Whatcha reading?

[Silent Majority]

He loves Bush to this day. Despite viewing himself as a progressive, he's so comfortable with Bush's brand of conservativism. In a possibly imaginary conversation with a back bencher MP, he asks just what it is that people dislike about Bush. The unnamed Labour MP is unable to bring up a reasonable point to the Prime Minister about the widely reviled President in 2004 and says he just doesn't like him. What if Bush is right about climate change, asks Blair? The strawman says that he'd dislike him even more if that were the case.

It's a pity he didn't go out and actually talk to people who can and will elaborate on why they despise Bush. Surely it couldn't be that hard, unless Tony's unwilling to ever leave his bubble.

No, outside of Tony's bubble, they're filled with unsensible prejudices about the clear eyed leaders of the world and their brilliant plans to do great things.

[Silent Majority]

Bedtime reading:

Only reading this because McKinney's Beatles book is one of my favourite bits of historical writing/speculation. While the same literary style is present, with sentences that can seem significant and fluff all at once, I'm not sure what the point of the book is, why Henry Fonda is a worthwhile subject.

Very photogenic actor, not sure if I'd care to learn more about his life.

[Dr. Medulla]

He loves Bush to this day. Despite viewing himself as a progressive, he's so comfortable with Bush's brand of conservativism. In a possibly imaginary conversation with a back bencher MP, he asks just what it is that people dislike about Bush. The unnamed Labour MP is unable to bring up a reasonable point to the Prime Minister about the widely reviled President in 2004 and says he just doesn't like him. What if Bush is right about climate change, asks Blair? The strawman says that he'd dislike him even more if that were the case.

It's a pity he didn't go out and actually talk to people who can and will elaborate on why they despise Bush. Surely it couldn't be that hard, unless Tony's unwilling to ever leave his bubble.

No, outside of Tony's bubble, they're filled with unsensible prejudices about the clear eyed leaders of the world and their brilliant plans to do great things.

Classic Progressive perspective. I tend not to push a particular view in my lectures—I'm as hard on leftists as I am those on the right—but I really hope my students have come away feeling very wary of Progressives like Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson … and to identify their perspective as it exists today, mostly amongst liberals.

[Silent Majority]

10)

Twilight at Monticello - Alan Pell Crawford. Audiobook. A quick dash through Thomas Jefferson's biography and then a big focus on what most books dash over in their race towards deadline, his post-presidential life. Jefferson, a monster with some lovely ideas, is well drawn here and in a fair sketch, seems like a pretty decent fella who wrote very well on the one hand, and, in a hand that far outweighs that first hand, also a slaveholder who raped the women he owned and allowed other white visitors free reign when they visited his property. I'm fascinated by the post-presidency as well as the time in the office. Just the difficult lives that these guys go on to lead after enjoying their time in the sun. I'd recommend the book, but don't run to it.

11)

Dead Men Scare Me Stupid - John Swartzwelder. Swartzwelder is, as everybody here probably knows, the reclusive genius behind the best of the Simpsons. This is the second novel of his that I've read, the first being The Time Machine Did It which I devoured just before the new year. On page one of that book is a sentence I'll never forget. "As my exciting story begins, I'm being punched in the stomach." This story is about a dumb, big private detective named Frank Burly - star of the Time Machine Did It - and his encounter with some ghosts and a machine that wipes him out of existence. The plot is threadbare and incomprehensible and that can make it a little exhausting, so I'd recommend reading it as a chaser after something a little more substantial, but I laughed out loud on every page and there are only about 150 of them, so the madcap Homer the Vigilante pace is pretty bearable. As funny as any book I've ever read with a hardboiled style and some incredible turns of phrases. Think chapter after chapter of jokes as good as "I live in a bowling alley that's underneath another bowling alley." If classic Simpsons means anything to you, you owe it to yourself to buy a Swartzwelder book.

[Dr. Medulla]

Two of my favourite bits of relative obscurata re. Jefferson has to do with the University of Virginia, which he founded after he left the presidency. One is that it was mandated that he be able to see the campus (or perhaps it was a clocktower or something like that) from Monticello, so the buildings are all quite squat. The library is therefore primarily underground some seven or so stories. The other is that his original desire was that the school not grant degrees. He wanted those who attended to do so because they wanted an education, not accreditation. Of the many ideals he espoused (and, of course, rarely failed to live up to), that one resonates a great deal with me.

[Silent Majority]

Two of my favourite bits of relative obscurata re. Jefferson has to do with the University of Virginia, which he founded after he left the presidency. One is that it was mandated that he be able to see the campus (or perhaps it was a clocktower or something like that) from Monticello, so the buildings are all quite squat. The library is therefore primarily underground some seven or so stories. The other is that his original desire was that the school not grant degrees. He wanted those who attended to do so because they wanted an education, not accreditation. Of the many ideals he espoused (and, of course, rarely failed to live up to), that one resonates a great deal with me.

He was dead proud of the U of V. That he was President didn't make it to his self-written tombstone, but founding the University of Virginia did.

[Dr. Medulla]

Two of my favourite bits of relative obscurata re. Jefferson has to do with the University of Virginia, which he founded after he left the presidency. One is that it was mandated that he be able to see the campus (or perhaps it was a clocktower or something like that) from Monticello, so the buildings are all quite squat. The library is therefore primarily underground some seven or so stories. The other is that his original desire was that the school not grant degrees. He wanted those who attended to do so because they wanted an education, not accreditation. Of the many ideals he espoused (and, of course, rarely failed to live up to), that one resonates a great deal with me.

He was dead proud of the U of V. That he was President didn't make it to his self-written tombstone, but founding the University of Virginia did.

While it might speak to the man's priorities, it might also refer to the fact that the US was still very much a backwater whose longevity was still doubtful in those early years. A university was an institution that was more likely to have legs than an untested republic.

[Dr. Medulla]

Audio book (just started):

One of those major epics of American literature that I've never gotten around to experiencing. The other two volumes are also down in the listening queue, but have plenty of books in between them.

Bedtime:

Given my interest in generational/cyclical history and made arguments about the Boomers as collectively an extremely selfish generation, this one should be right up my alley. So far, it's pretty clumsy in its argument (not least of all in its use of sociopath as the proper descriptor). I admit there might be some snobbery on my part because the author is a Xer hedge fund manager, not a historian, but there is a lack of nuance (race, class, and sex are ignored, for example, in favour of, seemingly, a white male middle-class perspective) and a certain badgering to make the case—see this evidence here? That's sociopathic behaviour and that's how Boomers are. Still, kicking the fuckers for their collective behaviour is deserved.

[Dr. Medulla]

Gave up on Gibney for the reasons I suspected might be true above. It's more polemic than historical argument, and I've got better things to read than that. Such as …

Inspired by James' choice above, I started Swartzwelder's The Time Machine Did It, which is very breezy and humourous. Not quite parody of the noir detective story, but riffing off it to write about ridiculous people and situations.

I also started reading the dissertation of an old friend and former teacher, the guy who inspired me to think like a historian and treat language seriously. The diss is a monstrous 800+ pages and it's about what drives some average chumps in Charleston, SC to push—hard—for secession. What that is, I don't yet know. Based on our own ex-Charlestonian, I'm guessing barbeque sauce and cilantro.

[Dr. Medulla]

Finished reading Sheehan's A Bright Shining Lie yesterday, after more than a month of plugging away (800+ pp, small print). As a single book, I don't think it succeeds because it tries to do too much. It's a biography John Vann, a man of many talents and demons. It's the story of John Vann's analysis of America's war strategy in Vietnam, how he went from perceptive rogue to desperate and blind. And it's the story of America's failed adventures in Vietnam. Sheehan tries, but doesn't really succeed, at bringing the three strands together. The latter two could work, but being pulled out of that narrative to focus on Vann's many, many peccadillos is a distraction, even if it's a fuller picture.

As an aside, tho, I was struck at how much John Vann was like Mad Men's Don Draper. A few examples: Vann was the son of a prostitute who fought to take another name (his step-father's). He was a man of immense sexual energy who spent a lot of time juggling mistresses, proving his legitimacy as a man. He was extremely talented and creative, able to see more clearly how conventional thinking was flawed. Every success, however, was compromised by his private demons, his tendency to lie about his life and his sexual dalliances. Yet, until the end, the guy seemed almost literally bulletproof, an amazingly resilient figure for whom the rules just didn't seem to apply. I did some quick googling but didn't find any other observations because I wondered whether Matthew Weiner modelled Draper, at least in part, on John Vann.

Still a few more days left listening to Dos Passos' The 42nd Parallel, which strikes me as possibly the first postmodern story, blending real-world portraits, current events, and narratives that are more snapshots of people wandering thru a bewildering modern landscape. There isn't a whole lot of traditional narrative cohesiveness. I'm enjoying it a whole lot more than I thought.

Next up as a tub book is an older collection of essays from The Baffler, Commodify Your Dissent, which is an indictment of 1990s consumer culture. Still chugging away at my friend's dissertation and I'll be starting another Schwartzwelder novel.

[Silent Majority]

Got nowhere near the time I'd love to have for reading just now, but finished an abridged version of Walden by Henry David Thoreau.

[Dr. Medulla]

Got nowhere near the time I'd love to have for reading just now, but finished an abridged version of Walden by Henry David Thoreau.

His essay "Civil Disobedience" is always relevant. If you've never read it, I encourage you to do so.

[Silent Majority]

Got nowhere near the time I'd love to have for reading just now, but finished an abridged version of Walden by Henry David Thoreau.

His essay "Civil Disobedience" is always relevant. If you've never read it, I encourage you to do so.

Will do - picked it up second hand the other day.

[Wolter]

This is kind of neat: http://www.openculture.com/2014/01/read ... press.html

A quick browse yields a multitude of interesting possibilities for future reading: Shelley Streeby’s 2002 book about sensational literature and dime novels in the nineteenth-century United States; Luise White’s intriguing-looking Speaking with Vampires: Rumor and History in Colonial Africa (2000); and Karen Lystra’s 2004 re-examination of Mark Twain’s final years.

[Silent Majority]

11)
Man Called Cash: The Life, Love, and Faith of An American Legend - Steve Turner. Audiobook. A very Jesus-y look at Cash, impatiently chasing through the classic Sun records days, the fascinating times where he was ripped on speed bouncing around the world being a bad boy, to get to the heart of the matter: God. I don't mind that. It's probably much closer to how Johnny would have viewed his own life than a lurid, Nick Tosches-esque sinful rundown.