Question

What do we call female "men of letters"?

Vaulting

Goodness gracious, this is from the pretty city in the mountains of central Slovakia where that cool tea shop was, Myrhh. I can't remember the name. Anyway, I love ceilings in general, and vaulting in particular.

Tall Tall Tabernacle

It is hard to see in this picture, but the tall (approximately 11 meters) ornately carved stone thing is a tabernacle. (From last summer, the cathedral in Bardejov, Slovakia where Elizabeth Bennet's parents couldn't get married because of communism--I'm going through some old draft posts...)

The Poet & The City

In Auden's essay of this name, he picks up themes that Arendt develops in "The Human Condition"--especially in his explanation of the realm of the social (which he calls The Public, following Kierkegaard, and which he connects, as Arendt does, to mass culture) and the labor/work/action distinction (he compares labor to slavery in the Greek world and laments the way in which the contemporary world has flipped the priority from action to labor).

Wystan writes of this essay:

"I thought it was quite interesting because it seems to follow something of the distinction Tocqueville makes about poetry in an aristocratic age versus a democratic age (certainly the judgment about the effect of democracy on poetry is the same), but derive an entirely different political point. Democratic politics is in most every way preferable (the whole essay is quite interesting on this topic--he has a definite sense of loss from the ancient world in particular, but that the loss has been compensated for by many things we shouldn't give up), but the poet has to marshal his own resources in a way democratic life makes very difficult."

I think that Auden's essay is wonderfully interesting. He notes that "the so-called fine arts have lost the social utility they once had." He claims that the contemporary world "fails utterly" at combining "the gratuitous with the utile" and maintains, as Wystan says, that artists must accept this about the contemporary world. The poet, then, must accept that he is no longer a public figure, and not try to maintain that his art, which is gratuitous in the contemporary world, is useful (this corresponds to Arendt's comments on the reversal of the relationship between the vita activa and the vita contemplativa, which I've never been entirely able to make sense of; this is, of course, Arendt's fault, and has nothing with my own inability to read properly). Auden then considers things that make being an artist harder now than they used to be (including the "disappearance of the Public Realm as the sphere of revelatory deeds--and here he is basically plagiarizing Arendt).

What he says about tradition is interesting (and it seems to me that he might be alluding to Eliot's understanding of tradition and his critique of contemporary originality here): "Further, the fact that we now have at our disposal the arts of all ages and cultures, has completely changed the meaning of the word tradition. It no longer means a way of working handed down from one generation to the next; a sense of tradition now means a consciousness of the whole of the past as present, yet at the same time as a structured whole the parts of which are related in terms of before and after. Originality no longer means a slight modification in the style of one's immediate predecessors; it means a capacity to find in any work of any date or place a clue to finding one's authentic voice."

So what does the relationship between politics and poetry in the contemporary world say about democratic politics? When Auden writes, "Poets are, by the nature of their interests and the nature of artistic fabrication, singularly ill-equipped to understand politics or economics. Their natural interest is in singular individuals and personal relations, while politics and economics are concerned with large numbers of people, hence with the human average and with impersonal, to a great extent involuntary, relations," this is not to say that it's good that politics is obsessed with statistics, nor that the politician should ignore singular individuals (granted, he's also not saying that politics is properly ordered when focusing on one person at a time). Okay, so a poet isn't a statesman, because poets like explosions--a) I don't know who wants to make poets statesmen; b) the politics that Auden describes is not a politics of statesmen, but of statistics and crowds; c) a properly ordered social sphere needs critics, as well, which is a role for the poet. Auden writes, "In a war or a revolution, a poet may do very well as a guerrilla fighter or a spy, but it is unlikely that he will make a good regular soldier, or, in peace time, a conscientious member of a parliamentary committee." And yet, an army always needs both regular soldiers and spies. And James Bond is fairly sexy.

So, yes, poets shouldn't rule. But, that's not to say that how politics is ordered in the contemporary world is without problems. Rather, what Auden shows us about the contemporary world that make poetry and art more challenging to produce, still either creates or is created by a problematic political regime.

He proceeds to argue that contemporary politics is concerned with bodies and necessity (labor) rather than with work and action (or the realms in which humans have the potential for immortality). Doesn't the artist's concern with single persons over "everybody getting enough food to eat and enough leisure" offer a corrective to the problem of contemporary politics--the reduction of politics from dealing with the whole person to dealing with the body? Isn't Auden pointing to poetry as a way to get us back to the realm of action, with which politics and people ought to be concerned? This is not to say that we ought to focus only on single persons and ignore the everybody, because we shouldn't--we need politics and we need politics and poetry to be separate. But right now politics isn't concerned with all of the things that it ought to be concerned with, and the existence of poetry is at least one way to point it toward a better path. This leads to Auden writing, "In our age, the mere making of a work of art is itself a political act. ... [Artists] remind the Management of something managers need to be reminded of, namely, that the managed are people with faces, not anonymous members."

I don't think that the question is whether or not Auden sees anything good in democracy (presumably he sees lots and lots of good things, although I don't see him point to them in this essay). The question is, rather, whether or not he is content with democracy as it is, or whether, like Tocqueville, he fears it easily moving toward excesses (or like, Arendt, who doesn't state whether or not the rise of the social has anything to do with democracy itself, but rather just sees it as a problematic fact of the modern world which we ought to address). Okay, so I think it's the latter.

Mansfield on Rousseau and Tocqueville

From Mansfield's review of Paul Rahe's book on Tocqueville, Montesquieu and Rousseau:

"Rahe shows the ideas behind Tocqueville's concept from two philosophers who were dear to him. He explains how the ideas of Montesquieu helped to create the "modern republic" of individual commercial interests, and how the ideas of Rousseau countered with a deep critique of the modern republic for its failure to promote citizenship among dissociated individuals and its misunderstanding of liberty as the expression and cultivation of uneasy, divided souls.

...

Another related difficulty in making Tocqueville the heir of Montesquieu and Rousseau is that Tocqueville does not appear to be a political philosopher, at least not one of their kind. He does not provide either a comprehensive survey of politics, as did Montesquieu, or an abstract foundation for politics, as did Rousseau. He calls for a 'new science of politics,' but does not supply it except in apparently unorganized fragments.

Instead, he presents the idea of democratic liberty in an account of the facts of American democracy, above all in the discussion of the New England township with which he begins his presentation of American government. Here one sees the natural, spontaneous association of free men to address a need before their eyes, such as laying a road, that cannot be satisfied by one individual alone. He goes on to describe and praise the complex, artificial, theoretical Constitution that presides over the more spontaneous 'civil society' of American democracy. But he never mentions the Declaration whose fundamental principles inspired the Constitution. Rahe notes this fact and deplores it, declaring that his purpose was to instruct Frenchmen, not to 'celebrate abstract principles.'

Yet Tocqueville appears to have had an aversion to abstract principles and to have considered them a menace to democratic liberty. In a democracy, abstract principles, including the Declaration's statement that 'all men are created equal,' will be democratic ones and will accelerate the democratic revolution rather than guide it. Democratic citizens, lacking any sense of hierarchy either in society or in their own souls, are likely to reject demanding ideals and to prefer immediate, material enjoyments that are easy, obvious, and palpable.

...he offers testimony to the influence of ideas while avoiding them, and to the power of the democratic context of ideas while resisting it."

There is Always the Possibility of a Spoiler in Something I Write about Movies

After shrimp salad and a pilsner and before coffee cake and iced coffee, Hopkins suggested Stranger than Fiction, which I think she's watched a million times and was itching to watch again. It was, I must say delightful. In addition, she pulled from her closet the perfect dress for me to wear to a wedding next Sunday (at this wedding, the bride, a political theorist, wants to have read Aristophanes' speech from the Symposium, which I think is delightful [it's the one where people are cut in half and go around seeking their other half]).

Stranger than Fiction was, as I say, delightful. What's not to love? There's Maggie G. (her last name seems hard to spell)'s nose (which I don't actually prefer), her brightly colored tattooed arm(/s?) (this makes me understand why men fall hard for libertarian chicks--something I never was clever enough to fake libertarianism to cash in on), Emma Thompson (I want to be Emma Thompson, mostly as she is in Sense and Sensibility, but also in Henry V and Much Ado about Nothing; on further reflection, this list is not complete), Harold's endearing, socially awkward honesty, etc.

And the themes!--the relationship between fiction and reality (fiction is clearly subordinate, and yet it helps Harold figure out both the weird existence of his own personal narrator as well as what action would be fitting for him), action v. passivity (Harold's development is from someone who is acted upon to someone who acts--he gets in front of the narrator toward the end of the film), the relationship between comedy and tragedy, and the high place of baking in the film (how horrible that Harold's mother didn't bake!).

Auden and Arendt

Okay, okay, so maybe there was no romance (I was getting excited):

"An Auden-Arendt Marriage

A letter from Miss McCarthy to Miss Arendt, her close friend, shortly after the death of Miss Arendt's husband, tells about a visit from Stephen Spender, who intimated that the poet W. H. Auden, an avowed homosexual, had just proposed marriage to Miss Arendt.

'It is true,' Miss McCarthy said the other day in a telephone interview from her home in Paris. 'I think Auden was slightly put up to it by Stephen Spender. Hannah was absolutely devastated by this. She felt that he was asking her for shelter and that she could not do it. She felt that somehow it was an unfriendly act on her part to refuse'" (from the NYTimes article, "Mary McCarthy, '33, Sends Papers to Vassar).

Either way, Auden evidently read "The Human Condition," loved it, and wrote a gushing review: "'Every now and then,' he declared, 'I come across a book that gives me the impression of having especially been written for me ... it seems to answer precisely those questions which I have been putting to myself."

Twitter

Serendipity: running into Ilana and friends while walking on the Mall with Elizabeth Bennet.

Twitter

I can't actually survive for long periods of time with no roommates. I am like a fish out of the water.

Double Indemnity: Necessity, Grace, Confessions

First of all, anything that I write about movies will contain spoilers. I really liked last night's movie watching experience because before hand, a film critic got up and explained what happens. Then we watched it. Then we discussed it.

Necessity and Chance:

Leon Kass kept pushing the audience to think about the relationship between chance and necessity. On the one hand, the theme is an insurance fraud perpetrated by an insurance salesman (he likens himself to the man behind the roulette wheel who is supposed to watch for cheaters, and, in the meantime, cooks up the perfect scam himself). Insurance is a sort of allowance for chance and managing of its effects. Keyes, on the other hand, is the guys who looks out for fraud--for people who've attempted to hide their actions as chance. Keyes' action is moral--he calls himself a "a doctor and a bloodhound... and a cop and a judge and a jury and a father confessor all in one." What is this, if not a picture of God? We see the image of the hound of heaven, the justice of God, and even a little bit of His mercy.

Walter and Phyllis' actions you might think of as the opposite of love (I found their kiss at the beginning to be absolutely unpersuasive as any sort of romance, even from Walter's perspective)--whereas love is open and risk taking and vulnerable, they are calculating and controlling and precise in the murder (whose implementation has been reduced to rote memorization). Once they commit the murder, the language turns to necessity. Keyes says to Walter about the murders he is pursuing, "They've committed a *murder*! And it's not like taking a trolley ride together where they can get off at different stops. They're stuck with each other and they got to ride all the way to the end of the line and it's a one-way trip and the last stop is the cemetery." Ironically, in order to avoid this necessity of ending up at the cemetery with Phyllis, he seeks to control everything even further by shooting her. He squashes out love as any sort of excuse and reveals himself as a vicious man who is also narcissistic.

Grace:

There is always the question of who is redeemed at the end. Phyllis has been, the entire time, using Walter for his insurance expertise. She shoots him toward the end but doesn't kill him. He turns around and walks toward her and she can't shoot him again. This is the first little glimmer that she has a heart or could love someone. What's interesting is that she doesn't care whether Walter believes her or not; she doesn't demand that anyone recognize that she has a change of heart, even a little one--so it clearly isn't just a convenient change of heart. She simply wants him to hold her. And then he kills her. So that's Phyllis.

Well, Walter does not finish his plan, which could have at least temporarily allowed him to avoid being discovered. Somehow he loses his guts or gets some goodness or something and doesn't let Nino show up at her house and get caught by the police. Rather, he gives Nino a nickel to call Lola. This means that maybe Phyllis' love and change got to him a bit.

Confessions:

Additionally, there is the confession aspect of the film, which is absolutely central. Walter feels compelled to confess to Keyes through the dictaphone. It is this confession, in fact, which means that he gets caught. The energy he spends recounting the whole story could have gotten him over the boarder. Keyes finds him in Keyes' office recording his confession. When Walter passes out on the way to the elevator, Keyes calls the ambulance and also asks for the police. There's something about Walter that it seems wanted to be caught. And there's regret in the way that he confesses.

What stuck out to me most was how much the narration in the film reminded me of Augustine's Confessions. The way that Walter talks about Keyes when he's confessing is almost as if he's omniscient: "maybe you already knew that it was me and were just playing with me." And, in a sense, he is--as soon as the little man in Keyes' chest who tells him that a claim is fraudulent starts to react, the audience knows that Walter and Phyllis will get caught. The catching, though, is slow; it isn't immediate. This is the hound of heaven idea--in this slow chasing that God does of sinners; there is time for them to regret and allow themselves to be caught (and there is mercy there).

Walter and Keyes are friends--they sarcastically acknowledge their love for each other, but this admission is obviously true. They light each other's cigar/cigarette. Keyes sees Walter's intelligence; Walter sees Keyes' kind heart.

Walter: "Know why you couldn't figure this one, Keyes? I'll tell ya. 'Cause the guy you were looking for was too close. Right across the desk from ya."
Keyes: "Closer than that, Walter."
Walter: "I love you, too."
...
Keyes: "Now that's enough out of you, Walter. Now get outta here before I throw my desk at you."
[looks in his pocket for a match]
Walter: takes a match of his own and lights Keyes' cigar] "I love you, too."
[voiceover]
"I really did, too, you old crab. Always yelling your head off, always sore at everybody. You never fooled me with your song and dance, not for a second. I kinda always knew that behind all the cigar ashes on your vest was a heart as big as a house."

And this, too, reminds me of the Confessions and of God--He hates sin, right, but he's still loathe to find sins in those He created (this is the judgment and mercy of God being attached to each other).

Here's to Percy and IHOPping

Twitter

Don't ask me when we just meet: about my conversion; don't ask me at all: about my dissertation proposal, unless I bring it up.

From the BCSC

Q. What could make bacon even better?
A. A martini.

BLTini and a garnish. AND: a bacon chocolate martini (this reminds me of Myrrh's theory that bacon, feta and dark chocolate could be added to anything and make it better, even each other).

Frankly, this is one moment in which I'm thankful that I don't care for martinis (tomato water??!).

(HT: Wendell.)

The Silmarillion in China: An Email.2 (For Father's Day)

Hey dad,

I just wanted to wish you a happy Father’s Day. I don’t really know how to send letters here ... so I figured Id just send an email... We had to write a 100 character composition the other day [in Chinese] and I wrote it about dad. It was pretty nice…I would send it to you but I don’t think your computer can display characters. I said that dad was smart and kind hearted in it…but I also said he was a doctor and better than me at basketball, so it wasn’t entirely true. Anyhow, I hope you really enjoy yourself today.

There is actually a small typhoon that is hitting us today. It's not that big. (We have all been yelling “aiya…taifeng lai la!!!” all day. It means “ahhh…a typhoon is coming!”). I've been finding time to get out and relax, though. I went out walking by myself the other day and just walked up and down random streets that had little vendor places all along the street. There are really neat little places that will fix watches and sew/fix your clothes. I bought a book of the most popular Chinese ghost stories at a tiny shop. So I've been working on translating that.

Slovaks and Me

(Which are all the best things.)

Poor!.2

I was with my father for a bit this morning (I will next see him in August), and I forgot to give him his Father's Day present, and I forgot to say happy Father's Day. (For some reason I thought Father's Day was yesterday [Wystan: "I think Father's Day is always on a Sunday."]

Quote

My five-year old first cousin, once removed to me, while I was playing with her baby brother: "You're going to make a great grandmother!"

Stearns: Overheard in Bratislava

Older British gentleman: "....a translation of the Bible by Wycliffe."

Younger Slovak woman, (inexplicably) wanting to impress him: "Wycliffe? I think he's my friend on facebook. I have over 2000 friends on facebook."

The Beach!

Jewett on Change

So someone once told me on this blog that my writing reminded her of Sarah Orne Jewett. I haven't read much Jewett at all. Here are a couple of excerpts from her letters that I like:

After all, it is change that is so hard to bear, change grows every year a harder part of our losses. It is fitting over our old selves to new conditions of things, without the help of the ones who made it easier for us to live, and to do our best that is so hard!
...
Alas, when I went to see my beloved big pitch-pine tree that I loved best of all the wild trees that lived in Berwick, I found only the broad stump of it beside the spring, and the top boughs of it scattered far and wide. It was a real affliction, and I thought you would be sorry, too, for such a mournful friend as sat down and counted the rings to see how many years old her tree was, and saw the broad rings when good wet summers had helped it grow and narrow ones when there had been a drought, and read as much of its long biography as she could. But the day was very lovely, and I found many pleasures by the way and came home feeling much refreshed. I found such a good little yellow apple on one of the pasture trees.
...

On Stamps

You know, the other day I was thinking about Iwo Jima man (Diana and Stearns will remember) and how I wrote to him every month saying thank you and I will not do drugs (I don't think I had any idea of what drugs were at that point). For those of you who are not in the know, he is a kind old gentleman who would send us stamps every month in the mail.

Hopkins is great. I think that Myrrh, in particular, would agree, thanking the post office for saving her wedding year. It's true: they are lovely stamps, although I haven't worked past the love stigma enough to buy them...

Arlington: The Rap

Do Not Be Confused

I am emphatically not a last minute person.

On Titles.2

Adding to my (very short) list of the best titles ever:

"Spirit's Phoenix and History's Owl or the Incoherence of Dialectics in Hegel's Account of Women"

I can't decide if I like it better with just the birds or with the part about Hegel and women in it, too.

If Happiness Isn't Green, Then It Must Be Orange (Or Pink)

Imagine how happy I was when I saw this book! A) the title is, "The Need for Roots"; B) Eliot wrote the preface; C) this is how carrots look when I bite off the top and the bottom and eat them whole!

On Muses

After tracing the history of the muse, the author takes this meaning:

"Yet the muse-world has thinned out. Artists may still have a muse, but the once-standard and then legendary relationship is no longer part of our common vocabulary. These days a muse's role as equal partner and/or equal talent now outweighs her or his function as inspiration. Who, in our proudly individualistic culture wants to feel like a valet to someone else's imagination?

Then, too, the recession of the muse -- if not her outright disappearance -- has to do with a general discomfort about ideals on pedestals, not to mention a feminist rejection of women as objects. But it is also related to the diminishing value attached to the idea of originality. More and more people seem to feel comfortable with cultural experiences that are familiar, rather than original ones that they are encountering for the first time. Witness the current popularity of Hollowood sequels and prequels, as well as familiar facial lineages on screen -- Linda Fiorentino to Sean Young to Anne Hathaway -- not to mention universal storylines -- from the flying house in Wizard of Oz to same in Pixar's "Up" -- that we can all vicariously enjoy together.

That could be why contemporary muses, such as they are, exist as highly public presences, universally available. Think Nicole Kidman, Beyoncé, Miley Cyrus. Contrary to the Met's new show, the muse's role has not been taken over by the fashion model so much as by the celebrity-performer who appears to masses of people. Rather than acts of creation, our mass-muses inspire escapist daydreams. And indeed the daydream is where art begins -- the universality of the idle trance makes all of us potential Picassos. Considering the toll artists and muses traditionally took on each other, this might not be a bad development. It certainly seems appropriate for our new age of more modest ambitions."

Tocqueville would love this: as women increasingly enter the public realm, their otherness decreases, leading to a decline in originality and "more modest ambitions." Literature, according to Tocqueville, will be increasingly concerned with universal man--with someone who represents us all. Apply this to the muse and the muse's function changes. She is more an escapist version of ourselves than something other to which we aspire.

Brain Food

My memory is atrocious. I really didn't know it was this bad until lately. I feel like Izzy after her brain cancer operation on Grey's Anatomy: I can be delighted anew with happy information every thirty seconds. A bad memory is really a liability in professoring though, I think.

So, I decided that I need to change my diet and put in it lots of memory enhancing foods. Problem is, I already eat lots of fruits and vegetables, except for the very expensive ones, which I'm not going to buy for my memory, either. Except for folic acid and fish. I think I need to get folic acid pills (where do you get these?) and eat fish every week. This is my mid-year resolution.

"I think we should be great friends; I like your face." --old woman in Wives and Daughters

"That's like Emily when we first met. Only she also liked my name." --Myrhh

Barcelona and Metropolitan: On Not Telling All

I only just realized that I've never blogged about Barcelona or Metropolitan! And you know, if you haven't blogged about it, you haven't really experienced it. (Thankfully, I have blogged about one of the trilogy, The Last Days of Disco. That's something.) So...

Barcelona:

The first time I watched this, I was intrigued because it deals with the Americans in Europe theme, which I am a little fascinated by. I mean, when Stearns and I were in Europe the first time, and we would run into American highschoolers who were there to drink and maybe see something old for an hour in the afternoon, before beginning to drink again...well, I didn't think all that highly of at least some Americans in Europe. And then my sister and I had drinks with our second cousin and his friends in Madrid and they were asking us if we watched Beverly Hills ninety thousand, two hundred and ten. And then I saw what they thought of Americans.

All that to say, I find the Christ Eigeman character perpetually annoying and irredeemable in all of the Whit Stillman films (although I think that I'm too harsh on him--I think that he's meant to have some redeeming characteristics). And in Barcelona, his naivete of how to act in another country and his manipulation of his cousin are reprehensible.

And I'm not sure what to think about the ending--the American boys get Spanish wives and come home and cook them hamburgers. In a way, this is good--it shows that openness between the two cultures is possible and that misunderstandings can be transcended. It shows that the European disdain for American hamburgers has to do with the fact that the hamburgers in Europe aren't so good. Well, and it shows that understanding everything isn't always best (sometimes the secrets that the Chris Eigeman character makes up really do spice things up in a good way).

Metropolitan:

This is the first Whit Stillman film that I watched. I remember being intrigued by the dialogue, which was a little pretentious, but witty. And by the darkness of the film (it was clear that it was a low-budget film). And by the slow pace (this is again one of those films in which two characters take painfully long to see that they should care for each other).

I guess something about Stillman films is that there are more and less problematic characters, but there are not typically really great ones. Alice stands out in The Last Days of Disco, but she is in no way without flaws, nor is she really great in spite of her flaws. In the same way, Tom in Metropolitan is pretty endearing, but, for all of his philosophical reflection on the group and for all of his outside-ness, he still ends up in the group, possibly a better member of the group than the other members (although he doesn't see right away when it is time for the group to disintegrate). Audrey sticks out as a character a bit better than the others--she realizes that you have to actually read Jane Austen (and not just literary critics). She also realizes that secrets can be good--and that telling all is a problem, which is why we have manners in social situations (this theme meshes with Barcelona's theme of the possibility for conversation between cultures, but also of the beauty of difference, a difference that never should entirely go away.

Twitter

I am very, very scared of lightning and thunder. So scared, I even hate this picture of it.

Twitter

Dissertation proposals make my stomach hurt like the first day of school when you're little.

Ad

"It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a large fortune must be in want of a wife."

Thankfully for us women, this is in fact not that far from being true. In fact, I can think of few, if any, single men who aren't in want of a wife. And so I offer you Robinson.

Robinson is a 20-something graduate student who reads a chapter of a book by James Ceasar every night before bed. If this doesn't cry out that he's ready for marriage, I don't know what does. While graduate students very rarely do have large fortunes, Robinson will most certainly end up with one: basically every professor I've ever met thinks that Robinson is the greatest thing since sliced bread (my least favorite metaphor, since I don't yet understand what's so great about sliced bread, except that the slices are even, which I have a lot of trouble making them on my own. But I would say that evenness is overrated. In fact, I bet that Oakeshott would call evenness in bread slices rationalism in cooking, or something to that effect.).

Robinson is an avid runner and an occasional pipe smoker. His students adore him and follow him around and imitate him. Basically everyone does this, teachers and students alike. I mean, it was only today that I was reading a section of his dissertation to find out how to include secondary literature in my discussion. It was only a couple of months ago that I was sent to his dissertation proposal as a model for how mine should look. And so you see, his shadow is rather long. I want to be clear, however, that I did not follow him from our undergrad alma mater to Georgetown. I shunned Robinson's example and took a detour in Waco, Texas. That didn't turn out so well.

Robinson loves Walker Percy and says morning and evening prayers from the 1928 BCP (I wish that I did this). One negative is that he does not own hot pads. This led to the unfortunate incident of me taking brownies out of his oven using a paper towel, which promptly burst into flames (I remember throwing it down and saying, "Robinson, you'll have to put this out." And he did. So he's basically a firefighter, which is just like being in the military. Which I am trying to properly respect).

Robinson is such a gentleman. I mean, don't let the word out on this, because he'll be swamped with female friends, but he doesn't really like to let women pay for things. Also, he owns things with elbow patches on them. Basically, he is the ideal man.

Mensch

Goodness gracious, this film is a little bit painful: you have to deal with a lot of anguish as Fran learns what she needs to look for in a man before you get to the (admittedly very charming) last lines:

Baxter: "You hear what I said, Miss Kubelik? I absolutely adore you."
Fran: "Shut up and deal."

Baxter is a guber who cooks tv dinners for himself (when he's not straining spaghetti with a tennis racket) and is adorably romantic ("Ya know, I used to live like Robinson Crusoe; I mean, shipwrecked among 8 million people. And then one day I saw a footprint in the sand, and there you were").

But it's very happy at the end--the two who get took all the time find each other and stop getting took.

Guestblog: Wystan on Baseball

Like all sports, baseball is wonderful because it defeats attempts to take it too seriously. It's a game, it's fun as a distraction or thing to do with friends. It requires no other end than to be enjoyable. As Woody Allen puts it in Annie Hall:

ROBIN: Alvy, what is so fascinating about a group
of pituitary cases trying to stuff the ball
through a hoop?

ALVY: What's fascinating is that it's physical.
You know, it's one thing about intellectuals,
they prove that you can be absolutely brilliant
and have no idea what's going on.

See also Dana Carvey's parody of George Will (full transcript).

Guestblog: Robinson on Baseball

Concerning athletics, I can say baseball was my first love, though it soon was overtaken by basketball and then, later, running. Is there a "progression" at work here, a move from the lower to the higher? I often describe basketball as the most poetic of sports, and running the most philosophical. The former, at its best, is marked by a grace of movement that I find remarkable: 10 human beings in a confined space moving to rhythms both spontaneous and delimited by the adverbial (if you will) conditions of the game. Basketball is the athletic instantiation of Oakeshott's ideal of civil association -- within the rules a nearly endless proliferation of creative moves are possible. With running, its solitary character seems to me to be most important. It is the thinking man's activity, the ultimate way to process the the lurking problems in your head. This is why so many people run with ipods -- they unwittingly prove that you must either be intelligent to run long distances (or at least be able to be alone with one's thoughts), or else distract yourself with what undoubtedly is loud, putrid music.

And yet where is baseball in this hierarchy? I think it is the most religious of sports. If I may continue with my allusions to Oakeshott, and consider "religion" to be the marriage of the practical and poetic modes of experiences, then certainly baseball partakes of both modes -- is somewhere between basketball and running. Like basketball, it is a "game" and involves others. It has rules that are (mainly) adverbial rather than substantive. There are occasional interludes of great beauty and grace when this game is played. And yet, like running, it allows for reflection. Its slow pace and the (compared to basketball) aloofness of your teammates and opponents provides the space and time to think. It is the most individualistic of "team sports."

It is unsurprising, then, that baseball also is very ritualistic. All baseball fans know this. The player who won't step on the chalk line; the batter's routine as he stands at home plate; the pitcher who methodically maneuvers on the mound -- baseball lends itself to these things. All sports, of course, are marked by the routines of their players. But baseball, perhaps, brings these rituals to bear on the actual conduct of the players -- the actual playing of the game -- in a unique way. They are not "pre-game" rituals. They are an integral part of the game itself. This reinforces my point that baseball is the most "religious" of sports.

To put all this differently, and to summarize, baseball is a liturgy, the liturgy of my summers. As I partake of its pace and rituals, leavened with beer and hotdogs, I am aware of the beauty of existence, and what it ultimately points toward. For a moment in time, in the cool of the summer evening, as I hear the crack of the bat and feel the buzz of multiple drinks, I know all will be well. Baseball, then, is a form of truancy, a dream within the dream of life, a wild flower planted among our wheat.

The National Pastime

Baseball is not really within the realm of my experience, aside from that time when I was very young and won an essay contest about the person I would most like to meet (Jesus). I mean, I guess I really should like baseball, coming from the home of the Little League World Series, like I do.







This game was delightful. Although I technically only lasted through about 7 innings (Whigwham pointed out that I started reading my book right when it got really interesting--the game was tied until right near the end when we got five more runs and won. Or maybe we came from behind; I forget). Our mascots are the Presidents--the ones on Mount Rushmore. They do a little race. They are funny with big heads like bobbleheads.

I admire people who know about and like stadiums. I don't know anything about stadiums, but I liked the pattern in the grass.








The "W" was even cut in the grass!









Also, you can see the river and hills behind the stadium, which is very pretty.








My friend, Hopkins, asked what I was taking a picture of. I replied, "The big W." She answered, "Oh, the clock." (I hadn't realized that it was a clock.)

Gosh: when no roommates are home and no one answers her phone, I go out looking silly. Do light pink linen capris match a white shirt?? (this is eerily like the day I went to the symphony in white pants, a purple shirt and a bright pink blazer. Kuwait [when I returned home]: "You look like an Easter egg.")

Me to Fr. Schall (in an email): "Once I read Maritain on women, we should drink beers and discuss!"

Fr. Schall's reply: "no sane man would discuss women with a charming lady. beer is a different matter."

BCSC, Summer Session

The impromptu dance party started when several members of the house put on their sunglasses and smoking robes (which looked almost exactly like bathrobes), the lights went out and the strobe light went on. First it was just Henry and Aristotle, and then Wendell danced through the middle with a drink shaker and his black bathrobe, twirling in the middle, shaking his drink to the music. At some point early on, Henry grabbed a mop, and for the rest of the night we danced with the mop. Aristotle did not disappoint with a total of 7 or 8 costume changes--first it was a white leisure suit, then his bathrobe and boxers, then a dark suit and straw hat, then his velvet blazer, then his pink pants. And then Whigwham started the break dancing. This was before the limbo stick and the all-robot dance and the shot ferris wheel (with Aristotle banging a knife against a glass). Henry would announce in a deep DJ voice at short intervals while stuttering the music, "BCSC. Summer session. Totally Bitchin.'" I think that every Sunday evening should end with dancing.