god is not Great, Christopher Hitchens

I've written here before about my own atheism and about how, in recent years, I've felt I've had to acknowledge a tone-deafness in my previous arguments against religion. Where previously I took an avowedly antagonistic attitude towards religion (though, in truth, this attitude was not terribly important to me; mostly I just wanted the topic to go away), sweeping all sorts of beliefs aside in my disdain, now I see this kind of antagonism as an unproductive distraction. In the last few years, there have been several books by writers urgently seeking to not only discredit religion, but also to advance the atheistic viewpoint and to defend "reason", or rationality, from the forces of darkness. Though I often agree with many of the basic points these authors tend to make, my essential position is that the focus on religion by these writers is misplaced. Indeed, if the elimination of religion or, more realistically, the lessening of its influence, especially the influence of its more extreme manifestations, is the goal, then they are taking exactly the wrong approach. But to these writers and others the matter is urgent: they are worried about the survival of the species. Well, let me tell you: in my view, there are numerous good reasons to be worried. But such concern, if genuine, should focus attention on our disastrous political and economic situation, yet it rarely does.

Everything else being equal, I’d like to have the time to read all of these recent books, pursuant to a lengthy essay on the topic. But everything else isn't equal, and I don't have that kind of time. Other, more intellectually substantial books are more important. However, against all expectations, I did recently read Christopher Hitchens’ god is not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything. My in-laws have a copy, so it was easily available, and I admit to having had a sort of mordant curiosity about it. I also admit I came into it not expecting much by way of argument, but in fact it's much worse than I imagined it would be. The book is quite terrible, for a variety of reasons. But the things that make it bad (and to my mind, virtually unpublishable) are not necessarily those elements that make up my main problems with it and with the popular so-called “atheist books” it exemplifies. It's bad not least because it's hard to figure what Hitchens really thinks he's doing with the book. He's said that, in effect, he's been writing the book his whole life (the link is to an interview, but he also says as much in the acknowledgments). You'd think he'd have taken more care with it. It's full of sloppy thinking, awkward writing, adolescent point-making, and of course, his stylistic trademarks: withering, sometimes glib scorn, and ostentatious displays of erudition (not to mention outright errors: he has Saddam Hussein invading Iran in 1979, rather than 1980). Occasionally he gets out of his own way long enough to tell us about an interesting historical event or figure, but these passages are the exception.

Who does Hitchens think his audience is? Through the first half of the book, I was inclined to think that his intended readership must be, aside from his fanboys and other rabid atheists, those secular people, such as perhaps myself, who he might view as apologists for religion (as with his familiar accusation that the Left is "soft on fascism"). This seems to be the only way to take the sneering tone of the first few chapters, including the silly repetition of the book's childish sub-title (in italics, naturally) and the overall sloppiness of the writing in those pages. And yet, in Chapter Eleven ("The Tawdriness of the Miraculous and the Decline of Hell"), he attempts to suggest that he might have some sense of what it might be like for one to "lose faith". He writes about how he'd once been a Marxist and now is not:

For a good part of my life, I had a share in this idea that I have not yet quite abandoned. But there came a time when I could not protect myself, and indeed did not wish to protect myself, from the onslaught of reality. Marxism, I conceded, had its intellectual and philosophical and ethical glories, but they were in the past. Something of the heroic period might be perhaps retained, but the fact had to be faced: there was no longer any guide to the future. In addition, the very concept of a total solution had led to the most appalling human sacrifices, and to the invention of excuses for them. Those of us who had sought a rational alternative to religion had reached a terminus that was comparably dogmatic. What else was to be expected of something that was produced by the close cousins of chimpanzees? Infallibility? Thus, dear reader, if you have come this far and found your own faith undermined—as I hope—I am willing to say that to some extent I know what you are going through.

A few comments. First, it is not an original observation to make, that Marxism became something of its own religion, with warring sects and so on. Though, of course, not all Marxists had such religious fervor, or felt the need to see Marx's (or Lenin's, or whoever's) writings as gospel, foretelling history. I find it interesting that Hitchens essentially says he did. Second, the sentence about those "who had sought a rational alternative to religion" is a problem. It implies that it is primarily religion itself, rather than economic and political conditions, that those who followed Marx were trying to escape or change. Third, the reference to "close cousins of chimpanzees"--the book is packed full of phrases like this: asides, parenthetical or otherwise, in which Hitchens lamely drums home one of his favorite points. In this case, the point that humans are products of evolution and not godly design. I certainly do not object to this point; I agree with it. But this is rhetorical overkill and limp writing, and seems designed to provoke, not convince. (He does this constantly: I can't tell you the number of times he derisively uses the word "mammal" to refer to some King or religious figure.) He says, "if you have come this far and found your own faith undermined—as I hope. . .": Is there any chance he believes that such a "confession", with such a reference to "chimpanzees", will persuade anyone who is a believer? Finally, is there really any chance he believes that anyone's faith might be undermined by this book? I find it hard to credit. He can't be that delusional.

You may note that the passage I've excerpted has nothing to do with either "the miraculous" or "the decline of Hell". This is another, in this case relatively minor, problem with the book. It appears to be organized according to topics (like, "The Metaphysical Claims of Religion"), and he does address the ideas that seem advertised by the chapter headings within the relevant chapter. But many passages, such as the one featuring this confession, have little to do with the immediate subject and feel tacked on as a result, as if he had a body of anecdotes and points he felt he had to include, but couldn't fit anywhere else.

Turning to the book's main argument, on page four, he lists for us the "four irreducible objections to religious faith" (numerals are supplied by me):

1. that it wholly misrepresents the origins of man and the cosmos,
2. that because of this original error it manages to combine the maximum of servility with the maximum of solipsism,
3. that it is both the result and the cause of dangerous sexual repression, and
4. that it is ultimately grounded on wish-thinking.

This is sort of an odd list. It's weird, structurally, that he provides this list, but then rarely returns to it (I believe he only refers to it one other time), instead choosing to harp on the fact that religion is "man-made" (which, of course, it is). That is, he doesn't bother to make his book, the book he's been writing his whole life, achieve any sort of structural coherence. The four points themselves seem to simultaneously say too much and too little. For example, I have no trouble with the first point on the face of it, but Hitchens assumes that this surface meaning trumps everything else. He appears to imagine that religions are constructed from the origin myth on down, and that people who have faith, who choose faith, and who maintain their faith, have that faith based on how much they believe in the factual truth of their religion's origin myth and other claims. That is, Hitchens, just like Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins and so many others, is fixated on the factual truth-claims of religion, whereas it seems to me that faith resides elsewhere, outside of the realm of factual claims, and that religious practice has more to do with faith communities and tradition than with factual truth-claims. There is no denying that plenty of religious people and groups do try to make factual truth-claims, claims that often have no validity whatsoever. But the use of these claims is political. The people making them no doubt seriously believe in their content, but they are resorting to such arguments for political reasons.

Personally, I agree with plenty of Hitchens' local points, but many of these points are barely worth making, or are often quite beside the putative larger point. He pretends to be arguing against faith, when instead he spends the bulk of his book showing the crimes of the church, of organized religion. So, if we look at his second point, that the original errant origin myths have led to "the maximum of servility" and "the maximum of solipsism", we can see he overshoots his claim again. As if it's religion only that leads to the "maximum" of either servility or solipsism, and as if these in turn depend on the belief in inaccurate origin myths. He gives examples in the book of this servility and solipsism, but he seems to believe that simply making the observation and providing examples is enough. It's not. He is presumably trying to persuade people who do not see things his preferred way. His task, one would think, is to actually attempt to make an argument that could conceivably persuade. He does not undertake this task. The other two points are handled similarly.

Now I want to address, at length, my real problem with the book, over and above my assessment of its tone or its sloppiness, though, to be sure, they both come into play here. This problem is of course political. In chapter one, Hitchens quotes Marx against the idea that religion offers true "consolation" to those in need, and as a common example where believers have misunderstood or misrepresented what non-believers think (in this case, Marx's view of religion, which is often reduced to the dismissive "religion is the opium of the people", or "opiate of the masses" in the version I'm familiar with). Here is the quote, from Marx's Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right, as supplied by Hitchens:

Religious distress is at the same time the expression of real distress and the protest against real distress. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, just as it is the spirit of a spiritless situation. It is the opium of the people.

The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is required for their real happiness. The demand to give up the illusions about its condition is the demand to give up a condition that needs illusions. The criticism of religion is therefore in embryo the criticism of the vale of woe, the halo of which is religion. Criticism has plucked the imaginary flowers from the chain, not so that man will wear the chain without any fantasy or consolation but so that he will shake off the chain and cull the living flower.

If Hitchens wants to show that Marx took religion seriously, this is fine. However, the quote is interesting for another reason, one that I doubt is intended by Hitchens. It gets at part of what I think is misguided about his book and the entire project of his sort of anti-religion argument (and indeed his shrill warmongering in recent years). These are the two key sentences for me: "The demand to give up the illusions about its condition is the demand to give up a condition that needs illusions. The criticism of religion is therefore in embryo the criticism of the vale of woe, the halo of which is religion." Hitchens wants Marx to be saying, simply, that the removal of the illusion of happiness provided by religion is necessary in order for real happiness to be attained. It seems clear to me that Marx here is saying that the conditions of existence ("the vale of woe") themselves prevent "real happiness"--which is why people resort to "illusory happiness", in this case religion (though one might include drugs, art, video games, etc). Thus, it is first the conditions that must be changed. As always, this points to solutions in the political-economic realm.

In fact, current politics is a major problem with this book, though Hitchens pretends that it's not. This becomes apparent as early as chapter two ("Religion Kills"). In this chapter, he tells us of a panel discussion he participated in, just before 9/11, during which Dennis Prager challenged him to "imagine [himself] in a strange city" near twilight, in which he sees coming toward him "a large group of men". Would he "feel safer, or less safe" if he learned "that they were just coming from a prayer meeting?" This is supposed to be a yes/no question, and I agree with Hitchens that it clearly isn't. The question is stupid. Hitchens' answer is that he doesn't need to be hypothetical, since he can draw from his personal experience in "Belfast, Beirut, Bombay, Belgrade, Bethlehem, and Baghdad" and say why he "would feel immediately threatened" if a group of men so approached him, coming from some kind of religious meeting. And then he describes such an experience that he's had in each of these cities. (There is something about the manner in which Hitchens draws from his personal experience that has always irritated me--in a sense, it points to one of the things wrong with him as a public figure. Everything is personal, how ever much he rails against "personal politics".) After his Bethlehem anecdote, he squeezes in this paragraph:

I once heard the late Abba Eban, one of Israel's more polished and thoughtful diplomats and statesmen, give a talk in New York. The first thing to strike the eye about the Israeli-Palestinian dispute, he said, was the ease of its solubility. From this arresting start he went on to say, with the authority of a former foreign minister and UN representative, that the essential point was a simple one. Two peoples of roughly equivalent size had a claim to the same land. The solution was, obviously, to create two states side by side. Surely something so self-evident was within the wit of man to encompass? And so it would have been, decades ago, if the messianic rabbis and mullahs and priests could have been kept out of it. But the exclusive claims to god-given authority, made by hysterical clerics on both sides and further stoked by Armageddon-minded Christians who hope to bring on the Apocalypse (preceded by the death or conversion of all Jews), have made the situation insufferable, and put the whole of humanity in the position of hostage to a quarrel that now features the threat of nuclear war. Religion poisons everything. As well as a menace to civilization, it had become a threat to human survival.

This paragraph is remarkably ignorant, or cynical, I can't decide which. I'm not going to try to tell you that religion plays no role whatsoever in the conflict over Palestine/Israel. It does play a role. But this conflict is fundamentally not about religion. It's about land, it's about water, it's about dispossession, it's about racism, it's about nationalism, it's about Zionism, it's about colonialism. It's about Israel as a U.S. client state and its regional role in the global maintenance of capitalism. It's about oil. In short, it's about politics. The idea that, if religion were removed from the occasion, all other considerations would magically cease to exist is absurd. (And if religion were no factor, and the political differences disappeared, how is it that the "two-state solution" is still the preferred one? Presumably without either religion or politics, everyone would be free to exist in one state, no?) It's disturbing that a figure in the position of Eban would say such thing, though I realize it's unfortunately a fairly commonplace view. It's more disturbing that Christopher Hitchens would buy into it, though I'm not sure why I continue to expect him to know better.

Then he comes to Baghdad. He tells us that he is not "going to elaborate a position on the overthrow of Saddam Hussein in April 2003". And then proceeds to make a number of assertions (as usual, unsupported--Christopher Hitchens doesn't need to cite evidence for anything; he simply knows what's going on), assertions that depend on a certain ridiculous, long discredited position on what he benignly calls the "overthrow of Saddam Hussein" (some of us refer to this as the invasion of Iraq). Throughout the book, as noted, he conflates the uses of religion by the powerful, with the practices and beliefs of those who are religious. Here, he seeks to disabuse those who would refer to Hussein's regime as "secular" by listing the numerous ways in which the regime was religiously inclined. He writes: "at least since his calamitous invasion of Iran in 1979 [sic], which led to furious accusations from the Iranian theocracy that he was an 'infidel,' Saddam Hussein had decked out his whole rule [...] as one of piety and jihad." And so on. Does it really not occur to Hitchens that Hussein, one of the more cynical rulers in recent history, might have been using religion for his own powerful ends? I'm not a student of Hussein's regime, but Hitchens needs to make an argument, and, again, he simply doesn't bother. He doesn't notice this cynical possibility: he simply makes an assertion, one that is not backed up by anything other than a list of facts, which he assumes can have played no other role than the one he assigns them. No citations of any kind are offered.

From here, he moves on to the invasion of Iraq itself. The next few pages are simply astonishing displays of a writer framing a story to suit his own needs, the implications of actual facts notwithstanding. Here is an excerpt:

At a minimum, it can be agreed by all that the Iraqi people had endured much in the preceding thirty-five years of war and dictatorship, that the Saddam regime could not have gone on forever as an outlaw system within international law, and therefore that--whatever objections there might be to the actual means of "regime change"--the whole society deserved a breathing space in which to consider reconstruction and reconciliation. Not one single minute of breathing space was allowed.

Everybody knows the sequel. The supporters of al-Qaeda, led by a Jordanian jailbird named Abu Musub al-Zarqawi, launced a frenzied campaign of murder and sabotage. [...] They directed the most toxic part of their campaign of terror at fellow Muslims. The mosques and funeral processions of the long-oppressed Shiite majority were blown up. [...] Before long, Shia death squads, often garbed in police uniforms, were killing and torturing random members of the Sunni Arab faith. The surreptitious influence of the neighboring "Islamic Republic" of Iran was not difficult to detect, and in some Shia areas also it became dangerous to be an unveiled woman or a secular person. Iraq boasts quite a long history of intermarriage and intercommunal cooperation. But a few years of this hateful dialectic soon succeeded in creating an atmosphere of misery, distrust, hostility, and sect-based politics. Once again, religion had poisoned everything.

Note, again, that Hitchens is now employing "regime change" as the accepted reason for the invasion; apparently he is no longer interested in defending the many other rationales that were used at different times as justification, by himself included. He observes that Iraqis have "endured much"--something we can indeed all agree on--but he has no apparent interest in other facts, beyond the nature of Hussein's regime, which have some bearing on the matter. He calls the regime "an outlaw system within international law", with no apparent irony, given his embrace of his new American citizenship, but also with no acknowledgment of the shifting requirements Iraq was forced to meet during the 12 years of UN sanctions, murderously manipulated by the United States and Great Britain. Nowhere in his account of "the sequel" does he mention the U.S. attack, the subsequent occupation, or the continued presence of American soldiers, which presence has been consistently cited by a huge majority of Iraqis as the chief reason for the continuing violence. No, it was for Hitchens simply a matter of sectarian fanatics refusing to allow the proper period of breathing space necessary for other Iraqis to . . . to what? Build an independent, pluralistic, liberal democracy? Does Hitchens actually believe that the United States was going to let anything like this happen? Or does Hitchens think that the Iraqis should be thankful for the removal of Saddam Hussein and simply welcome their new U.S.-appointed, U.S.-subservient government? He doesn't say. Granted, his book is not about the War, but his overall claims depend to a large extent on the truth-value of what he says. If he is hung up on the truth-claims of religion, he cannot expect to get away with making such assertions as if they are facts that are self-evident. (Incidentally, in one of the passages I've elided above, Hitchens refers to a letter Zarqawi sent to Osama bin Laden. He gives a State Department url for this letter in the back of the book. This is the only citation supplied for his account of the war on Iraq.)

In the final chapter of the book ("The Need for a New Enlightenment"), we learn of the source of Hitchens' fear for the survival of the species and thus his sense of urgency in writing this book at this time. "[T]he confrontation between faith and civilization" is now "on a whole new footing", since "a version of the Inquisition is about to lay hands on a nuclear weapon". He is, of course, referring to Iran. It is perhaps appropriate that this book should end with such an assertion as part of its concluding remarks. Of Iran, he writes that with "the stultified rule of religion, the great and inventive and sophisticated civilization of Persia has been steadily losing its pulse". He recites a brief litany of ills: exiled and censored artists and intellectuals; sexual repression; poorly educated youth. "After a quarter century of theocracy . . . [m]odernity and technology have passed it by, save for the one achievement of nuclearization." Do I need to tell you that Hitchens provides no evidence for any of this? It used to be, writes Hitchens, that

those who adopted the clerical path had to pay a heavy price for it. Their societies would decay, their economies contract, their best minds would go to waste or take themselves elsewhere, and they would be consistently outdone by societies that had learned to tame and sequester the religious impulse. A country like Afghanistan would simply rot. . .

All that changed, of course, with 9/11, and now with Iran's alleged "nuclearization". As with his description of the aftermath of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, Hitchens displays no interest in, or even awareness of, the role of the West in any of this. Of course he knows about the U.S./British overthrow of Mohammad Mosaddeq in 1953 and the subsequent role of the Shah as regional enforcer; he knows about the U.S. funding and training of the mujahideen against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, and the subsequent blowback. He knows these facts, but he refuses to address them, or to even mention anything else that takes away from his grand narrative of theocratic evil, operating in irrational isolation, against the forces of light and reason. Though he is prepared to eagerly accept the existence of ancient hatreds (as between the Sunni and Shia), he consistently refuses to consider that the extensive activities, over at least 60 years, of the United States in Iran, in Afghanistan, in Iraq (and before them, the British, and other Western powers), have had any effect whatsoever on these places, have had any effect on the options that are available to the people living in them. With Iran and "nuclearization" he continues his embarrassing tendency in recent years to believe almost anything about his declared enemy. Of course, Hitchens' book was published before the NIE findings made public in December, which reported that Iran had "halted its nuclear weapons program in 2003". I'm skeptical about the existence of such a program even in 2003, but I certainly cannot hold Hitchens responsible for knowing about these findings. However, I can hold him responsible for his willingness to jump to conclusions and his credulity in the face of highly dubious official claims. Well before the NIE report, there were countless pieces of evidence that pointed to the fact that Iran is not pursuing a nuclear weapons program. But Hitchens, it seems, wants to believe that it is, wants to have justification for his hate. Do I need to point out the irony?

Towards the beginning of this post, I wrote that god is not Great is not just a bad book, but "virtually unpublishable". Why do I say this? Certainly I disagree with a large amount of the book, but my disagreement does not make a book bad or make it unpublishable. I've tried to show why I think that the arguments presented by Christopher Hitchens in god is Not Great are at best inadequate and where I think the book exemplifies many of the problems with the anti-religion argument. I hope I've been able to demonstrate the flaws in some of his arguments, such as they are. On the litblogs we see a lot of hand-wringing about the current state of publishing. And it's not uncommon to see laments about the quality of our public discourse; I've certainly made my share of such comments here. Books are published all the time that add nothing but fear and bile to this discourse (feel free to supply the title of your favorite right-wing screed). Hitchens' book is not quite as bad as all that. But what does the book add to any discussion? There is nothing in god is not Great that can't be found elsewhere, other than the ubiquitous presence of Christopher Hitchens himself, with his rhetorical winks and nudges. The book is poorly argued, tonally inconsistent, and frankly childish, from the title and sub-title on down. The inconsistency in tone--as if he intended to destroy religion once and for all with the power of his scorn, but then occasionally realized that he needed to make a feint in the direction of persuasion, with disingenuous displays of humility thrown in for good measure--is part of what I mean when I say the book is sloppily written. For me, these qualities ought to mean that the book should have been sent back for considerable re-tooling before it got anywhere near being published. And yet it was not only a best-seller, but was nominated for a National Book Award. The latter in particular is another tiny sign of an intellectual culture in poor health. Hitchens may say that he'd been effectively writing the book his whole life, but it has the feel of something slapped together quickly in order to cash in on a trend.

Noted: Marcel Proust

From The Guermantes Way:

Each of our actions, our words, our attitudes is cut off from the "world," from the people who have not directly perceived it, by a medium the permeability of which is infinitely variable and remains unknown to ourselves; having learned from experience that some important utterance which we eagerly hoped would be disseminated [...] has at once, often because of our very anxiety, been hidden under a bushel, how immeasurably less do we suppose that some tiny word which we ourselves have forgotten, which may not even have been uttered by us but formed along its way by the imperfect refraction of a different word, could be transported, without ever being halted in its progress, infinite distances [...] and succeed in diverting at our expense the banquet of the gods! What we remember of our conduct remains unknown to our nearest neighbor; what we have forgotten that we ever said, or indeed what we never did say, flies to provoke hilarity in another planet, and the image that other people form of our actions and demeanor no more resembles our own than an inaccurate tracing, on which for the black line we find an empty space and for a blank area an inexplicable contour, resembles the original drawing. It may happen however that what has not been transcribed is a non-existent feature which only our purblind self-esteem reveals to us, and what seems to us to have been added does indeed belong to us, but so quintessentially that it escapes us. So that this strange print which seems to us to have so little resemblance to us bears sometimes the same stamp of truth, unflattering, certainly, but profound and useful, as an X-ray photograph. Not that that is any reason why we should recognize ourselves in it. (pp. 368-369)

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Noted: Marcel Proust

From The Guermantes Way by Marcel Proust (translation by Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright):

. . . I realised the impossibility of obtaining any direct and certain knowledge of whether Françoise loved or hated me. And thus it was she who first gave me the idea that a person does not, as I had imagined, stand motionless and clear before our eyes with his merits, his defects, his plans, his intentions with regard to ourselves (like a garden at which we gaze through a railing with all its borders spread out before us), but is a shadow which we can never penetrate, of which there can be no such thing as direct knowledge, with respect to which we form countless beliefs, based upon words and sometimes actions, neither of which can give us anything but inadequate and as it proves contradictory information--a shadow behind which we can alternately imagine, with equal justification, that there burns the flame of hatred and of love. (pp. 81-82)

Notes on the Israel Lobby

I've been meaning to post something about the "Israel Lobby" for months. Instead of simply writing the thing and being done with it, I got ambitious, envisioning a huge, magisterial, all-encompassing post. Meanwhile, however, it's not as if the topic has lost any of its relevance. And then last week, Lenin at Lenin's Tomb posted exactly the kind of entry I had in mind, saying much of what I had intended to say. You should read it. I've tried to organize my own remaining notes as follows.

Israel is a perversely difficult topic of conversation in the United States. It is even more difficult to talk about Israel's role as an ally of the United States or about the role played by the "Israel Lobby" in shaping public debate or public policy. Nobody wants to be accused of anti-Semitism. My take on the Israel Lobby is that of course it is a powerful interest group lobbying members of Congress. I think the Lobby does have undue influence on aspects of American policy, and especially on the quality and content of American public debate. My view is that its lobbying achievements, such as they are, are largely at the level of stifling debate within Congress--as Lenin points out, this is a key reason why the right wing courted the Lobby in the first place. And it might just be possible that if debate in Congress could ever rise to the level of common sense or decency, then that august body might be able to put pressure on the executive. But the fact is that very few members of Congress question the basic aims of American foreign policy. (I wonder how many of them even understand it.) The few that occasionally make some noise about our role in the Middle East, or our relationship with Israel, have indeed run into problems. (Cynthia McKinney is but one example.)

But to leap from this limited exercise of influence to the larger point, that the Lobby determines American foreign policy, to the detriment of both Israel and American so-called "national interests", is to seriously misunderstand the purposes behind the policy (or even to not grasp the facts themselves). The argument presented by John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, first in their hugely controversial article nearly two years ago in the London Review of Books, now expanded into book-length with The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy (which I have not read), does just that. Such is the debased nature of our public discourse that Mearsheimer and Walt have been subjected to the customary accusations of anti-Semitism, even in normally level-headed places. It somehow never occurred to many people that such a conclusion could be reached without the presence of anti-Semitism. Nor did it seem to occur to these sorts critics that the thesis might simply be wrong for other reasons. (Though of course the accusation of anti-Semitism is so often merely a rhetorical ploy anyway, so it's likely that such critics simply don't care.)

It was on the occasion of Leslie H. Gelb's review of the book in The New York Times Book Review in September of last year, that I began to assemble my notes on the Lobby. To his credit, Gelb does not accuse the authors of anti-Semitism. He disagrees with the book’s premise, but he takes it seriously. He makes some good points, but he also operates under some questionable assumptions. Since Gelb is a former Times columnist and President Emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations, his long review can be seen as an official response, of sorts, to the Mearsheimer/Walt thesis, as well as an official attempt to reinforce the preferred view of things. In his review, Gelb observes that, after an opening in which they explain that the Lobby is "certainly not a cabal or conspiracy that 'controls' U.S. foreign policy", Mearsheimer and Walt offer what Gelb says are largely unsubstantiated claims of the Lobby’s dominance. From there, Gelb proceeds to explain what he sees as the correct view. He begins fairly well:

At one level, this argument is obviously correct. Of course, America's close ties with Israel compund its problems with Arabs and Muslims. But at a deeper level, one ignored by Mearsheimer and Walt, these problems would not disappear or seriously lessen if Washington abandoned Israel. The main source of anti-Americansism and anti-American terrorism is America's deep ties with highly unpopular regimes in countries like Saudi Arabia and Egypt, not to mention the war in Iraq.

So far, so good. But he goes on to make several demonstrably false statements, and reveals various working assumptions. Before I get to those, let me excerpt from Lenin's post now, on the purposes of the Israel alliance, and the problems that the war against Iraq poses for the thesis:

The American Right has latched onto Israel precisely because it helps them regulate discourse and win hegemonic battles. It facilitates the repackaging of an aggressive programme of imperial domination and extreme global violence as the defense of the ideals of democracy against - what do you know? - anti-Semites. [...] people who are primarily concerned with stifling internal left-wing dissent, and critical analysis of US policy, have used Israel as a crucial alibi in that struggle. And these lobbies and think-tanks, like the Hoover Institute and the American Enterprise Institute, are recipients of huge amounts of corporate cash. When it comes to corporate America, Israel can't compete in terms either of dollars or ideological reproduction. And this is a problem for Mearsheimer and Walt throughout their book. They list people and institutions as belonging to an 'Israel Lobby', even where their activity isn't really lobbying, even where they aren't funded by Israel, even where their motive has rather little to do with Israel. The neoconservatives support Israel, but the key institutions in which they work are auxiliaries of US capital, not of the Knesset. They are unable to explain anywhere why these pro-Israel neoconservatives have the weight that they do (and why being pro-Israel matters to US capital). This is because they have no conception of class power, a reductionist conception of the 'national interest' and a flimsy account of ideology.

Perhaps the least persuasive of all examples is that of Iraq. Although, Mearsheimer and Walt concede that the US had powerful motives to invade Iraq, they insist that the Israel Lobby was the element without which it would not have happened. It is undoubtedly true that supporters of Israel were also strong supporters of the invasion of Iraq. It is true that Israel has also regarded Iraq as an enemy. It is true that Israeli interests were involved here. It is true that pro-Israel organisations 'lobbied' or simply vocalised hard on behalf of war with Iraq. Yet, if this is supposed to trump - not merely complement - US 'national interests', it is necessary for Mearsheimer and Walt to minimise the benefits of war. Their dismissal of the reasoning that holds control of the oil spigot to be a key goal is roughly as follows: if they wanted oil, they could have invaded Saudi Arabia, and anyway the oil companies would rather have traded with Saddam than overthrow him. This part of the argument is dealt with in a rather perfunctory fashion, but it demands considerably more attention than they are prepared to allot it. For example, it would appear as if the authors did not realise that Saudi Arabia is already subordinate. There is no need for an invasion force to trundle across the Nejd. Actually, one of the problems that Iraq solved was to enable America's troops to move out of Saudi Arabia, where their presence caused some trouble. Saddam Hussein represented, by contrast, the last outpost of Arab nationalism. Successfully conquering Iraq and installing a pro-American client state with a thin veneer of democratic rule, which must have looked incredibly easy after the initial cake-walk in Afghanistan, would have decisively altered the regional balance of power in America's interests. It would also have provided a model for further expansion. The aggressive right-wingers who contrived this policy explained their rationale: in the absence of a serious superpower rival, there was a brief window in which the US could powerfully assert itself as the next century's sole power, demonstrate its ability to fight and win multiple wars, and secure its dominance for the long-term.

In light of sensible, acute analysis like this, it increasingly appears that those "experts", like Gelb, who the press turns to for insight into these matters, either themselves don't understand American foreign policy, including the nature of the close relationship between the United States and Israel (recall Chomsky's many sarcastic comments over the years about how clueless Kissinger always seemed to be), or else they simply see it as necessary to reinforce widely held misconceptions. I'm focusing on Gelb, though his review is by now out of date, because his response is symptomatic of typical mainstream discourse--at least that discourse that has some claim to respectability (alas, truly typical mainstream discourse rarely rises to this level). In his review, Gelb repeats nonsense about Saddam Hussein's "quest" for nuclear arms and claims that "the more we know, the clearer it is" that Bush went to war to correct his father's "blunder" in allowing Hussein to remain in power in 1991. It doesn't seem to occur to him--or, more likely, perhaps, he is unwilling to admit--that it was at that time in the ruling class's interests ("national interests" as they are more generally known) to keep Hussein there. He says that "the greatest strategic bond between" the United States and Israel is that the latter is "one of the few nations in the world that share American values and interests, a true democracy." This sort of garbage is only true if, again, you correctly read the phrase "American values and interests" as those interests of the ruling class we continue to call "national interests". Gelb asserts that the U.S. has no choice but to ally itself not only with Israel, but also with the repressive regimes in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and elsewhere. This is because, he tells us, the alternative is far worse; there is, he says, no source of "moderate" views in the Middle East (no "center"). This sort of assertion is typical. And, typically, it elides an entire half-century and more of American political activity in the Middle East. Indeed, Gelb and the establishment he represents have no interest in anyone knowing or remembering this history. For example, he writes:

It's important to remember that the shah of Iran was overthrown not because he enjoyed good relations with Israel, which he did, but because a majority of his own people came to hate his regime and also his ties to the United States. There was no sustainable moderate center between the shah and the fanatical mullahs. And the lack of such a center is precisely what Washington needs to worry about now in places like Saudi Arabia and Egypt.

Of course, much of this paragraph is true. But it intentionally leaves out a lot (and there are numerous other similar paragraphs in the review).  Gelb doesn't address why the shah's people hated his regime, or why he had good relations with Israel, or what variety of purposes the shah's regime, combined with Israel, served for American interests in the Middle East (for some details on this, see Mahmood Mamdani's excellent book, Good Muslim, Bad Muslim: America, the Cold War, and the Roots of Terror). "There was no sustainable moderate center between the shah and the fanatical mullahs." "Sustainable" is an interesting word, and the words "moderate center" are nearly devoid of content (these kinds of words only ever refer to politicians or movements which are amenable to U.S. demands). What there was, in fact, was a left-wing revolutionary movement--a movement, to be sure, that finally ended up being destroyed by the "fanatical mullahs"--but what might have been the role of the U.S. in all of this? How does a democratic movement "sustain" itself under continuous threat of destruction from abroad?

The Mearsheimer/Walt Israel Lobby thesis suffers from a lot of the same problems that seem to face most Americans--especially educated Americans--in trying to make sense of U.S. foreign policy.  As Lenin puts it, they have a "reductionist conception of the 'national interest'".  This means, essentially, that they buy the basic rhetoric used by the ruling class to gain support for its actions and policies.  It is impossible to fully grasp the purposes behind American foreign (and, really, domestic) policy, if you persist in believing that the United States is a functioning democracy (and that, in general, it seeks to inculcate democratic values abroad); that the so-called "national interests" resemble what might actually be in the interests of the people of the nation, as opposed to simply those interests of the ruling class; that capitalist and neoliberal twaddle about free trade has anything to do with ideas of "freedom" as understood by actual people; etc.  It is belief in these kinds of ideas that allows many to accept notions of "humanitarian intervention" without investigating too deeply into other reasons that exist behind a given action.  These other beliefs are necessary to sustain the illusion that American foreign policy is intended to serve the interests of the American people, which then forces one to look to other causes which prevent these interests from being successfully served--in this case, the Israel Lobby.  So, for example, if you identify one such "interest" as "security from acts of terrorism", and you observe that the alliance with Israel, and the war against Iraq, has clearly only made matters worse, it is then all too easy to conclude that the alliance does not "serve" American "interests".  From this basic error, Mearsheimer and Walt then notice the very real impact of the Israel Lobby in such areas as the stifling of public debate, and leap to the conclusion that the Lobby determines that unsuccessful policy, and then are able to locate piles of circumstantial and anecdotal evidence in support of that conclusion. These kinds of errors are common, and themselves only serve to mystify and deflect and ultimately to aid the ruling class in its endless class war against the rest of us.

Listening Notes

Animal Collective – Strawberry Jam. In retrospect, it seems churlish to complain about a band’s "direction" when they are capable of a record as delightful as Strawberry Jam. Suddenly, I've become obsessed with it. Its surfaces do seem a bit shinier, smoother, than other Animal Collective music, and the vocals are definitely cleaner, clearer, and higher in the mix. But still, this music is addictive, and, as ever, the sense of controlled chaos is thrilling. "Peacebone", "For Reverend Green", and "Fireworks" are the standouts. Also, there's rarely much cause to quote lyrics from an Animal Collective song, but somehow this line from "Peacebone" makes me happy: "The other side of takeout is mildew on rice. "

Robert Wyatt – Comicopera. I parenthetically highlighted "Be Serious" in this post, but in fact it's my least favorite song on this excellent album. One might think this is because the opening lyrics are trite: "I really envy Christians, I envy Muslims too/It must be great to be so sure/Like a top Hindu or Jew." But really, it's Wyatt's singing of these opening words that irritates the hell out of me. Wyatt's voice was an acquired taste for me, and I've come to really appreciate it and his phrasing. But it's annoying here. The rest of the album is great; I'm not sure I think it's as good as Cuckooland, but I'm not complaining. It's pretty much alternating with Strawberry Jam in the competition for my obsessive attentions of late.

Neko Case. In my short wrap-up of my year in music, I'd expected to expend more words than I did on Neko Case's wonderful, enigmatic Fox Confessor Brings the Flood. I didn't even say anything about her beautiful voice. But then, what is there to say? (A question that is a sure sign that, once again, I've drawn a blank.) On Scraps' advice, I'm moving backwards through her catalog, one album at a time. To that end, I've picked up Blacklisted. Early verdict (after about a half-dozen listens): quite good. As expected it has more of a country feel.

Deerhoof – Friend Opportunity. I'd meant to say this in the earlier post, but I completely forgot: after having trouble with this album all year, I spent some quality time with it in November and December (which is to say that I listened to it over and over again for several weeks, alongside my continuous play of Fox Confessor Brings the Flood, much to Aimée's dismay), and now I don't know what my problem was. This is perfectly good Deerhoof music. Which is to say that it's mostly great. It's very short, which I think was part of my problem with it (but then my complaint about Runners Four was that it was too long, so what the fuck?). The first nine songs speed by, the songs seeming to run together, before we get to the comparatively aimless and quiet (but plenty interesting) 12-minute closer, "Look Away". I'm sure I wasn't even paying attention with those several early spins (excuses: iPod, work), and the next thing I'd know the album was over, leaving me with nothing to hang a verdict on. In fact, those first nine songs, beginning with the great "The Perfect Me", and including "+81", "Choco Fight", and "Whither the Invisible Birds", are exhilarating. It helps their cause to have Satomi Matsuzaki on lead vocals. (Greg Saunier's lead on "Cast Off Crown" comes dangerously close to generic indie Death Cab vocal, thus amounting to the weakest aspect of the nine songs, but even that song brings the serious guitar and drums glory).

Other recent acquisitions: new cds from Jackie-O Motherfucker (Valley of Fire) and Six Organs of Admittance (Shelter from the Ash) (net cd reduction: 54). Neither of these albums break new ground for these artists, but I'm enjoying them. The Jackie-O cd, I think, is more interesting than the last couple of have been. The Six Organs is not quite as good as either School of the Flower or The Sun Awakens, but those are both great albums, so that's ok (incidentally, the Pitchfork review of the new one is just terrible).

Music writing elsewhere:
Some great year-end thoughts from janedark. On M.I.A.; on Britney Spears (with a nice paragraph on Neil Young's archival Massey Hall concert album); on Miranda Lambert & Taylor Swift and pop critics and what they notice; on Lil Wayne and the possible "near-future" for the album as a form.

Also on M.I.A. and The Wire and the idea of "Neoliberal Grotesque", see I Hear a New World.

And a while ago, John at uTopianTurtletop had a thoughtful response to Carl Wilson's new book about Celine Dion and the question of taste (Let's Talk About Love: A Journey to the End of Taste). One quote that appealed to me from John's post:

Persuasive history of how elitist sensibility shifted from defending cultural hierarchies (classics high, pop genres low) to seeking the unattainable ideal of cultural omnivore-ism. This nails me to my wall. I have a humanist defense of at least partial omnivore-ism, which I don’t think Carl would disagree with: People love their cultures for reasons; the more we can understand why and how others do, the more we can love as well; more love is good. Let’s love!

I know I've read some good stuff that I'm leaving out, but my back hurts and I'm tired, so I'm out...

Debtor Nation

Michael Hudson is a name I've been seeing a lot of lately, particularly through the recommendations of Stan Goff. Hudson is a Wall Street financial analyst, and author of the book Super-Imperialism (which I really need to read). Today, I read this interview (pdf) with Hudson, conducted by Acres USA (link again found via Stan Goff, in a comment he posted to this post--"Bubble Bubble"--at Feral Scholar). The interview is titled "Debtor Nation: The Hijacking of America's Economy" and is well worth reading. It begins with a discussion of the sub-prime crisis, covers the Chicago Boys in Chile, the looting of Russia, the "anti-country" of Panama (including its purposes for the trade in oil), and hits on Thorstein Veblen, Paul Volcker, Alan Greenspan, and the Democratic candidates for president. Here is a fascinating passage in which Hudson talks about the Unites States' balance of payments deficit:

HUDSON. [...] The United States became a true deficit country after August 1971, when President Nixon took the country off gold. Once European and Asian countries and their central banks could no longer turn in their surplus dollars for gold, they had only one choice, and that was to invest their international monetary reserves in the form of U.S. Treasury bonds. Central banks don't invest in the stock market, they don't buy real estate, and they don't buy companies — at least not until recently. They buy government securities because those are the most secure. So the United States found that the larger the balance of payments deficit became, the more dollars it would pump into foreign economies. The recipients of these dollars, either exporters or sellers of companies, would turn the surplus dollars over to their central banks in exchange for domestic currency, and then the central banks had a problem — what do they do with these dollars? The only thing they could do was to buy U.S. Treasury bonds.

ACRES U.S.A. That would add up to a lot of bonds.

HUDSON. Yes, the balance of payments was so large and pumped so many dollars bonds, or they wouldn't buy these dollars — they would let them be sold on the market, and their currency would appreciate against the dollar. This would have raised the price of their exports to foreign countries, causing unemployment in their export industries. When they complained about the U.S. payments deficit, the U.S. government said "That's your problem, not ours." The United States found that it could run a balance of payments deficit without ever having to pay for it — and today, the U.S. Treasury owes $2.5 trillion to foreign central banks.

ACRES U.S.A. That's an astronomical debt!

HUDSON. There is no way in which the U.S. economy can repay $2.5 trillion. Of this amount, about half is owed to China, and all the while dollars continue to be pumped into the global economy. In effect, the United States is exporting paper dollars, or paper bonds, and other countries are exporting goods and services and selling their corporate stocks and natural resources in exchange. The dollar is getting a free ride from this. As far as it is concerned, the debts owed to foreign central banks are never going to be repaid.

ACRES U.S.A. Don't these nations know this?

HUDSON. Yes, but as yet they have no political response. That would require changing how the overall international payments system works and also break the U.S. economy out of the global orbit, isolating it until it can give a quid pro quo for what it buys. A change would also require restructuring European and Asian domestic economies to replace dollar-export markets with their own domestic market. So foreign countries could indeed refuse to accept more excess dollars, refusing to sell out to Americans, and try to develop their internal market. But the German government is so anti-labor that it refuses to build the internal market, and the Chinese — like the Germans — continue to produce chiefly for export.

ACRES U.S.A. Why did they do this? Why does Germany with its high unemployment rely on this world trade, and the same with China, when they have their own internal economies they might service?

HUDSON. Because they don't seem to care about their internal economies, except to go on waging the old class war. That is how mainstream economics is taught these days — and why I stopped teaching academic economics for many years. Many people have tried to explain why European central bankers are so idiotic when it comes to this system. One suggestion is the "Stockholm Syndrome": When somebody is kidnapped, the victim tends to identify with the kidnapper, the victimizer — and there is an idea in Germany, in England, and other countries that no matter what, they have to do whatever the U.S. government recommends. It's a passive mentality. But for Europe and Asia to behave in this way violates every theory of how international relations are supposed to work. In theory, every nation is supposed to act in its own self-interest. But in today's world it seems that only the U.S. government is acting in this way. It is understandable why the United States would love to pay paper dollars and get foreign resources for nothing. It's not understandable why foreign countries go along.

Shared Moral Universe

Chris Knight, Marxist anthropologist and author of the brilliant and inspiring book Blood Relations: Menstruation and the Origins of Culture (which I wrote about here), has a website which includes links to several pdfs of his articles and papers. Today in the Evolution of Language section, I came across this fascinating paper called "The Human Revolution". I think it's well worth reading. In it he explains why the emergence of language must be explained in Darwinian terms, and how that emergence might have occurred (here using a necessarily shorter version of his theory outlined in Blood Relations). Here is a passage from near the end:

The 'human revolution' became consummated as coalitionary resistance to philandering drove up the costs of 'selfish' male strategies to the point where they were no longer affordable. With this source of internal conflict removed, enhanced community-wide trust transformed the context in which communication occurred. We have seen that signals may become conventionalized wherever trusting listeners can be assumed. The establishment of stable, 'blood'-symbolized kin-coalitions allowed 'brothers' and 'sisters' to trust one another as never before. Signallers no longer needed to ground each communicative performance in hard-to-fake displays whose intrinsic features inspired trust. Trust, in other words, no longer had to be generated signal by signal – it could be assumed. With this problem removed, even patent fictions could now be valued as evidence from which to reconstruct others' thoughts. Language consists entirely of fictions of this kind.

Humans who had undergone the revolution, then, no longer had to stage a 'song and dance' each time they needed to appear persuasive. Costly ritual performance remained necessary, but only because each individual’s initiation into and subsequent commitment to the speech community could be signalled in no other way. Once such commitment had already been displayed, coalition members could cut their costs, replacing indexical display with a repertoire of conventionally agreed shorthands (see Knight 1998, 1999, 2000). Since these low-cost abbreviations – 'words' or 'proto-words' – were tokens in the first instance of group-level contractual phenomena, they could be honest without having to be grounded in anything real. Reality-defying performances upholding community-wide moral contracts are familiar to anthropologists as 'religion' (Rappaport 1999). Once humans had established such traditions, they found themselves communicating within a shared moral universe – a socially constructed virtual reality – of their own making.

Endless Variations on a Drearily Glossy Theme

k-punk, excellent as ever on the homogeneity of capitalist culture, and the need to recognize what was worth keeping about the past, without engaging in fatuous nostalgia (a theme nicely dovetailing with some of my concerns here):

'Diversity' and 'choice' are of course the very names by which today’s homogeneity goes. Yet it is by now clear that it is not 'paternalistic' but consumer-driven broadcasting that leads to infantilisation, and that a proliferation of barely-rejigged formats does not constitute choice.

[...]

What is important, now, is not simply a nostalgia for an earlier time, but a rescuing of what was valuable in that era from its slandering in the false memory that neo-liberalism has installed and naturalised - a task characterised by Dan on The End Times as 'reinterpreting the past in order to find a way out of the present'. From the commanding heights of the post 89 End of History, the pre-Style, pre-consumer 70s represents in time what the Soviet Union represents in space: stagnancy and shortage. Yet public funding yielded more than the dreary State propaganda or dour Reithian austerity that neo-liberalism painted as its sole products. In the December issue of Sight and Sound, Ian Christie reinforced the point I made about Tarkovsky in Marxist Supernanny:

Tarkovsky is now generally acknowledged to be a great artist… But it is worth recalling just how much his genius owed to the limitations and freedoms of being a Soviet film maker. Back in 1981, well before the Soviet edifice began to crumble and before his own defiant departure into exile, Tarkovsky walked a tightrope between being the USSR’s highest profile director and a standing reproach to its values … Russian culture of the Soviet era was Tarkovksy’s culture, despite his contempt for its pettiness and mendacity.

[...]

Once again, the point is not to indulge in Old Left nostalgia for the Soviet state apparatus. The point is to correct the misapprehension that neo-liberalism has successfully propagated that only capitalism can produce a vibrant culture. Not only is it by now clear that the ‘dynamic’ culture of ultra-precarious capitalism would never produce something like Tarkovsky’s films, it is beginning to appear that - as Jameson suspected over a decade ago - unchallenged and unsheathed capitalism cannot produce any sort of vibrant culture at all, only endless variations on a drearily glossy theme.

Notes on Early Beckett and Waiting for Godot

[The following is condensed from two posts begun last year, closer to when I actually read Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot, Watt, and Mercier and Camier. I think I had larger purposes in mind when I began the posts, but was unable to find the time to do anything further with them. I'm posting it here in part because they seem related to my recent entries. The words have been modified and updated for clarity, though it necessarily remains more scattershot and unfinished than I would like.]

Imagining Samuel Beckett to be a particularly difficult writer, I'd long delayed my reading of him. Then a couple of years ago, I eagerly snapped up a used copy of A Reader’s Guide to Samuel Beckett by Hugh Kenner. I expected I would begin reading Beckett soon and wanted some company. I began at the beginning, with Murphy. I always like to begin at the beginning, when I can. Beckett at this time may have still been in thrall to Joyce's influence, as I've seen said a few places, but I enjoyed the novel. I love its famous opening line: "The sun shone, having no alternative, on the nothing new." Like I said, I love the line, though I can see what might be overly precious about it, overly poetic. In any event, I found Murphy by turns hilarious and bewildering. Part of my bewilderment, I'm sure, stemmed from my unconscious insistence that the world of the book conform to the world outside the book. Beckett will have none of this. Here is Kenner on this point:

A novel, in short, is a novel, not a map of the familiar world, and Beckett's novels differ from most in the consistency of their insistence upon this principle. If God wrote the script of the familiar world, he laid down also the principles that govern in it the possible and the impossible. Beckett's covert suggestion appears to be that these principles are as arbitrary as the rules of chess, which likewise state what is possible and impossible.

"Arbitrary": this word jumps out at me these days, very likely because of the influence of Gabriel Josipovici (other words jumping out at me lately: "certainty"; "trust"; "tradition"; "faith").

Again Kenner: "Clearly the author of Murphy had insufficient faith in 'the novel' to return to that form with any ambition of improving his management of it."

I think it was my bewilderment with parts of Murphy that held me back, along with what I still perceived as Beckett's "difficulty". But, more than a year after reading Murphy, in the wake of reading Josipovici's On Trust, I decided it was time to get on with reading Beckett. So, I decided to read Kenner's book from the beginning. I'd noticed that the first chapter is about Waiting for Godot. Finally reading the introduction in full, I learned why:

. . . Beckett was a long time finding his way, and beginning at the beginning is a mistake. To make anything at all of his earlier work one needs to sense the quality of his mature imaginings. Fortunately, there is a sanctioned place to begin. Nearly everyone encounters Beckett through Waiting for Godot, so my commentary does the same.

Ok, so beginning at the beginning is a mistake. I can see that. If a writer took a while to get going, his or her early work could put a reader off from tackling the good stuff. Fortunately, Murphy is entertaining enough, though it's evident that it wasn't quite what Beckett was about. So, on Kenner's advice, I read Waiting for Godot. As ever, it's strange reading a play. We forget to remember that the words are meant to be performed on a stage. The temptation to read the words too quickly is strong. And reading the actor instructions is not the same as seeing an actor following them (assuming the actor manages to follow them correctly). And the play is so famous that the temptation to look for significance is strong. Yet Kenner compares the play's Vladimir and Estragon to Laurel & Hardy, which seems to undercut that temptation. Though he also notes the similarity of the play's setting to occupied France under the Germans, the waiting in the play to that waiting that must have been endured by Resistance operatives:

Here is perhaps the playwright's most remarkable feat. There existed, throughout a whole country for five years, a literal situation that corresponded point by point with the situation in this play, and was so far from special that millions of lives were saturated in its desperate reagents, and no spectator ever thinks of it. Instead the play is ascribed to one man’s gloomy view of life, which is like crediting him with having invented a good deal of modern history.

He is not, of course, suggesting the play is about the Resistance. In fact, he specifically argues against the tendency to make it be about anything larger than what it is: a play, that is, about waiting.

Readers of this blog may have noticed that for months now I've quoted a line from Waiting for Godot at the top of the blog: "Was I sleeping, while the others suffered? Am I sleeping now? Tomorrow, when I wake, or think I do, what shall I say of today?" It's the kind of line that, taken out of context, seems to say something about our complicity in the world, especially the complicity of those of us living relatively well, while others suffer. I say this, knowing that it's perhaps not right to quote such a line from this play in this way, and yet the line appeals to me, speaks to me, so I take it and use it for my own purposes.

Incidentally, the short novel Mercier and Camier, which I also read last year, and which was written in French in 1946, soon after Watt, but not published until 1970, very much seems to me to be a rough draft of sorts for Waiting for Godot. You have the same sort of Laurel & Hardy-ish banter, this time in service not of waiting, but of planning a sort of journey, that never quite comes off.

Bullying the Reader

My last post reminded me of the final paragraph from Hugh Kenner's chapter on Watt, in his A Reader's Guide to Samuel Beckett. But before I present that, let me give some background. In the chapter, Kenner is discussing the uncertainty of the narrative of Watt, its "provisional" nature. If you've read Watt, you will recall that we encounter several instances of extremely detailed uncertainty. Watt cannot be sure about anything, and Sam, the narrator, who gets most, but not all, of his information from Watt, can only be as sure as Watt is about those things that Watt tells him. For example, Watt approaches Mr. Knott's house, where he is to be employed. The house is dark, and Watt goes from the front to the back door, and back again, finding both locked, until finally the back door is unlocked:

Watt was surprised to find the back door, so lately locked, now open. Two explanations of this occurred to him. The first was this, that his science of the locked door, so seldom at fault, had been so on this occasion, and that the back door, when he had found it locked, had not been locked, but open. And the second was this, that the back door, when he had found it locked, had in effect been locked, but had subsequently been opened, from within, or without, by some person, while he Watt had been employed in going, to and fro, from the back door to the front door, and from the front door to the back door.

Of these two explanations Watt thought he preferred the latter, as being the more beautiful. For if someone had opened the back door, from within, or without, would not he Watt have seen a light, or heard a sound? Or had the door been unlocked, from within, in the dark, by some person perfectly familiar with the premises, and wearing carpet slippers, or in his stockinged feet? Or, from without, by some person so skilful on his legs, that his footfalls made no sound? Or had a sound been made, a light shown, and Watt not heard the one nor seen the other?

The result of this was that Watt never knew how he got into Mr. Knott's house. He knew that he got in by the back door, but he was never to know, never, never to know, how the back door came to be opened. And if the back door had never opened, but remained shut, then who knows Watt had never got into Mr. Knott's house at all, but turned away, and returned to the station, and caught the first train back to town. Unless he had got in through a window.

I copied out this passage without remembering and before noticing again that Kenner had used most of the same passage as "characteristic of the narrative movement" in the novel. Indeed, elsewhere, for another example, we learn about the food that is prepared for Mr. Knott, the leftovers of which, when there are any, are given to "the dog", and there follows an elaboration on various possible permutations and historical conditions that occurred to Watt surrounding the preparation of the food, and availability of the dog, and the history of the dog's (or dogs') handlers, who may or may not be the Lynch family, about whom we learn all kinds of extenuating details as well. And this goes on for some 20 pages. Not that by the end of these pages Watt has necessarily exhausted the possibilities, but he has perhaps settled the question to his necessary satisfaction:

But it did not last long, this concern of Watt's, not very long, as such concerns go. And yet it was a major concern, of that period, while it lasted. But once Watt had grasped, in its complexity, the mechanism of this arrangement, how the food came to be left, and the dog to be available, and the two to be united, then it interested him no more, and he enjoyed a comparative peace of mind, in this connexion. Not that for a moment Watt supposed that he had penetrated the forces at play, in this particular instance, or even perceived the forms that they upheaved, or obtained the least useful information concerning himself, or Mr. Knott, for he did not. But he had turned, little by little, a disturbance into words, he had made a pillow of old words, for a head. Little by little, and not without labour.

In just this sense, perhaps the narrative can be permitted to move on, sufficient attention having perhaps been given to these matters. These passages, this scrupulous attention detail, are amusing, at times quite funny, and rhythmic, often fun to read, though at times tiring. I found it helpful to read portions of the novel aloud, though the symmetry of the paragraphs, the rhythmic flow of the details, at times allowed the sense of the words to evade my understanding.

Anyway, Josipovici in On Trust had alerted me to the narrative issues that faced the Modernists, that the certainty, the narrative control, of the 19th century novel was a problem for writers like Kafka, Proust, Beckett. And as I read Kenner's Reader's Guide, I found myself in familiar territory. Beckett would not, could not, simply write a traditional novel. With reference to Watt and these precise, detailed lists of things that didn't happen, he says, "[so] many trivia are entoiled in such uncertainty that the author cannot make with any confidence the simplest narrative gesture. And being scrupulous, he itemizes the possibilities: so much can language do, and the mind do." And so, Kenner closes his chapter on Watt thus:

The book chokes, therefore, slowly, on its own internal elaborations, redeemed however--this is nicely calculated--by the ceremony, the rhythm, in short the great formal beauty of all those gentle scrupulous sentences. Provisionality, from being a point of epistemology, becomes almost a point of etiquette, as though to affirm anything at all--to affirm that Watt passed through a door--would be a discourtesy to the reader, a bullying. Sam, the narrator of Watt, though we know him only by the manners of his prose, is excellent company, agreeable, unintimidating. Watt is like a rope of sand, dissolving before our eyes as it is narrated, but Sam is never ruffled, never ruffled.

Proust and the Problems of Writing

A little over a year ago, I wrote about the impulse to write, and those thought processes that have prevented me from writing. I wrote about the impossibility of saying anything new. If I wasn't going to say anything new, the thinking went, why would I bother to write at all? For—to repeat myself—a great many things have already been written about a great many topics. Later, I wrote about my sense of enveloping chaos when I look on the various forms available to the fiction writer. How does one choose the correct form? What makes a form "correct"? How does a writer make these kinds of decisions? These questions paralyze me, and yet I note that we have no shortage of writing, no shortage of people taking the time to put pen to paper, or keystroke to screen, no shortage of novels. My sense is that the questions bothering me are of little concern to most of these writers. I don't necessarily mean that as condemnation of those who don't share these concerns. But what motivates them? Is it sufficient to note that we live in a time that is awash in self-expression? Writing is viewed by many as a means of this self-expression. Fine. But what does it mean to express the self? What is this self in need of expressing? (I think of a line from Robert Wyatt's "Be Serious", a song from his latest album, Comicopera: ". . . self-expression's such a fraud./I mean how can I express myself/when there's no self to express?")

When I think of writing (always thinking of writing, not often enough actually writing), when I think of writing, when my mind alights on a certain topic, unfolding a sentence, a pleasing phrase, even whole paragraphs, instead of writing these words down, all too often I think then of conditions, I think of counter-arguments, problems that must be attended to, historical contingencies that must be accounted for before I may begin writing. Other things, that is, that, perhaps, must be written first. Other things that perhaps rely on extensive knowledge I don't have. Or perhaps I do have some of the needed knowledge, but I envision the effort necessary to compose this all important preamble, the background data needed to show that I've considered other viewpoints, that I've done my reading, that would demonstrate that I have the right to take up a reader's (any reader's) time with my impertinent babble, and I blanch, I back away, I fail to begin. Hedging my bets, always like this coming up with reasons not to write, I then don't write. Then, the mind not always (or, indeed, often) having my best interests at heart, I think to myself that surely a "real" writer would have written nonetheless, a "real" writer would have a notebook at bedside, ready to take down words that come, a "real" writer would, instead of being afraid of losing sleep (valuable, treasured, precious sleep) by turning on the light and jotting down some notes, running through these words in his mind, would in fact lose a little less sleep by getting up, turning on the light, writing.

Reading In Search of Lost Time, I sense in Proust a writer struggling with similar sorts of questions. I imagine a writer with a story, such as it is, and a set of related themes and topics, and an urge to write, but who does not see how he could possibly tell this story or explore these themes in the traditional fashion, who does not see how he can justify such an account without sufficient preamble, without sufficient considerations of all that might have been left out if he simply wrote a traditional novel.

Let me give an example. In part 2 of Within a Budding Grove, volume 2 of In Search of Lost Time, the Narrator is on holiday with his grandmother in Balbec. After a time, the M. and Mlle de Stermaria enter the picture, and our Narrator is immediately taken with the daughter, "her pretty face, her pallid, almost bluish complexion, the distinctiveness in the carriage of her tall figure. . ." Unfortunately, her father's haughtiness and constant presence by her side often prevents the Narrator from easily getting a good look at her. Then there is a chance, as her father leaves their table to go speak to another hotel resident. But, inevitably, he returns:

But I was obliged to take my eyes from Mlle de Stermaria, for already, considering no doubt that making the acquaintance of an important person was an odd, brief act which was sufficient in itself and, to bring out all the interest that was latent in it, required only a handshake and a penetrating stare, without either immediate conversation or any subsequent relations, her father had taken leave of the president and returned to sit down facing her, rubbing his hands like a man who has just made a valuable acquisition.

This is a trivial passage in the course of In Search of Lost Time, and I've chosen it for exactly that reason. It contains little of the beautiful ruminations, little of the "keen sight" (to invoke Nabokov) that marks so much of these books. It seems to me that there is little likelihood that it is a passage that would catch the eye of a reader underlining phrases worth remembering. And if you've heard that Proust can be excessively verbose, well, I doubt that this short passage will disabuse you of that notion. I've noted the passage, because I was more than usual (perhaps due to the relative brevity of the sentence) struck by the fact that we are not simply told, "I was forced to stop staring at the Mlle, because her father had already returned to her side.” In fact, very rarely are we told something in so straightforward a fashion. Intervening phrases are always offered, reasons, conditions, further observations in support of what seems to be the sentence's main point. My sense is that Proust did not think he could justify simply moving the father back to the table. I see this as a tiny example of his larger problem, which was that he felt that he could not simply write a "normal" novel, that he did not feel he was justified in autocratically imposing his story on the reader. If Valéry claimed that he could never write a novel, because writing a novel would mean, at some point, writing something so pedestrian, so arbitrary, as "the marquis went out at five", then perhaps Proust sensed this problem keenly, but as a novelist he had to find some way to deal with it. He sensed that he did not have the right to simply assert that M. de Stermaria had returned. So: he needs him to return, he observes, well, after all, it doesn't take so long, does it?, to make the acquaintance of a certain personage, doesn't take so long to shake this personage's hand, and, really, what else is needed in such an encounter?, surely the encounter and the handshake, the acknowledgement, is enough; surely, then, the M. having accomplished this much, surely then I can say that he has returned to his daughter's side? Will you, dear reader, not feel that I have over-stepped my bounds if I do this much?

Again, I chose this example for its relative insignificance, as well as its brevity. There are other, longer, more detailed, more integral examples of this. Indeed, it seems to me that the whole of In Search of Lost Time represents, in part, a coming to terms with this sort of narrative problem (to the extent that I may be permitted to speculate on the nature of the whole, having only read volume 1 and nearly finished reading volume 2). I imagine Proust thinking: How can I fully explore memories of childhood if I don't animate the distinctions between voluntary and involuntary memory? How can I describe the many shades and gradations of society life and snobbery and elitism, if I don't give detailed sketches of each of the various grades? How can I mention Swann's "appalling marriage" if I don't discuss his affair with Odette? How can I talk about Odette if I don't explain the Verdurins? How can I explain the Verdurins if I don't elaborate further on society? If I haven't discussed the Verdurins in sufficient depth, or elaborated enough on snobbery, how can I possibly justify embarking on an account of Madame Swann's salon?

Maybe all of this just means that Proust was simply incapable of editing, incapable of selection, incapable of brevity, incapable of coming to the point. Maybe all this talk about the viability of forms, of justification, of arbitrariness, of trust, the problems of narrative, of writing, maybe it's just a bunch of critical hogwash. Plenty of people don't seem troubled by them. Maybe, but I don't think so. I admit that, as a reader, it's only recently that I have given much thought to these sorts of questions, in part due to the influence of Josipovici. However, as a potential writer? As a writer these problems have always vexed me, whether I articulated them as such or not. In fact, they bothered me so much, at some primal level, that I simply refused to write. I refused to believe that there was some justification in simply writing, that one could write without being concerned about what had gone before, without being concerned that one was not being thorough, that one was taking everything into account that needed to be taken into account (where, as a reader, I had granted the other writer total authority to do whatever he or she chose). As a potential writer of fiction (for the problem is not only for the writer of fiction, I think), the problem was more pronounced: I would consider a novel that I enjoyed, and I would be simply unable to imagine how the writer had come to write it as he or she had. How had the necessary decisions been made? How had the writer known to make the decisions appropriate to this novel? "Talent!" you may cry. The writer has talent, a gift, an inspiration (and of course the writer works). Yes, perhaps. Though something tells me there's more to it than that, that assuming talent (admittedly, a big assumption), the writer must still decide. And the writer consumed by these kinds of questions must find a way to write that he or she can live with. Proust, if the problems he encountered while writing fiction in any way resemble the problems I am talking about here, far from being incapable of selection, or of making a decision, was instead incapable of writing in a way that he felt was false. Without comparing myself to Proust, I think that my task is similar, in the following sense: I must discover a way to write, to write anything, that is true to myself.

Listening Year 2007

How do I explain my utter indifference to Radiohead's In Rainbows, which everyone seems to think is awesome? It's true that I generally don't care for their previous album, Hail to the Thief. But still, Amnesiac is the album prior to that, and I'm always saying that it's their best (which it clearly is). So why the lack of interest? A few reasons, I think. First, I was unimpressed by the whole pay-what-you-like download gambit. I mean good for them and everything, but I had a hard time getting worked up over it as this great revolutionary act. Besides, I still don't like downloading albums. Second, as reported earlier, my relationship towards music has changed, I think irrevocably. I no longer care much about keeping up with new music. I still occasionally feel that tug of curiosity when I read about this or that record, but rarely enough of one to pursue much further. This doesn't mean no more new records, but it does mean I'm being a lot more parsimonious with my music funds. (And for the time being, it still means that what I can't get with trade-in funds, I can't get.) Third, and this time more specific to Radiohead, though still not much of an explanation: I don't know, somehow I just don't care. There was something about the nature of the transition from Amnesiac to Hail to the Thief that has made this listener lose almost total interest in new Radiohead music.

So, at least for now, no In Rainbows.

However, even without new Radiohead, I did have a pretty good listening year in 2007. In line with the second point above, and as expected, there was no end-of-year best-of music post here at The Existence Machine, but here is some of the music I spent a lot of time with:

Neko Case - Fox Confessor Brings the Flood. It took a couple of listens for me to warm to it, but over the course of dozens of listens since, this has become one of my favorite albums, period. I love every moment of it. Even after excessive exposure, it still seems to me to be somewhat mysterious. I'd love to say a lot more about it, but words are failing me. It's great, that's all. I'd never paid any attention to Neko Case before now, but I expect to be looking into her back catalog.

Bill Callahan - Woke on a Whaleheart. This is not the essential album that certain Smog releases are (Red Apple Falls, A River Ain't Too Much to Love, Wild Love, The Doctor Came At Dawn, Dongs of Sevotion), and on the first few listens, I didn't find much to like at all. But I kept coming back to it. If I was listening to it, I was listening to it obsessively, every day, possibly a few times a day, for several days on end. There's something about it that is both awkward and compulsively listenable. Overall, it doesn't seem to me that Callahan's lyrics are as memorable or as interesting as usual, but his rich baritone is always a pleasure, and the music has an easygoing yet still prickly atmosphere. It could be likened to classic rock, and yet I'm not sure what specific classic rock I could fruitfully compare it to. The opening track, "From the Rivers to the Ocean", probably the best song on the album, does have some lines I like: "Have faith in wordless knowledge"; "I could tell you about the river/or/we could just get in"; "And it's hard to explain what I was doin' or thinkin' before you". I'd say that "The Wheel" has a real hootenanny flavor, except that I've never experienced a hootenanny. But it feels communal and joyous, and I like how he speaks each line before he sings it. Other songs are loose and casual, inviting but not at the level of great Smog songs of the past. This is the kind of minor catalog album that reminds me of an artist's greatness. (Though if Callahan settled into a groove releasing only this kind of thing, I think I'd lose interest.)

Robert Plant & Alison Krauss - Raising Sand. I was surprised as hell when I heard about this collaboration. Then I read about it in detail in The New York Times, and I was convinced I would buy it. I love Led Zeppelin, of course, and Plant's solo career has been pretty damn good, all things considered. But as he's gotten older, Plant's voice has become much better suited to mellower fare than to trying to belt out something like "Black Dog" like he's 25. I'm thinking of something like "29 Palms", my favorite song on the uneven Fate of Nations album. Here, he sounds great singing rockabilly and country rock, and he and and the excellent Krauss mesh very well together. My only complaint about it is that T-Bone Burnett's production sort of smoothes out some of the edges, which can create something of a somnolent effect on this listener. But this is a real treat.

Panda Bear - Person Pitch/Animal Collective - Strawberry Jam. I preferred Person Pitch to the group's Strawberry Jam. The latter has seemed at times overly shiny, and though I've liked each phase of the group's development, with each release Animal Collective gets further and further away from something elusive that drew me to them. For some, Feels was a sign that the group had fashioned an "indie rock" version of their sound. I wasn't concerned; I love Feels (again, I can listen to the gorgeous "Banshee Beat" all day long, and sometimes do). But Strawberry Jam is perhaps evidence that they've settled into that polished version of their previous selves a little too comfortably. Don't misunderstand: Strawberry Jam is quite good, and I'm liking it more the more I listen to it, but if you listen to the fragile Spirit They're Gone, Spirit They've Vanished or the utterly strange and marvelous Here Comes the Indian maybe what I'm saying will start to make sense. . . I don't know, maybe not. Person Pitch, on the other hand, is glorious and significant evidence by itself that the collective still has a lot of excellent music to offer. (To be fair, Strawberry Jam isn't really evidence that they don't.)

The Necks. My favorite "new" band. Naturally, they've been around for more than a decade and have several recordings, all available (or not) as expensive imports. Awesome. Just what I need in my life these days. Anyway, Chemist was my second favorite album from 2006. It has three tracks, each about 20 minutes long. It comes up on iTunes as "jazz" and you could call it that, but somehow that seems not quite right. It's minimal at times, improvisational. They elaborate on themes, creating wondrously beautiful trance effects out of simple elements: bass, drums, piano, maybe some guitar, some electronics. I love it. When we visited California in April of last year, I looked for their other albums at Aquarius in San Francisco. I found several, all fairly expensive, as CDs go; most of them featuring one hour-long track. I ended up walking out with two: Hanging Gardens and The Boys. The latter, a soundtrack to a film by that name, features shorter tracks, none over eleven minutes. I chose it just for that reason. Now I wish I hadn't--not because I don't like it, but because Hanging Gardens convinces me that the Necks need more room in which to operate. It's a single hour-long track, and it's simply wonderful. Now I am coveting all those albums I left behind, especially Aether, and I also have my eyes on the four-cd (and priced accordingly), four-track Athenaeum, Homebush, Quay & Raab. Plus, apparently there was a new live album released in 2007 that I missed, called Townsville.

Those were the main high points of my year in music. LCD Soundsystem's Sound of Silver has like three or four great songs, and I listened to those songs a lot. As ever, I spend a lot of time listening to Bob Dylan, the Mountain Goats, Sonic Youth, the Rolling Stones, and loads of other records that now escape me. A lot of time enjoying the virtual radio of my iPod on shuffle. And that's about it.