Poets, Philosophy, Pyrrhonism, Pragmatism

Poets have a bit of a checkered history with regard to philosophy, among other things. Aristotle used dramatic poets, the playwrights of his time, or at least their work, as the basis for his Poetics--after Plato had suggested that in the perfect Kingdom, poets probably shouldn't be included, apparently because they make things up, unlike philosopher-kings, who always speak the truth, unless of course they're inventing dialogues between Socrates and opponents who always seem to fall for his tricks.

One of many problems may be that poets treat philosophy as they treat other items, as raw material for poetry. So literary critics can argue about how much German philosophers influenced Coleridge or how much Kant and Hartley influenced Wordsworth, but the by-product of such influence is always going to be idiosyncratic and quirky, especially in the poetry itself but also in the nonfiction prose the poets might write. One might also posit that the more purely philosophical a poet becomes, the less interesting his or her work may become, and one might go on to cite Alexander Pope and Matthew Arnold. Pope was a superb versifier, master of the heroic couplet and great manager of extended conceits, but oh my goodness, sometimes his poetry just wears you out with its "ideas." Ideas seemed, in a way, to paralyze or enervate Arnold, whom I don't think was a very good poet. Arguably, Yeats and Pound get downright loony in their philosophical and political turns.

A hopelessly broad generalization is that poets tend to be Aristotelian--grounded--as opposed to Platonic, tempted to look past or through what is here. "No ideas but in things," as Williams wrote--in a poem. Two schools of philosophy that might well be appealing to poets, then, are Pyrrhonism, a form of skepticism, and Pragmatism, as practiced, so to speak, by William James, bro of Henry "Hank" James, but not, apparently, a member of the James Gang, although a movie in which William and Henry rode with Jesse, or one in which Jesse lectured at Harvard and Yale, might be moderately amusing.

My understanding of Pyrrhonism is that it assumes for every good argument, a very good counter-argument can be found, and whether we can know anything for sure is not only doubtful but actively doubted. So I think you're just supposed to go with the flow, live according to the way things seem. Of course, extreme skepticism can lead to what they call "quietism," in which you accept all manner of things without squawking, including things that appear to you, in spite of your skepticism, obviously wrong. Unjust. Undoubtedly bad. I guess one appeal of Pyrrhonism is that in does focus on "appearances," on the concrete aspects of life, or at least on the sensory reports about same. Poets do seem inordinately fascinated by really specific, ordinary stuff. I mean, Hopkins wrote a great ecstatic sonnet about "dappled things," for Heaven's sake (literally for Heaven's sake).

Pragmatism, as advanced by Charles Pearce and William James, doesn't doubt everything; it just doubts philosophy, unless and until one or more persons can see how any philosophical idea will play out with Charles Pearce, William James, or whoever, literally, happens to be living at the time, breathing air, thinking, talking, trading, laughing, gardening, and blogging. Pragmatism in this sense is not anti-intellectual; the question is not, for example, "How will philosophy help put food on my table?" The question is more like "As I'm eating at the table, how will this or that philosophical idea alter my experience of eating at the table, along with everything else I'm doing at that moment, and everything else everyone else is doing?" My reading of James is that he constantly tries to remind philosophers and anyone else who will listen about how messy, voluminous, and shifting reality is. (At one point, he suggest that reality often "boils over" and overwhelms a fixed philosophy.) James isn't flatly opposed to idealism, or to a skepticism that suggests we can't really know anything, but he counters with the idea that, well, we apparently do know things, in the sense that we go around knowing and acting on knowledge all the time.

He actually pays philosophers (and scientists and anyone with bright ideas) a compliment, though, by arguing that what this or that age sees as "common sense" may be the result of a long, evolutionary process influenced by a person who had a great new idea. For instance, "common sense" now tells us that the Earth is round, but only because leap-ahead work by Copernicus and friends finally, slowly, got absorbed into everyday knowing. James thinks knowing is under constant revision, even when it may not seem to be, so he embraces the view that we simultaneously go around knowing things for sure and knowing that things for sure may not be for sure for long. This is sort of thinking is mightily bothersome to those craving absolutes, of course. At the same time, James by no means shies away from establishing an ethics.

James's work is highly poetic--full of imagery, anecdote, warm irony, and some jokes. He's far more accessible--and in a way, less abstract--than some of the prose from his brother Henry (I really mustn't call him Hank). Of course, people who "do" philosophy, will point immediately to the imagery, anecdote, and familiar rhetoric and assert "not philosophy!" People who "do" poetry, as readers or writers or both, are likely a) not to read William James's work at all and b) if they do read it, like all the arguments in favor of the contingent, ongoing, frustrating, but specific messiness of life as we, as you, live it.

In any messy case, here's a shout out to the four P's: Philosophy, Pyrrhonism, Pragmatism, and Poetry. What a mess they make.

The Lyricism of Politics

Ah, I love it when politicians wax poetic in their constant effort to keep the herd hypnotized.

Bush: "They [terrorists, presumably] hate our freedoms." But not as much as the Bush administration hates them, apparently. Warrantless wire-taps, suspended habeas corpus, executive power stretched to tragi-comic limits (the people have no right to hear what Cheney said to "energy" executives?), "signing statements" ("I laugh at your legislation, elected legislators! I am Texas's answer to Mussolini!").

Obama: "The Audacity of Hope." Has a nice ring to it. But if to hope has become audacious, then hope is probably just a lovely gesture. I think one aim of government might be to make hope commonplace. "Change you can believe in." Is that Obama's or Clinton's? I can't remember. I'll believe it when the next president completely revamps the machinery of secrecy and executive privilege started by Eisenhower and made worse since then. I'll believe it when the next president breaks up media and oil conglomerates, with the help of Congress. I'll believe it when the military tribunals (which Obama supports) go away. Etc.

McCain: As I've mentioned, if a person really favors straight talk, he or she doesn't lyrically refer to a bus as the Straight-Talk Express. McCain is also a self-styled "maverick," a poetic word that appeals to Americans' fondness for frontier independence. Oddly enough, here's the original meaning of maverick, according to the OED:

1867 in J. G. McCoy Hist. Sketches Cattle Trade (1940) 83 The term maverick which was formerly applied to unbranded yearlings is now applied to every calf which can be separated from the mother cow.

To be fair, we must acknowledge that the connotation of "maverick" has changed; nonetheless, the bar of independent thought is set pretty low when all you have to be is weaned and a year old--but still a part of that herd on the Chisum Trail. And what is McCain independent from? Not from any major policy-decision Bush has made, with the possible exception of torture. Not from lobbyists. Not from all the Anti-Trust abuses. With regard to the ever-expanding "privileges" of the Executive Branch, I suspect McCain would be like a pig in--I mean a maverick in manure.

It's a measure of a) my befuddlement and b) the blurring of campaign slogans that I don't know whether "Change you can believe in" belongs to Clinton or Obama. In any (or either) case, the phrase would have been trochaically more interesting (but far more nerdy) as "Change in which you can believe," which has roughly the same rhythm as "Tyger, Tyger, burning bright." Anyway, one can still believe in change with which one disagrees, so I'd need to hear more about what changes the person has in mind. I think "Good change you can believe in" is a more persuasive phrase, potentially.

I think that among Obama's most audacious moves is to decide to (and demonstrate the capacity to) raise a lot more money than McCain. When was the last time a Demo was that audacious? LBJ v. Goldwater? "Change (as in ka-ching) you can believe in."

Responses Appreciated

Recent comments on recent postings have informed me of the following, which I appreciate:

1. In Tacoma, not only does Alder (Street) turn into Pine which turns into Cedar, but Cedar turns into Oak. Maybe it just continues on down to California and becomes Palm Street. I think there's an idea for a movie or a short story in here somewhere. In Tacoma, people just blithely note that (for example) Pine turns into Cedar. No one seems to want to explore why this is so. I believe there's an existential and/or epistemological debate lurking in this street-name phenomenon. I don't recall Kant or Hegel writing about the streets in Tacoma. Clearly an oversight. Please note, however, that Hammett, in The Maltese Falcon, does mention the philosophy of Charles Peirce in a Tacoma-street context--in the splendid "Flitcraft" chapter, which all philosophy students, but especially those who like detective novels, should read.

2. The New Incredible Hulk may be worth seeing. I think I'll still wait for it to come to television, whereupon I can watch it in pieces. It's hard for me to digest these blockbusters at one sitting. They bust my block. I like to watch European movies on the IFC. The Europeans still make movies about people with human problems. It's very old-fashioned of them. The movies have stuff like conflict and dialogue. Actors play scenes. It's all very quaint.

3. Ants in some parts of Japan are a huge problem, so watch out. Apparently, they're a lot more trouble than humans are over there. Hmmm. Maybe there's a connection here to all those great giant-insect movies from Japan.

4. I was very glad to hear from another Chickering-piano-player (and Chickering-player-piano-piano-player).

5. At least one reader liked Browning's short poem. Those who didn't like the poem can take some consolation in the fact that the poem is short.

Force-Fed

So we went out to a restaurant to celebrate a birthday, not mine, and as a Hemingway narrator might say, "it was good."

It was, however, a Friday night, and the restaurant is a venerable one in these parts, and it wasn't close to full. I assume the economy that Bush's witchcraft has created with much toil and trouble is having its effect on restaurants, the income of which depends upon discretionary spending.

Another effect is that the wait-staff have clearly been directed to try to sell more food and beverages. Our waitress, or server, was extraordinarily competent, but, albeit sweetly, she put on the hard sell. A member of our party who had worked as a busser in a local restaurant noted, "They're hurting, so they're really trying to push the booze, where they make all their profits."

Some people like a lot of interaction with waiters. I don't. I think I'm more of a reader. I like to study the menu as if it were a poem, and I like waiters and waitresses to be laconic advisers. I like to see how the management has decided to describe the dishes. On this menu, after the list of entrees and of all the entrees had to offer to the buds of taste, there was a note mentioning that any of the fish on the menu could simply be grilled. I rather enjoyed the subtext of that message--namely, that nouveau cuisine may be okay, but nothing beats the atavistic practice of gutting a fish, flattening it, and putting it over the campfire. Of course, you'd want to serve a wine that had an after-taste of plums, gasoline, pears, and Roundup (or whatever it is those wine-critics say).

One of the waitress's techniques was to tell us what her "personal favorites" were on the menu. This rhetoric only confused me. If I chose something else, would I implicitly be casting doubt on her judgment? Does she really try all the dishes, and if so, would it be appropriate, then, to interrogate her and ask whether all the dishes were really that expensive to make? A stubborn streak in me always prevents me from ordering what is the favorite of the waiter or waitress. Terribly petty of me, I know. I did mind my manners, however, and I betrayed none of this confusion and resistance to her. After all, she's just working the job, out on the front line. The decision-makers are nowhere to be seen. It's no good giving grief to people who aren't in management, just because they happen to be visible.

--And by the way, do you think "appetizer" is really the appropriate term for a first course? Usually, the appetizer takes away one's appetite because, well, the appetizer is food, and if you eat food, you're less likely to remain hungry. Also, "appetizer" sounds a bit like science fiction. "Put him in the appetizer! Appetize him! Invasion of the appetizers!" Under "Appetizers" on a menu should be a list of things that will make you hungry: Poverty, Exercise, Working All Day, Fasting.

Antsy

On my urban hikes, which used to be called taking a walk, I have an opportunity to see things that won't make the evening news but may be more interesting than the evening news. Today I walked for an hour and was reminded of one of Tacoma's anomalies: sometimes sidewalks just disappear. There must be some kind of gray municipal legal area in which neither the city nor the landowners are primarily responsible for putting in sidewalks. So you might be traveling by foot on a sidewalk for several blocks, and although the neighborhood doesn't change architecturally or topographically, the sidewalk will stop, and in its place might be weeds, rocks, dirt, or a wee path. I have come to cherish Tacoma's anomalies, another of which is that Alder Street turns into Pine Street, which turns into Cedar street. It's as if someone deduced that after a few blocks, a street will get the urge to have its name changed.

I've also seen many ants, chiefly tiny brown ones which appear to locate the seam between sidewalk-segments, burrow down, and leave conical piles of dirt they've displaced. I don't know the proper name of these ants, and I don't know what they eat. I grew up observing red ants, which would build massive teeming hills so thick with ants that they stank: fabulous to observe. The ants seem to prefer to eat other insects--or any kind of protein, really. Also, there were black ants, which grew wings and flew during one of their phases. We also had the ants that came inside and looked for something sweet. But these tiny brown ants I hadn't seen before.

Then today I saw a small nest of black ants, smaller than the kind I saw in California. The nest was right next to the sidewalk, and hundreds of ants were traveling on a two-lane ant-highway, which ran parallel to the sidewalk. I think these ants are called "workers" or "soldiers," the former if they're getting food or debris for the queen, the latter if they're occupying foreign ant territory (and perhaps drilling for oil). However, there was also a smaller stream of commuting ants that crossed the sidewalk between the next and a patch of grass. Someone had written on the sidewalk, in chalk, "Ant Crossing." I found this notation to be charming.

Apparently, an ant's life-cycle is something like 6-10 weeks, although the entomologists seem to hedge their bets and suggest that some workers can live for years, and queens can life up to 15 years. I need to find out the species of ants I've been looking at. I also wonder how these ants decided where to place a nest or underground network before sidewalks existed. That is, before geometic patterns of concrete existed, what were the criteria for selecting a nest-site, and why are sidewalks so appealing to ant-ontology now?

All of this reminds me that when I was an undergraduate, I hung out for a while with an entomology major. Her name was Paulina, a name I quite liked, but she preferred to go by "Mouse," which was her nickname. I don't think I ever learned how she got that nickname. She smoked Marlboros, if memory serves, and she was, pardon the pun, quite antsy--amped up, fidgety. But also humorous. I do hope she was able to become a professional entomologist, if indeed that was her dream.

The Credible Hulk

Opining not so much as a poet but as a person who generally and specifically enjoys words, and as a person who is weary of Hollywood's main fare, I assert that a movie entitled The Credible Hulk would be more interesting than another remake of The Incredible Hulk. The plot might focus on a large person who is believable, perhaps an immense trustworthy politician, a robust honest person, or a body-building soothsayer. Didn't Hollywood just make a version of the angry green man a few years ago? Is this new version absolutely necessary? Would the money be better spent on necessities for impoverished persons?

Apparently there's also another Batman movie coming out. Once again, the movie seems to be about a man who dresses in dark leather outfits. That is, he's really not a batman. I'd like to see a version where the person is actually a bat/human hybrid--you know, like that movie, The Fly, which was really about Flyman.

I think maybe all Hollywood movies, but especially the remakes, should be shorter by two-thirds. Then they could show three sequels in the time it takes to view one. More value for your movie-going Euro. We already know the plots, the plot-twists, the moments when explosions will happen, and the moments when the antagonists must seem to prevail. Just speed it up!

Or they could make a very short film entitled: Sequel: A Cry for Help, followed by a plea to the general public to send Hollywood some fresh ideas for movies. The short film could be narrated by the Credible Hulk.

A Short One by Browning

I like the following short poem by Robert Browning, who's probably best known for longer narrative works and those famous dramatic monologues, such as "My Last Duchess." I always thought his sensibility and that of the 20th century American poet, Randall Jarrell, were similar. In fact I wrote a long paper once in which I attempted to characterize this sensibility, which I argued had a lot to do with empathy. Both were quite learned poets, but they understated the learning by means of relatively plain phrasing. Jarrell was undoubtedly more interested in criticism than Browning, whose contemporary Matthew Arnold was arguably the chief poet/critic of th era, in England at least.

Night Meeting

by Robert Browning

I.
The grey sea and the long black land;
And the yellow half-moon large and low;
And the startled little waves that leap
In fiery ringlets from their sleep,
As I gain the cove with pushing prow,
And quench its speed i’ the slushy sand.

II.
Then a mile of warm sea-scented beach;
Three fields to cross till a farm appears;
A tap at the pane, the quick sharp scratch
And blue spurt of a lighted match,
And a voice less loud, thro’ its joys and fears,
Than the two hearts beating each to each!

I especially like the way Browning works in basic colors here--grey, black, yellow, blue. I like the bookend rhymes he uses in both stanzas, too--very effective. At the core of each stanza is a couplet, and the distance between rhymes widens from there. This would bed a nice rhyme-scheme to imitate, as an exercise.

I might have left off the exclamation point. . . .The penultimate actions--someone taps on a window-pane to announce arrival, and someone inside lights a match: wonderful--basic but precise and evocative, like the colors. Well done, Bob.

The Memory's Trains

So I had to drive up near the Canadian border, in a car, and take the train back. It was like a Hitchcock movie. Right after I got on the train, I tried to think of the last name of my wife's first boss when we first moved here, 25 years ago. I knew it began with a "B," but my memory blocked the rest. One tactic my memory used was to put the name, "Shirley Bassey," in place of the boss's name. (Shirley Bassey sang "Goldfinger.") I was angry with my memory, so I worked on the problem for about an hour, off and on.

Then I gave up, and I told myself that when my wife picked me up at the train-station, I would ask her the name, surrendering to my misbehaving memory.

I was standing outside the Amtrak station, waiting to be picked up and thinking about this and that. Then I saw my wife in the car, and I remembered that I needed to ask her the last name of her former boss. At that instant, and only at that instant, the name popped into my memory.

I believe there is something like an elaborate switching-yard in the brain, where memories are lined up like trains, but they have to wait until the track-switcher lets them through. I imagine a train-yard about a million times more complicated than the ones in L.A., Paris, London, or Vienna.

The memory-switcher stalled that name until the switcher was good and ready. I saw my wife, and the train was let through. Probably about 100 years from now, the switching-yard of the brain will have been mapped carefully, and someone will be able to explain exactly what goes on with a delayed but suddenly triggered memory. All aboard!

Mandatory Minestrone

Since Congress isn't doing much anyway, I believe it should pass a federal law stipulating that all Italian restaurants in the U.S. must have minestrone soup available any time they are open. I'm very weary, and wary, of "Italian" restaurants that do not have minestrone soup on their menus. I suspect and fear that some of these restaurants worry that minestrone isn't hip enough. Imagine almost any kind of popular music without a bass-line, which isn't hip but necessary.

For minestrone purists, any time is the right time for minestrone, but for generalists, I will concede that the temperature outside should probably be below 60 degrees Fahrenheit.

The best recipe I know for minestrone is Marcella Hazan's. I've been using it for at least 20 years. When I cook guests a meal, they rarely if ever expire, but they also rarely ask for a recipe. When I serve the minestrone, they often ask for the recipe.

I'll try this from memory, but to be sure, find Hazan's book, Cooking the Italian Way. What does this have to do with poetry? Minestrone soup is a poem.

Get a big old stock pot, preferably cast iron. Chop about one half a yellow onion finely, and sautee it in olive oil and butter, quite a bit of the latter. Then chop the following vegetables finely, and add them one by one to the simmering onion, butter, and oil, stirring for a minute or so between additions: a cup of carrots, two cups of potatoes (two small potatoes, finely chopped), two cups of zucchini squash, two cups of white Italian beans (Cannelini, I think they're called--canned is fine; cook your own if you're a purist), a cup of green beans (French cut, chopped further), and three cups of finely shredded Savoy cabbage. Finally, add just 2/3 cup of Italian stewed tomatoes, with the juice. I think those are all vegetables, but double-check. By the time you stir in the last of the vegetables, you'll think you'll have a thick vegetable stew on your hands, and you will, because there's not all that much liquid yet. Don't panic, but if you get nervous, add a bit of red wine. And we're simmering, remember. Then add somewhere between 4 and 6 cups of beef broth, or vegetable broth, if you're a vegetarian. Hazan calls for six, but sometimes six seems like too much. Minestrone shouldn't be watery. Spices I like to add almost at any point are a bit of powdered garlic (or fresh and sauteed, if you like), rosemary, parsley, and pepper.

Then add the rind of Old School Parmesan or Romano cheese. Yep, right into the soup. It will not disintegrate; it will add much flavor and body. Put the lid on the pot. Leave a wee gap, if you like. Simmer.

The genius of this minestrone, in my opinion, is that it's both more rustic and more complex than what you get in most restaurants--which is usually a quick-and-dirty, tomato-dominated soup. You'll note that there's only a hint of tomato in Hazan's. Simmer it for as long as you like, hours. Keep an eye on it. Mainly, you don't want it to boil excitedly, and you don't want it to be watery.

Serve it with some bread, and with some freshly grated Parmesan on top of the soup. Red or white wine, or water, your choice. Need something more hefty (the soup holds up well as its own meal): some pasta, maybe, or some grilled Italian sausages.

Hazan's minestrone has a quasi-spiritual effect on people, even those who do not have Italian or Sicilian background of some kind. The soup comforts and nourishes. The chopping and stirring and observing take quite a while, but they're worth it--a fine food-favor to do for your family, friends, and other loved ones. A food-poem.

Traveling Piano

June 10, 2008

Our piano, a smaller kind of grand piano--parlor grand?--was finally released from the custody of storage--and then tuned.

Therefore, I can hack away at 30s and 40s ballads, Broadway songs, and very simple classical and ragtime things. I'm essentially self-taught, so I had the worst possible instructor, although my mother attempted to give me formal lessons when I was in 7th grade. It's basically chords and melodies for me. I'm good at reading the guitar chords above the melody, a short-cut for the left hand. I like the ballads in part because of their lyrics; e.g., "I got it bad, and that ain't good,' but also for the rich chords, with which one can improvise.

The piano's more interesting than the player pounding on it. It's a Chickering, made in Boston in the 1920s or 1930s. Our tuner says the Chickering craftspeople worked without a blueprint, so every piano has its own design-personality. A decal on the piano has the dealer's name--the Johnson Piano Company in Portland, Oregon. So we know the piano traveled--by train or boat, I guess--from Boston to Portland. (The photo here is of a Chickering that has a more ornate music-stand gizmo than ours.)

Then the piano's biography becomes quite fuzzy--until the piano ends up in a bar in my hometown, way up in the Sierra Nevada. They guy who owned it had bought the bar from my uncle. How the guy got the piano, nobody seems to remember. Then he got married--to a woman he later characterized as a "gold-digger," and she divorced him. So he hid or gave away lots of stuff to keep it away from her. He gave the piano to my father, probably as barter for some work. So my mother played it a bit, and I started playing it. In one octave, the notes always sounded tinny because somebody in the bar had spilled some whiskey on the hammers. After my parents died, we had the piano shipped up to the Pacific Northwest--through Portland again, as karma would have it.

It also happens to be a player-piano, and we have a huge box of the old Ampico piano rolls. Before radio got really popular, people gathered around a player piano and had a good time. But the player-part--a very complicated system that literally involves plumbing--doesn't work. We had the parts removed, and we kept them, so some day we'll restore the thing to its original state. We've already had the piano itself restored--new hammers, strings, felt, etc.

The Chickering has become like a member of the family--a member that weighs 800 pounds, even without the the player-piano equipment. I wish my two hands could get the keyboard going up to its specifications, but I do what I can. The best part is thinking about how much the piano, like a blues musician, has traveled. At the moment, it seems content in this house. It doesn't yet have those traveling blues.

Down Escalator?

So we went to Le Mall to try to outfit a guest-room. The goal was to get things to put on a new bed, not just sheets but the whole arsenal of textiles.

If I go someplace to buy something, I like go in fast and buy it, almost like a raid. The only exception is in a used bookstore, wherein a might dawdle for a few minutes. I don't mind strolling down the main avenue of a mall. I rather like that experience. There is much to observe and question. But I hate "shopping" of any kind. The person I was with likes to sort through options in a rational, linear, patient way. She and I both joke about the possibility of our different approaches' being gendered, but actually, neither of us believes they really are. Put most men in an auto-parts store or a hardware-store, and they will dawdle and graze. Send most women to an auto-parts store, and they will not "shop." They will quickly identify and buy.

To get to a textile-venue, we had to go up an escalator, which was marked "UP." I found this to be redundant. Where else would an escalator go? Of course, the problem is that when they invented and named escalators, they had to have a analogous machine that took people down, and the inventors and namers boxed themselves in by using "escalator." Thus we now have the contradictory name "Down Escalator." This is like a forward retreat. What should the "down escalator" be called? I suppose it should be called what it is called. Everybody seems used to the name. I'd prefer the descender, however. The same problem obtains in the case of elevators, of course. To go from floor 3 to floor 1, one must be elevated downward. Escher.

We did find what we sought, but I found myself immersed in another set of language I did not understand--that of beds. There are duvettes. Is that the right spelling? I don't know what they are. On my own, I would never buy such a thing. There are comforters and quilts and bed-skirts. There are mattress-pads, and in the arena of sheets, there are thread-counts. I do hope someone has written a history of beds and bedding, just as one person has written a history of salt.

At my parents' house, I slept for years on what was called "a Navy bed." It was a simple wooden frame, with wire mesh (no springs), and a mattress of sorts thrown on top. One never knew how my parents ended up with such things, but apparently this thing had once belonged to the United States Navy. My father had served in the Army Air Corps, so obviously he didn't steal it from his "employer" during WWII. However, on that bed was a genuine Army blanket, green. I think in fact that he did haul that home from Europe, but who knows? It was a pretty short blanket, but it was all wool, and it was a horrific shade of green, of which I grew quite fond.

My parents themselves slept on a double-bed, not even a queen-sized mattress, and they had attached a reading lamp to the head-board. My father never required much sleep, so they might go to bed at 10 or 11, let's say, and then he might wake up at 1:00 a.m., smoke a cigar and read a Louis L'Amour paperback "western" in bed. My mother slept through all of this activity and pollution. When I learned of this, from my brothers or my mother, I naturally thought all parents engaged in such behavior. Of course The Father would wake up, smoke a cigar, and read a book, while The Mother slept. Thus had it been so since Adam and Eve. It all made sense, just like the Down Escalator does today.

Rumpole and Keating: Brits Fit For Reading

I'm having a great time reading short stories by John Mortimer, whose protagonist is an English barrister named Rumpole. Mortimer's Rumpole novels and stories (famously adapted to the small screen by the BBC) fit into the legal-detective genre, but they're exceedingly character-driven, witty, and literate, and without being heavy-handed, Mortimer also likes to examine social issues, such as colonialism and feminism. One could say Rumpole is Britain's answer to Perry Mason, as Rumpole is a defense "attorney" and tends to win, but he's more cerebral than Mason, and Mortimer likes to raise good if basic questions about law and morality. The short stories themselves are superbly constructed, and anyone interested in short fiction generally would benefit from reading them. Rumpole also loves to quote poetry, so really, what's not to like?

I also just found H.R.F. Keating's Crime & Mystery: The 100 Best Books. Splendid. Keating (photo attached), who reviewed crime novels for the London Times (maybe he still does) and also wrote mystery fiction, lists the books chronologically, starting with Poe and ending with P.D. James's A Taste for Death in 1986, when this book of "the 100" was published.

In the preface, Keating immediately admits that his task is impossible, qualifies his selections, and acknowledges that some authors he left off the list (like Dick Francis) have earned the right to be on there. After each title, Keating writes 3-4 pages that explain what the author and the book bring to the genre that's fresh and/or especially strong, and he explains why he likes the particular book. He doesn't gloss over problems a book or author may have, and he rarely if ever spoils the plot.

I was astounded that the two Simenon books featuring Maigret that he chose were ones I hadn't read--unless, of course, I've read them under a different title--quite possible with so many editions of the translations of Maigret novels out there. So I'll need to track them down. I've probably read something by 70% of the authors and maybe 50% of the books. So in general, there's some work left to be done.

Keating has convinced me that I need to read some things by Cornell Woolrich, Celia Fremlin, and William McIvanney. He has not convinced me to try Josephine Tey, Margaret Allingham, Michael Innes, Cyril Hare, or Emma Lathen again. Books by these authors just didn't click with me.

In this gem of a reference-book, Keating has written some of the best, most insightful short essays on detective fiction available. He's a discerning but generous critic--generous, probably, not just because that may have been who he is but also because he is a novelist as well as a critic: he knew how difficult the genre was. He also has a knack for saying fresh things about old war-horses like Conan Doyle, Christie, Hammett, and Chandler.

There's no sense in quibbling with such a list of 100, but I do wonder if Keating has ever read Rudolph Fisher's The Conjure Man Dies. (Keating does include a Chester Himes novel set in Harlem.) I'd love to learn what Keating thinks of that book.

Miscellany: Hovering Sparrows, Stuff I Don't Understand, Etc.

As an amateur, I've been observing different kinds of sparrows for a long time, but I hadn't seen a sparrow hover until today. He (in this case) was perched in a very small tree, really a sapling. The wind was blowing pretty stiffly from the west. He got off the tree, seemed to fly into the wind, but beat his wings just enough to hover; meanwhile, he was looking down at the ground, on which he subsequently landed, only to take off and to hover again. It had just rained, so he might have been looking for surfaced worms in the grass, or maybe there was a hatch of bugs. But the hovering clearly had a surveillance-purpose. There are so many different kinds of sparrows that I dare not hazard a guess, or maybe I do dare: house sparrow?

Which leads me to bird-poems, which I believe I've blogged about before. So, to recap, my favorite bird-poems are Hopkins's "The Windhover," Dickinson's poem about a bird coming up her walk, and William Everson's "Canticle of the Birds." Hopkins dedicates his poem "To Christ, Our Lord," and I always suspected that he felt obligated to do that because the poem comes close to idolizing the hawk, and if you're a Jesuit priest, you're not (or so I've read) supposed to have false idols. Students tend, I think, to want to make the poem too religious. I'm not opposed to any religiosity they can demonstrate to exist in the text, not by any means. It's just that I think the poem's real strengths are its linguistic jazz and its superb observation of a hovering, flying hawk. Hopkins just nailed that poem, on every level.

I can come up only with a lame transition to the next topic, which concerns stuff I don't understand, so I'll lamely say I don't understand how Hopkins could come up with sprung rhythm, any more than I can understand how Duke Ellington came up with all those great melodies and superb chords, which mange to be lush, complex, and whimsical all at once.

By "stuff I don't understand," I mean that I don't understand how the thing came to be, or I don't understand why "we" put up with the thing, or both.

1. The two-party system. I think we need at least 5 political parties.

2. When I "end" a program on this computer, after the program is "not responding" (this is a euphemism; the program failed; it didn't work, okay?), the software asks me whether I want to "Send" or ["Do Not Send"] an "Error Report" to Microsoft. I don't believe for a minute that the report goes to Microsoft, and even if it did, what does the report contain, and who reads it, and what do they do with it? This is nonsense.

3. I don't understand why Puerto Rico isn't a state. Or a nation. I think it's time to decide, and I think the way to decide is either by a vote or a coin-flip, whichever one would lead to less violence. But hell, they get to vote in a primary but not the general election? That's right out of Kafka. Or Borges, to keep it in the hemisphere. And I don't want to hear that the issue is "complicated." I know it's complicated. It's just that it's been complicated forever, so let's flip the coin and get on with it.

4. I don't understand why journalists interview other journalists. TV journalists are always having print-journalists on their shows--meaning the print journalists become TV journalists. I'd rather they pick some citizen randomly from outside the studio and interview him or her, OR interview someone who has information (as opposed to opinions) or both. What if police-persons would arrest some criminal only if that criminal were a police person? What if a pastor or a rabbi would preach only to other faith-professionals? What if teachers would teach only other teachers? WTF?--to coin an acronym. Journalists shouldn't interview journalists, except in the rare instance in which a journalist makes news--as in biting his or her dog.

5. I have no idea how micro-wave cookers actually work.

6. Why can't we take the massive profits of oil companies, divide by two (let's say), leave the companies one half, and use the other half to buy a lot of oil all of a sudden, to drive down the price? I don't understand. Why is this so hard? Congress should just look at the numbers, say what we all know ("You guys are making way too much money"), and take some of the money back. People who have to drive to work every day, or who drive for a living, need the gas and the money more than the massive oil companies do. It's just an issue of equity. I don't understand.

7. I don't understand why English barristers still wear those wigs. It's just not a good idea anymore, and I don't want to hear about what the wigs symbolize or about tradition or wool or anything like that. You and I know it's a stupid idea that's gone on way too long. If they want to retain a nod toward tradition, they can just hang one wig from a string, or have a painting of a wig, or have a ewe in court, or whatever. Just get rid of the wigs. The Canadians still do it, too. Somehow, that's even sadder. They should wear some fur from a moose, or a hockey puck, or a piece of perma-frost tundra--something Canadian, not British.