Unfinished Reading

Books you don't finish reading
are like mountains you don't
finish climbing or comparisons
like this that don't seem quite right.

They are like acquaintances who
don't become friends. (This seems
better.) You have been told or
think you see what's up ahead,
but a weariness sets in. Let

the book be great for others,
you think.  Just leave me out of it. 
I've resigned from the reading of
The Fairie Queen, Clarissa, The
Castle of Crossed Destinies, 
The Charterhouse at Parma, 
countless portly mystery novels.
I pretended to finish Paradise
Lost but, as with the film,
The Titanic, I had guessed the ending.

I forced myself to climb Mann's
Magic Mountain. It took
decades, and it wasn't worth it.

When Sam Johnson (who
said of Paradise Lost, "No one
wished it longer") got tired
of a book, he threw it across
the room. Bolder than I,
he didn't resign from reading.
He fired the book.


hans ostrom 2017

Samuel Johnson on Patronage

"Discreet Books," by Hans Ostrom

Old books, discreet, keep what now
seems naive, quaint, or embarrassing
enclosed, hidden in stacked pages
between covers. Replayed TV episodes

lay bare what's now funny
for the wrong reasons. They
show how the writers
sank their lives into a wicked,
remunerative genre bound
to betray them as now

they sit in fine houses,
their bodies ravaged
by the stress of the Industry,
looking at the spines
of novels they've collected.

Faint noise of grandkids
splashing in the blue pool,
Hollywood hills, reaches
the interior, paid for
by residuals. It was,
it is, a living, and as Sam
Johnson said, "No one but
a block-head writes
for anything but money."


hans ostrom 2014

Elvis Read Books, Had Excellent Taste in Movies

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(photo: Slim Pickens and Harvey Korman, in Blazing Saddles, with books in background)
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Well, if you're in Memphis, you pretty much have to visit Graceland. I'm in Memphis, so I visited Graceland.

A "modest mansion" is an oxymoron, but I think the phrase fits Elvis's home, which he decorated immodestly. Actually, the place is probably decorated just the way most young working-class men in the 1950s-through-early-1970s would have decorated a place if a) they suddenly obtained a great deal of cash, b) were under no one's guidance, and c) were egged on by a bunch of "pals"--or hangers-on.

My second impression concerns just how much cash the site generates. The scale of the operation is difficult to fathom. It is a massive cash-machine. I do wish a significant percentage of that money were dedicated to not-for-profit aims, particularly in Memphis, to address poverty, educational needs, and even basic infrastructure-problems. That would be a good thing, such channeling.

On the tour of the larger airplane, I learned that Elvis liked to read and traveled with boxes of books. What exactly he read is unclear, but one site on the web points to some of his spiritual reading: http://www.bodhitree.com/booklists/elvis.presley.html

However, in the mansion, at least on the ground floor, there appears to have been no space for books. The scholar and bibliographer in me would love to acquire lists of books Elvis read. What was in those boxes he toted to Las Vegas? As a reader, he probably had the same habits, if not the same classical education (Humes High School v. Pembroke College, Oxford, so it goes) as Samuel Johnson, including impatience. Johnson famously tossed books across the room when he became bored with them, and one imagines the nervous, pharmaceutically sped-up Elvis reading voraciously but getting bored fast. Cat on a hot tin roof, so to speak. Go, cat, go.

I also learned that among Elvis's favorite movies to watch on the plane were Blazing Saddles and the Monty Python films. This confirms that Elvis had great taste in cinema, at least in the comedy column. Of course, as with the home-decoration, the taste in comedies also betrays a bit of male adolescent bias. As clever as Brooks and the Monty Python team are, they're also mischievous in an adolescent way.

Most of Elvis's own movies are (as you know) bad, sometimes so bad they're campy and good, but that was Hollywood's and the Colonel's fault. Elvis was actually a good instinctive actor, as Walter Matthau once observed. He worked with Elvis in King Creole, and he said that after a scene, the director told him (Matthau) to stop trying so hard, and Matthau was aware of the extent to which Elvis wasn't trying hard but had a good sense of timing. One imagines all the good, surprising, interesting movies Elvis might have made. Too bad he didn't collaborate with the Monty Python troupe early on. Too bad Samuel Johnson never got to visit Graceland.

Apostrophe's Extinction Signals Apocalypse's Arrival

(image: representation of an apostrophe, or of a tear, or of both)


One occasional reader of this blog relayed a link to a news story which reports that new or replaced street signs that once contained apostrophes will no longer contain them because "they're confusing and old fashioned"--the apostrophes, not the signs or decision-makers, apparently.

The link: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,486144,00.html

That this event should occur in Britain, where precise men with incendiary tempers such as A.E. Housman, Samuel Johnson, Lord Byron, and Alexander Pope once strode the earth (owing to some infirmities, Byron and Pope hobbled a bit, no worries), strikes an apostrophe-lover with a combination of punches.

Nonetheless, we who teach English and/or care about the language saw this one coming decades ago, for the apostrophe has been disappearing from college papers (for example--this is not to put the blame on college students) for a long time. We "correct" the papers, write something in the margin, perhaps even spend seconds in class discussing the apostrophe. The students, ignore our corrections, marginalia, and blather, as they should. They are college students. They have certain duties to uphold. Each has his or her role in the academy.

And having studied German, I knew that the possessive apostrophe had disappeared long ago.

Nonetheless, let me point out that the reasoning behind the decision to eliminate the apostrophe would not pass muster with Hume's (or Humes) or any philosopher's big toe, not considered the seat of logic.

The apostrophe's old-fashioned? Well, so is printing itself, which dates back to the 15th century. So is the monarchy. So are those goddamned wigs they wear in court over there. I say the wigs should go first; then maybe we'll pretend to discuss the demise of the apostrophe. The apostrophe has a clear semiotic use. The wig has a murky one, at best. The apostrophe is unobtrusive. The wig is not, and I'd (Id) be willing to bet that those wigs stink. I've never known an apostrophe to need a good cleaning or to harbor fleas.

Confusing? Imagine a sign that read St. John's Wood. Or St. John's Wood, One Kilometer. I'm just not feeling the confusion coming from either sign.

Now consider a sign that says William's Pub. Then one that says Williams Pub. The first sign is not confusing. The pub belongs to William, or at least William figures or figured in the history of the pub. Such niceties may be sorted out nicely in the pub over a pint, but they are niceties, not sources of confusion. Now consider the second sign. Is it William's Pub, singular? Williams' Pub, plural--the pub owned by the Williams family? One is so disgusted by the lack of clarity that one will go to another pub.

One might assert that the absence of an apostrophe will either have no effect (let's [or lets] be generous and say 10% of the time) or will, indeed, cause confusion, an absence of precision being more likely to create confusion than a persence of precision (that is my assumption)

Let us further assume that those in charge, or what Gogol called Persons of Consequence, are lying. They want to to save money and time, which are the same thing in their minds. It takes X amount of time to punch an apostrophe into a sign and then paint it. Multiply by Y, and you have an amount (illusory, of course) that you are saving. Read Dickens' [or I guess I should write Dickens and surrender) Hard Times for a flavor of this mentality.

Or maybe this is their revenge on English teachers!

I don't (I mean dont) like the slothful use of "old fashioned," unsupported by data, although my use of slothful begged the question, I grant. I don't like an assertion concerning "useless" when the assertion is not followed closely by reasoning, logic, or at least something dressed as good sense.

I like the apostrophe. It adds clarity. Nonetheless, I let it go long ago, even as I ritualisitically point out its absence (or should I write it's absence?) or its incorrect presence in papers.

With the impending official demise of the apostrophe in England, the apocaplyse's, I mean the apocolypses, intial phase has begun. Whats a person to do? Store a years worth of food? :-)

Listen, this is how loyal, to a fault, not just to people but apostrophes I am: In those rare instances when I use my telephone to "text" (sigh, text is a verb), I use the apostrophe. What percentage of texters use it? I would guess 1% at most. Nonetheless, all hail the corporate design-dude or design-dudette who allowed the phone to be programmed to include an apostrophe. Hes my hero or shes my hero, of sorts. I mean he's my hero or she's my hero.

National Lampoon might write the headline this way: ENGLAND BAN'S [SIC] APOSTROPHE, GOES IMMEDIATELY TO HELL'S ANTECHAMBER.

"Should all apostrophes be forgot and ne-ver come to mind . . . ." Cue tears, pull out handkerchief, head to William's Pub.

Patronizers

Samuel Johnson famously described a (financial) patron as one who ignores a drowning man but then, when the man has already fought his way to shore, encumbers him with assistance. I believe he was directing his lack of amusement at a person who had promised to help him pay for the great dictionary on which Johnson was working. That dictionary remains one of the quasi-miraculous achievements in scholarship. The man wrote a dictionary of the English language mostly by himself--he had a few of what we might call research-assistants--and he pulled many of the explanatory examples of definitions from his memory.

Patronizers are a different sort of creatyres, One doesn't expect money or anything else for them. One simply expects false, duplicitous "praise" or politeness that's been on the shelf way past the sell-date.


The Patronizers

I've grown to appreciate the patronizers,
who stand on an invisible wee step-ladder
and speak down. Theirs is a subtle art.
They upholster ill will with civility. They
dismiss by squeezing out an anemic compliment.

Relentlessly, they try to shrink the world
as they assume they expand. At least
the old patrons used to hand over cash
once in a while. The patronizers pilfer
superiority. They buy arrogance on credit,
spend it mincingly. They're as bold

as a spectator at a bullfight, as generous
as a dead snake, as well meaning as a rabid
skunk. They're clever and deft, though,
like old troupers. They please themselves.

Patronizers make themselves at home
in your forebearance. They're really
something. They've honed a hapless
social skill. Well done, Bravo.
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Copyright 2009 Hans Ostrom

Hope

(photo of Jacques Ellul, looking hopeful)






A professor from whom I took graduate courses in 18th century literature (many moons ago) especially liked this quotation from Samuel Johnson:

"The natural flights of the human mind are not from pleasure to pleasure, but from hope to hope."
Johnson: Rambler #2 (March 24, 1750)

He was bit dour, this professor (as was Johnson), rather chronically disappointed in almost everything. So I think he interpreted the quotation as bearing on humans' penchant for false hope.

Given the news from almost everywhere about almost everything, hopelessness is a tempting position. Turn where one might, much seems hopeless: the plight of the poor everywhere, the health of the planet, Middle East politics, and so on. No doubt you have your own pertinent list handy.

At the same time, one might posit that hopelessness is a luxury. For example, today I found myself lapsing into a hopeless attitude toward conflict between Palestinians and Israelis, but at the time I was driving on calm, if pot-holed, streets, headed to a well-stocked grocery store. Easy for me to indulge in hopelessness. If I were trying to raise a family and/or support friends somewhere in the midst of conflict, violence, and oppression, I might not have the option of focusing on my private hopelessness. I'd probably have to focus on surviving, getting through a day or a week.

And, indeed, perhaps the most important word in the Johnson quotation is "natural," a word about which social scientists, among others, are quite skeptical. Nature v. nurture, essential v. constructed, and all that. Maybe there is some hopeful hard-wiring in the brain, however. Who knows?

At the same time, as a close friend of mine is fond of saying, particularly of organizations that can't get their stuff together, "Hope is not a strategy." I find that assertion hard to argue against. In my limited experience, preparation, attention to detail, persistence, and focus have seemed to be more productive than hope. But I'm also open to the argument that hope helps make these practices possible.

I'm also emboldened, or at least made hopeful, by people who maintain hope in extreme situations, who "beat the odds," at least for a while, and who do what had seemed like the impossible. Emily Dickinson, who knew much hardship and pain, famously took the side of hope in this poem:

“Hope” is the thing with feathers—

That perches in the soul—

And sings the tune without the words—

And never stops—at all—

And sweetest—in the Gale—is heard—

And sore must be the storm—

That could abash the little Bird—

That kept so many warm—

I’ve heard it in the chillest land—

And on the strangest Sea—

Yet, never, in Extremity,

It asked a crumb—of Me.

There may be some of Dickinson's attitude in that of Jacques Ellul, 20th century French theologian and political scientist. Ellul's book, Propaganda, is arguably the very best single volume on the subject, and what he had to "say" about propaganda and mass media seems more pertinent with each new technological "advancement" in media. Ellul's book is not entirely hopeful, and Ellul himself had seen France occupied by Hitler's military (but then also unoccupied, or liberated). Oddly enough, Ellul settled on a combination of anarchy and Christianity as his hopeful, feathery perch amid the gale. He saw Christianity as having been rooted in anarchy--"anarchy" in the sense of being opposed to oppressive hierarchy. And he perceived non-violent Anarchism as the stance most likely to lead to liberty and justice.

How does Ellul reconcile Christian faith and political anarchy (not chaos, mind you, but the political philosophy of anarchy, as defined by Bakunin and others)? Well, in the short run, I'll rely on a one-paragraph summary taken from amazon.com:

"Jacques Ellul blends politics, theology, history, and exposition in this analysis of the relationship between political anarchy and biblical faith. On the one hand, suggests Ellul, anarchists need to understand that much of their criticism of Christianity applies only to the form of religion that developed, not to biblical faith. Christians, on the other hand, need to look at the biblical texts and not reject anarchy as a political option, for it seems closest to biblical thinking. Ellul here defines anarchy as the nonviolent repudiation of authority. He looks at the Bible as the source of anarchy (in the sense of non-domination, not disorder), working through the Old Testament history, Jesus' ministry, and finally the early church's view of power as reflected in the New Testament writings. 'With the verve and the gift of trenchant simplification to which we have been accustomed, Ellul lays bare the fallacy that Christianity should normally be the ally of civil authority.'" - John Howard Yoder

In the long run, I'll rely on Ellul himself. A translation of his book, Anarchy and Christianity, appeared in 1991 and is still available in paperback, and maybe in a locally owned used bookstore of your choice. If, however, the combination of anarchy and Christianity just seems too preposterous to you, seems to be a perch to which you have no hope of (or interest in) reaching, then I hope you'll glance at Ellul's Propaganda sometime, if you haven't already. One absolutely need not be either Christian or anarchist to benefit from that book; indeed, it's the sort of book that's easily imported to all sorts of world-views. As is the wisdom in Sam Johnson's essays and poems (and the dictionary), come to think of it. Johnson said of Paradise Lost, as one might say about this post, "no one wished it longer."

In Times of Crisis, Count On Poets

The broken financial times call for poets. See, almost almost all poets are practical because they can't make a living by writing poetry and must therefore maintain other kinds of gainful employment to get by. Most poets are frugal, both with money and words. They have to make do, so they're used to repairing things, living on a budget, scraping by, solving problems, these sorts of things. Poets tend to be good listeners, too.

If I could assemble some poets in D.C. by, say, Thursday, I know we could pass a sensible fix-it financial bill--one good enough to let everybody gain their equilibrium and start to dig out of the larger problems caused by unregulated greed and capitalists on speed. First of all, we'd all start to get bored really fast, and we couldn't leave until we passed the thing, so we'd pass it and then to to the Library of Congress, used bookstores, cafes, or whatever.

In one column on a piece of paper, I'd list the most serious immediate problems. In another column, I'd list the best ways to solve them, realizing these are short-term repairs, like fixing a tire but not driving on it for a long time. Then I'd break the legislation, based on the repairs, into pieces, and start voting.

Obviously, credit needs to flow again. People need to pay employees and get inventory, that sort of thing. People need help making house payments and hanging on to houses as they go through bankruptcy. This screwy "mark to market" nonsense needs to stop; everybody knows that.

Aunt Sam needs to take over lending-institutions that were run by greedy morons. That can't be hard to arrange. Aunt Sam needs to hang on to these for a while, straighten them out, and then sell them back to the private sector at a modest grocery-store profit so the taxpayers don't get screwed--again.

I'd also have some of my poets call, oh, 50 billionaires in the Gates and Buffett class and ask them to put up 10 per cent of the so-called bail-out, which isn't a bail-out so much as a re-priming of the credit-flow pump and a "calm down, everybody" move. These billionaires can afford it, kicking in 10 per cent would calm nerves, and the billionaires would go down in history as heroes, not just really rich guys and gals. We could have their faces carved on a mountain somewhere, maybe in Alaska.

If it would make the timid congresspeople feel safer, I'd have a different set of them constitute the majority that passed each major section of the legislation. That way, all the praise and blame would be spread out like peanut butter on a piece of bread. You could break down the fix-it bill into, say, 5 parts and have the whole thing passed by dinner time. Then I'd have everybody read Samuel Johnson's "The Vanity of Human Wishes," and they'd get some perspective and learn something about heroic couplets and what it's like to read something written by a person who's brain seemed to work at warp-speed.

There. See how easy that is? Sonnets are hard. Legislation is easy. While no one was paying attention, lots financial folks got greedy and sloppy. That's just the kind of shit people do. They created some problems. Some short-term solutions are required to get people confident again and get some credit flowing. Then we need to create some longer-term solutions, which are more in the novelists' turf.

I'm telling you, poets have a good idea of when it's time (to dredge up a 1960s term) to get one's shit together. George needs to tell that treasury guy of his to settle down, and Congress needs to get its shit together. This isn't rocket science. It isn't even poetry. It's legislation. Sam Johnson's term for the congress-person entities would be "blockheads."

If it's broken, and it is, fix it--no later than Friday. No excuses. Do your damned job. If you can't or won't, call in the poets.

Poets On Strike

For several months, I've been having a blast reading the Rumpole stories and novels by John Mortimer. They rival P.G. Wodehouse's Jeeves narratives for pithy, hilarious writing, although because Rumpole is a barrister, there's also some underlying commentary about law and society. There's a very strong libertarian streak running through the books and Mortimer's worldview, but it's genuine libertarianism, not cloaked GOP politics (or Conservative politics, in Britain). Rumpole defends anyone with whom the State is unamused, including women, minorities, smokers, immigrants, persons deemed strange, and nonviolent criminals, including the Timson family. If you're looking for quick summer reading that will bring belly laughs, knowledge of poetry, and stylish British writing, go with John Mortimer and Rumpole. It doesn't matter where in the series you start, either. Just go to a used bookstore and pick one out.

The late actor Leo McKern played Horace Rumpole on the BBC (I've posted a photo of him), and you'll enjoy that video series, too.

In a story called "Rumpole and the Summer of Discontent," strikes or "industrial action" are featured. The clerk in Rumpole's firm threatens to strike, and Rumpole is sympathetic but reasons that the action in this case would be about as effective as if poets or pavement artists were to go on strike. Most amusing, and most certainly true.

Indeed, if poets were to go on strike, who would care? This is not to say that poetry is unimportant. It's only to say that society regards poetry as inessential. If you would test what profession, service, or vocation is essential, ask whether a strike by said profession, service, or vocation would be effective, would cause consternation if not chaos. Police, fire, emergency rooms, truckers, longshoremen, teachers, farmworkers: essential. (Teachers are essential in part because both parents work and even if both parents don't work, they want a break from the kids.) Poets, painters, interior decorators, stock brokers, philosophers, priests, rabbis: not essential. Of course, people might be wistful that such folk were on strike, but society would not grind to a halt.

Should Rumpole's observation (and remember, Rumpole loves poetry, especially that which appears in Quiller-Couch's edition of the Oxford Book of English Verse--it's just that, as a barrister, he must practice Realpolitik and even observes that knowledge the law only unnecessarily encumbers a barrister) be depressing to poets? Heavens, no. We poets (and philosophers) do what we do because poetry and philosophy are essential in ways that vegetable-produce, gasoline, and emergency medicine are not. There are different kinds of "essential," that's all. Oxygen is essential in one way; poetry is essential in another. Luckily for people and oxygen, people know right away when they are deprived of oxygen. Unfortunately, it may take the better part of a lifetime for someone to realize how much better life would be with poetry.

Rumpole regards employment, trial by jury, innocent until judged to be guilty, wine, small cigars, shepherd's pie, and poetry to be essential. Like Samuel Johnson, Rumpole is a dangerous person with whom to disagree. Therefore, I shall continue to read the Rumple stories and poetry, and I shall continue to write poetry, but I've decided not to go on strike, at this time.