep. It is meant to stir and excite you, to move you--it may even exhaust you. But isn't that the kind of stimulation you go to the theater for or read a book for? Why make an exception for music? (p. 199)

I have often observed that the mark of a real music lover was an imperious desire to become familiar with every manifestation of the art, ancient and modern. Real lovers of music are unwilling to have their musical enjoyment confined to the overworked period of the three B's. (p. xxxi, Preface)

Copland wrote this long enough ago that "the three Bs" referred to Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms; today, one might as well be referring to Berlioz, Bruckner, and Bizet. Or Bartok, Britten, and Bernstein. (Or even Berg, Berio, and Boulez.) Alan Rich has added a foreword and an epilogue to help bring the book up to date, but it is the mark of a classic that it is still relevant after the passage of half a century.

Copland discusses the "four essential elements of music" (rhythm, melody, harmony, and tone color) in a suitable manner, and follows up by describing the sonorities of the orchestra's instruments and the compositional forms common to the orchestral repertoire. This book is excellent throughout, and I can't think of another volume so accessible for an orchestral neophyte. Copland closes with these words for the listener:

Music can only be really alive when there are listeners who are really alive. To listen intently, to listen consciously, to listen with one's whole intelligence is the least we can do in the furtherance of an art that is one of the glories of mankind. (p. 219)

It's unusual to read a book that so strongly pushes the reader to put it down and listen to music, but that's what Copland has done with What to Listen for in Music. Read it, and then open your ears.

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Russian novelist and historian Alexander Solzhenitsyn has died at the age of 89. Although awarded the 1970 Nobel Prize in Literature, Solzhenitsyn did not receive his award until being charged with treason and exiled from the Soviet Union upon publication of his magnum opus The Gulag Archipelago several years later. Solzhenitsyn's undelivered 1970 lecture meditates on capital-A Art, with this wonderful passage:

It is we who shall die - art will remain. And shall we comprehend, even on the day of our destruction, all its facets and all its possibilities?

Not everything assumes a name. Some things lead beyond words. Art inflames even a frozen, darkened soul to a high spiritual experience. Through art we are sometimes visited - dimly, briefly - by revelations such as cannot be produced by rational thinking.

Like that little looking-glass from the fairy-tales: look into it and you will see - not yourself - but for one second, the Inaccessible, whither no man can ride, no man fly.

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Hart, Mickey & Fredric Lieberman. Spirit into Sound: The Magic of Music (Petaluma, CA: Grateful Dead Books, 1999)

Grateful Dead drummer Mickey Hart has assembled (along with Fredric Lieberman) a wide-ranging book of quotes about music, interspersed with reflections from Hart on his long and continuing career. Hart quotes philosophers and poets, composers and conductors, and more than a few fellow musicians on various aspects of music and its magic. Hart barely scratches the surface of the subject in his two hundred pages, but he shares some brilliant insights along the way. Here are my favorites:

"It took me twenty years of study and practice to work up to what I wanted to play in this performance. How can she expect to listen five minutes and understand it?" (p. 38, Miles Davis, when an audience member complained that she didn't understand what he was playing; from Duke Ellington, Music Is My Mistress, p. 244)

"Music washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life." (p.46, Berthold Auerbach)

"Music sobs for you. It laments, it rejoices, it explodes with vigor and life." (p. 159, Anaïs Nin)

Whether you are a musician or an inquisitive listener, you will probably find some thought-provoking words in Hart's compendium.

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Moore, Alan & Brian Bolland. Batman: The Killing Joke (The Deluxe Edition) (New York: DC Comics, 2008)

In honor of the new Dark Knight film--featuring Heath Ledger's final (complete) film role--I revisited a classic from the Batman comics canon: the Alan Moore/Brian Bolland tale The Killing Joke. The newly recolored hardcover "Deluxe Edition" may seem unnecessarily extravagant at $18 for a 46-page story, but its brilliance outweighs its brevity. Van Jensen's ComixMix review says:

The Killing Joke is without question one of the greatest encounters between Batman and his nemesis, and the real reason is that the story serves both as a zenith for the Joker's depravity and for his pathos. [..] It makes a Joker that's more real, and more terrifying.

The Killing Joke isn't nearly substantial enough to be classified as a graphic novel, but it's a very successful short story and a great example of what talented creators can produce within the comics medium. (This edition also includes an 8-page Batman tale, "An Innocent Guy," from Batman: Black & White. Bolland wrote, drew, and colored this story; it fits well with The Killing Joke, and helps add a little more bang for the buck in this slim volume.)

I read the new Killing Joke side-by-side with the original version, and noted a few minor artistic revisions: the yellow oval around the symbol on Batman's chest is gone, and Bolland admits that "every page has something slightly different on it from The Killing Joke of 20 years ago" (such as the inclusion of a new background figure in one of the panels--can you find it?). Heidi MacDonald discusses the coloring at Publishers Weekly, and Jon Haehnle has several well-chosen recoloring comparisons here. My favorite compare-and-contrast example is this one from the Joker's origin sequence:

While John Higgins did a dramatic job with the original colors, Bolland goes for more contrast (and for bleeding eyes, as many observers have noted):

I'm largely a fan of the newer, more subdued color scheme, although Higgins' more expressive work on the original wasn't bothersome either then or now. Bolland's scene-to-scene transitions remain some of the best I've ever seen, being almost uniformly excellent. Here are the two transitions (pp. 6-8) which bookend the Joker's flashback from his purchase of a dilapidated circus to an incident with his wife about a failed nightclub gig:

After she consoles him, the Joker snaps back to the present:

The first and last panels of the story are identical, which ties the story together nicely. (I wish the Deluxe Edition had preserved the original use of the rain-puddle image on the endpapers, rather than using sickly green.)

Is The Killing Joke the perfect Batman/Joker story? No, although it's one of the best I've ever read. Batman's reaction on the last page nearly ruined the ending of the story for me, seeming quite out of character. <SPOILER> A silently dismissive response from Batman would have been more appropriate and would have echoed the tale's opening in a very intriguing manner. However, doing so may have required changing the story's title.</END SPOILER> The overall excellence of the rest of the book is still thrilling and explains why I--and, apparently, many others--still hold The Killing Joke in high esteem since its initial release two decades ago.

I would have more trouble believing that it's really been twenty years since The Killing Joke came out, but that same time period also saw the Grant Morrison/Dave McKean Arkham Asylum, and the Frank Miller/David Mazzuccelli Batman: Year One story. (Miller's seminal The Dark Knight Returns is slightly older at 22 years; without the reinvigoration of the Batman franchise provided by it--and, of course, by The Killing Joke--we may not have seen the 1989 Tim Burton film or any of its successors.)

The legacy of Bob Kane lives on!

[chronology errors fixed]

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Pausch, Randy. The Last Lecture (New York: Hyperion, 2008)

In The Last Lecture, noted CMU professor Randy Pausch tells the story behind his famous last lecture, paralleling much of the lecture itself as he does so. (Despite the repetition, perhaps the only way to improve this book would have been to include a DVD of the lecture.) Pausch's recent death propelled his book The Last Lecture over several others in my to-be-read stack; reading it was a sadder experience than it would have been just a little while ago, but that is more a testament to what Pausch wrote than the time in which I read it. Indeed, his sentiments may outlive the rest of us much as they did him.

The Last Lecture isn't a depressing tale of surgery, chemo, and radiation, but rather a celebration of living well in a limited time--Pausch writes about achieving our own dreams and enabling those of others. One needn't be staring down the barrel of a terminal disease to get a great deal out insight from this book, and I have more praise for it than perhaps any current best-seller I've ever read. In a book filled with wisdom about life, love, and parenting, it is difficult to highlight just a few representative passages. I will confine myself with one that spoke deeply to me, these words on the importance of maintaining an inquisitive household:

...my dad had an infectious inquisitiveness about current events, history, our lives. In fact, growing up, I though there were two types of families:

1) Those who need a dictionary to get through dinner.
2) Those who don't.

We were No. 1. Most every night, we'd end up consulting the dictionary, which we kept on a shelf just six steps from the table. "If you have a question," my folks would say, "then find the answer."
The instinct in our house was never to sit around like slobs and wonder. We knew a better way: Open the encyclopedia. Open the dictionary. Open your mind. (p. 22)

A world filled with dream-achievers such as Mr Pausch would be an immeasurably happier place; spend some time with his book to find out why. (But watch his lecture first!) After you've read The Last Lecture, share it with someone you love.

links:
Randy Pausch on Wikipedia
CMU's Entertainment Technology Center
Alice Project
Pausch's role in JJ Abrams' upcoming Star Trek film

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Vonnegut, Kurt. Armageddon in Retrospect (New York: Putnam, 2008)

Consisting of a thirteen previously unpublished pieces, Armageddon in Retrospect is the first Vonnegut collection to appear since his death last Spring. This is only the third of his books I've read (A Man without a Country and Slaughterhouse-Five being the other two), so I can't claim to be an expert on Vonnegut's writings. Armageddon in Retrospect is an interesting book, but not an essential one.

The book leads off with Vonnegut's first letter home after his POW experiences in Dresden, followed by a commencement address from 2007. The remaining eleven pieces are short stories that deal with various aspects of war and the bellicose mentality. While Armageddon in Retrospect is enjoyable, I didn't find any of the selections compelling enough that their absence from his published oeuvre would have constituted a great loss. The following sentiment, though, is as fitting a capstone for Vonnegut's career as any:

Where do I get my ideas from? You might as well have asked that of Beethoven. He was goofing around in Germany like everybody else, and all of a sudden this stuff came gushing out of him.
It was music.
I was goofing around like everybody else in Indiana, and all of a sudden stuff came gushing out. It was disgust with civilization. (p. 233)

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Wheaton, Wil. The Happiest Days of Our Lives (Arcadia, CA: Monolith, 2007)

After enjoying the hell out of Wil Wheaton's first two books (Dancing Barefoot and Just a Geek, reviewed together here) I was itching to get my hands on a copy of his third book, The Happiest Days of Our Lives. That itch has now been scratched, and it feels GOOD!

The book's highlights are "Exactly What I Wanted" (about a Sunday ice-cream trip with his kids) and "Let Go: A Requiem for Felix the Bear" (about saying goodbye to a beloved family pet). They are perfect little episodes that evoke just the right emotional notes; I laughed out loud at the first and teared up at the second. You can read them online (here for the first story, here and here for the second) or in print (pp. 33-35 and pp. 107-118) while you sit in the bookstore's coffeeshop waiting for the checkout line to shrink down to a tolerable length. If you like those stories, then buy the book already; if you don't, then...you suck. Give up and go home.

Seriously, though: Wheaton is a great writer, and I'm now eagerly waiting the announcement of a publication date for his next book (or at least a convention appearance near me, so I can tell him in person how much I enjoy his work). When Wheaton writes that "I have been able to touch people's lives as a writer in ways that I never could have when I wore a spacesuit, just reading the words that other people thought I should say" (p. 104, "The Big Goodbye"), he's not exaggerating. It's great to have a Niven-reading, taiko-loving unrepentant geek writing such great slice-of-life stuff. Even when Wheaton writes about gaming and poker (two habits I never acquired) he does it so well that even a newbie can grok what he's saying.

Do yourself a favor and check out Wheaton's blog; then go read his books. For some levity, here are two Quotes of the Day that made my inner geek laugh:

My core cast [of Star Wars figures] was Han Solo (in Hoth and regular outfits), Luke Skywalker (X-wing fighter or Bespin version), Greedo (shoots second, goddammit, version), Obi-Wan Kenobi (I lost the plastic robe and broke the tip off the light saber version), Princess Leia (pre-slave girl "man I wish I could hit that" version), C-3PO (tarnished version), and R2-D2 (head stopped clicking a long time ago version). (pp. 43-5, "The Light Special")

...we had D&D fever, and the only prescription was more polyhedral dice. (p. 81, "A Portrait of the Artist As a Young Geek")

[typo fixed]

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Lakoff, George. Whose Freedom? The Battle Over America's Most Important Idea (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2006)

I've read a few of Lakoff's previous books (Moral Politics, Don't Think of an Elephant, and Thinking Points), and Whose Freedom? is perhaps the best of them: a tightly focused book that covers its territory both succinctly and thoroughly. In it, cognitive linguist Lakoff looks at the contested meanings of freedom and illuminates the subject with his customary insight. (Don't worry if you haven't read any Lakoff before; his section on "The Mind and Freedom" on pages 9-15 will quickly get you up to speed with the relevant cognitive theories.)

Chapter 12 ("Bush's Freedom," pp. 229-242) has Lakoff dissecting Bush's notorious second inaugural speech in detail, and is the book's best chapter. I noted Bush's linguistic sleight-of-hand at the time, but only in passing:

Bush's continual repetition of the words "freedom" (33 times) and "liberty" (16 times) in a 2,000-word address is inconsistent with the administration's well-documented abridgement of civil liberties, disdain for the rule of law, and tacit approval of torture.

The effort Lakoff puts into his analysis of the speech makes this chapter alone worth the price of the book, and there are many other sections to sweeten the deal. One example, my Quote of the Day, is from his advice to counter the Right's framing of judicial issues:

You can defuse the conservative frames of "strict construction" and "judicial activism" without mentioning them. Whenever a case reaches a high court, it is because it does not clearly fit within the established categories of the law. Judges have to either extend or narrow those categories, and when they do they change the law, in one way or another. The question is whether they change it in the direction of greater or lesser freedom. Are they expanding--or narrowing--voting rights, civil rights, education of the public, scientific knowledge, and other aspects of the public good? Do they want to take us back before the expansion of our freedoms or forward to a greater expansion of our freedoms? Are they profreedom or antifreedom? (pp. 245-6)

Lakoff's work on economic freedom is also excellent:

Part of the economic liberty myth is that employers "give jobs" to employees. The flip side of that is a deep truth: Working people provide profits to those who pay their wages, and it is the work by workers, even low-skilled workers, that provides profits to employers. (p. 162)

As a wise man once observed, "The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread." (Anatole France, The Red Lily, 1894) Conservatives may see such an "equality before the law" as the summum bonum of American freedom, but liberals need to do better than that. This book suggests some of the ways in which we can re-frame the subject of freedom both more accurately and more effectively than how it is currently treated in the media.

<digression>

Although Lakoff's book is quite comprehensive, I'd like to offer a few observations on the difference between symbolism and substance that illustrate the liberal/conservative divide on the related issue of patriotism:

• Reading the Declaration of Independence every July 4th doesn't protect our inalienable rights;
• Venerating a parchment facsimile of the Constitution doesn't form a more perfect union;
• Reciting the Pledge of Allegiance doesn't actually create liberty and justice;
• Singing "The Star-Spangled Banner" doesn't make our nation the land of the free or the home of the brave;
• Flying the flag from your porch (or sticking a pin through your lapel) doesn't mean that you love your country; and
• Attaching a "support the troops" bumper sticker to your SUV doesn't mean that you value either the members of our armed forces or their military service.

Patriotism may be inspired by words and symbols, but it is in political and civic works where it truly lives. In each of examples listed above, it is conservatives who value the symbols of freedom (such as the flag) over actual freedom that they represent (such as the right to burn a flag in protest). While freedom and patriotism are contested concepts, I find it interesting that conservatives worry so much about the trappings of patriotism; I also wonder if conservatives have corresponding observations about liberals.

I would love to see Lakoff address the framing of patriotism in a sequel to this book.

</digression>

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In response to a recent comment on my review of William Martin's What Liberals Believe, I was asked to share a few of my favorite quotes from the book. I was going to share a "top ten" list, but decided to go for a baker's dozen instead:

Here's a wonderful retort to small-government conservatives:

"Other than telling us how to live, think, marry, pray, vote, invest, educate our children, and, now, die, I think the Republicans have done a fine job of getting government out of our personal lives." (p. 36, editorial page, Portland Oregonian, 19 June 2005)

I used this quote when criticizing George Will's ANWR errors:

"That's what happened to Jimmy Carter--he asked Americans to take responsibility for their profligate ways, and promptly lost to Ronald Reagan, who told them once again that they could do anything they wanted." (p. 125, Jane Smiley, "The Unteachable Ignorance of the Red States," Slate, 4 November 2004)

Although I'm an atheist, these two pro-Christian quotes well worth pondering (the second one I had read a long time ago, but hadn't added to my commonplace book):

"Liberalism is secular Christianity." (p. 115, anonymous)

"If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth can save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you." (p. 128, Jesus, The Gnostic Gospel of Thomas)

I laughed out loud over this one:

"Jesse Helms and Newt Gingrich were shaking hands congratulating themselves on the introduction of an anti-gay bill in Congress. If it passes, they won't be able to shake hands, because it will then be illegal for a prick to touch an asshole." (p. 248, Judy Carter, "Editor's Bit," BC Magazine, 16 June 2005)

TR would be appalled at the depths to which his (former) party has sunk over the past century:

"There once was a time in history when the limitation of governmental power meant increasing liberty for the people. In the present day the limitation of governmental power, of governmental actions, means the enslavement of the people by the great corporations." (p. 279, Theodore Roosevelt, Progressive Principles: Selections from Addresses Made During the Presidential Campaign of 1912)

Mencken was a hell-raiser of historic proportions, and funny to boot:

"It is now quite lawful for a Catholic woman to avoid pregnancy by a resort to mathematics, though she is forbidden to resort to physics and chemistry." (p. 340, H.L. Mencken, Minority Report, 1956)

So was the great anarchist Emma Goldman:

"The most unpardonable sin in society is independence of thought." (p. 380, Emma Goldman, Anarchism and Other Essays, 1910)

Krugman does a great job here:

"If Bush said the earth was flat, the mainstream media would have stories with the headline: 'Shape of the Earth--Views Differ.' Then they'd quote some Democrat saying that it was round." (p. 364, Paul Krugman, interviewed by Terence McNally, "The Professor Takes the Gloves Off," AlterNet, 12 November 2003)

This was depressingly prescient concerning Jonah Goldberg's screed Liberal Fascism:

"Fascism was really the basis for the New Deal." (p. 636, Ronald Reagan, Time, 17 May 1976)

We could really use a Schlesinger today:

"Human rights is not a religious idea. It is a secular idea, the product of the last four centuries of Western history. ... The basic human rights documents--the American Declaration of Independence and the French Declaration of the Rights of Man--were written by political, not religious, leaders." (p. 33, Arthur Schlesinger Jr., 1989 speech at Brown University, quoted in 2000 Years of Disbelief)

"The great religious ages were notable for their indifference to human rights in the contemporary sense--not only for their acquiescence in poverty, inequality and oppression, but for their enthusiastic justification of slavery, persecution, torture and genocide." (p. 506, Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., The Cycles of American History, 1999)

These words are especially apropos for th