Lionel Trilling: Criticism as the Pursuit of Complexity

John Holbo recently jogged me in an email to take a look at Lionel Trilling's essay "The Function of the Little Magazine" (from The Liberal Imagination [1950]). The idea is to link Trilling's support for magazines like Dial and Partisan Review, which only a few, very smart people read, to the relatively elite world of intellectual/critical blogs -- which only a few smart people are reading. The key paragraph in the essay is the one John actually quoted publicly a year ago, in a Crooked Timber post celebrating CT's 1 year blogaversary:

From the democratic point of view, we must say that in a true democracy nothing should be done for the people. The writer who defines his audience by its limitations is indulging in the unforgivable arrogance. The writer must define his audience by its abilities, by its perfections, so far as he is gifted to conceive them. He does well, if he cannot see his right audience within immediate reach of his voice, to direct his words to his spiritual ancestors, or to posterity, or even, if need be, to a coterie. The writer serves his daemon [creative spirit] and his subject. And the democracy that does not know that the daemon and the subject must be served is not, in any ideal sense of the word, a democracy at all.

In short, there should be a place where people write, freely assuming their audience knows way more than the average reader of USA Today. Serious writers and thinkers should feel free to take advantage of such an intellectually enlivened -- if rarefied -- space to work out complex ideas. And if that means a few thousand readers a day rather than a few million, then so be it. The circulation of your magazine (or today, your hitcount) is not everything; if it is, you're probably not doing your best thinking.

This idea of the writer's "daemon" or "daimon" (which is not the same as "demon," in case anyone is confused) is one that Trilling comes back to in various ways in many other essays. I notice it, for instance, in Trilling's "T.S. Eliot's Politics" (1940) in which his general purpose is to review Eliot's rather less-than-inspiring book, Christianity and Culture:

What the philosophy of the [French] Revolution lacked or denied it is difficult to find a name for. Sometimes it gets called mysticism, but it is not mysticism and Wordsworth is not a mystic. Sometimes, as if by a kind of compromise, it gets called "mystery," but that, though perhaps closer, is certainly not close enough. What is meant negatively is that man cannot be comprehended in a formula; what is mean positively is the sense of complication and possibility, of surprise, intensification, variety, unfoldment, worth. These are things whose more or less abstract expressions we recognize in the arts; in our inability to give this quality a name, our embarrassment, even, when we speak of it, marks a failure in our thought. But Wordsworth was able to speak of this quality and he involved it integrally with morality and all the qualities of mind which morality suggests.

In the lines just before this passage, Trilling has been talking about Wordsworth's turn against the radical politics of the French Revolution during the Reign of Terror as a possible model for Eliot, in the latter's antagonistic relationship with the Anglo-American left in the 1930s. I read Trilling here as saying that what Wordsworth wanted to do was use art to think about things that are too complicated (which could also mean: too personal, too mysterious, too dynamic) to be represented via any available political or ideological system. Trilling would equally value the pursuit of complexity to anyone engaged in artistic creation or serious criticism of the arts. Thus, it's no surprise to see almost exactly the same sentences at the end of the preface to The Liberal Imagination:

It is one of the tendencies of liberalism to simplify, and this tendency is natural in view of the effort which liberalism makes to organize the elements of life ian a rational way. And when we approach liberalism in a critical spirit, we shall fail in critical completeness if we do not take into account the value and necessity of its organizational impulse. But at the same time we must understand that organization means delegation, and agencies, and bureaus, and technicians, and that the ideas that can survive delegation, that can be passed on to agencies and bureaus and technicians, incline to be ideas of a certain kind of a certain simplicity: they give up something of their largeness and modulation and complexity in order to survive. The lively sense of contingency and possibility, and of those exceptions to the rule which may be the beginning of the end of the rule--this sense does not suit well with the impulse to organization. So that when we come to look at liberalism in a critical spirit, we have to expect that there will be a discrepancy between what I have called the primal imagination of liberalism and its present particular imagination. The job of criticism would seem to be, then, to recall liberalism to its first essential imagination of variousness and possibility, which implies the awareness of complexity and difficulty.

The gestures Trilling is making in the two passages quoted above are not the same, but they do rhyme. In one place, Trilling is asking his readers to take T.S. Eliot's conservatism seriously, by substituting Wordsworth's turn away from radicalism for Eliot's. He uses the example of Wordsworth's prodigious poetic output as proof of the value of the endeavor. In the second instance, Trilling suggests that it is the role of criticism to go against the utilitarian tide -- the dominant stream of technicians, explainers, and by extension to our own day, the shallow ideas that can be presented on Television in a minute or two (or on Internet weblogs in a meme or two). Criticism, he hopes, will be a space where people can think about things that may not necessarily go anywhere, where transparent use-value is not quite the goal.

In both essays, it's important to note that Trilling -- a life-long New York liberal, of Jewish descent -- is in some sense praising his enemies. (With Eliot, that might have been especially difficult to do, given the circumstances.) His essay on Eliot is Trilling demonstratively respecting Eliot's ideas, even though he feels Eliot's argument doesn't quite work. And in the essay on liberalism, Trilling spends quite a number of pages praising John Stuart Mill (an early 19th century liberal, and one of the architects of 19th century philosophy of utilitarianism) for praising Coleridge's Establishment conservatism. Trilling reads Mill's generosity to Coleridge as a model for what he himself should do.

The political modulation (which in our current political idiom might be called "waffling") is important because it makes Trilling's emphasis on "complexity" either suspect or especially noble, depending on your perspective. "Complexity" in the two instances is shown by the refusal to tear down one's enemy, to respect the Conservatives in Liberalism's (dominant) midst. Without this necessary nuance, "complexity" is actually a bit too simple an idea to be interesting. With it, the connection between a kind of intellectual discipline to a humanist ethical imperative becomes clear.

Marketing India to Foreign Tourists

This column on Rediff caught my eye.

T. Thomas is brainstorming some ways to improve India's cachet as a tourist destination. Despite experiencing some big changes over the past 15-20 years, India remains a place that few people visit -- only about 3 million visitors a year, to Thailand's 20 million. And many who do go there aren't especially impressed -- dirt, heat, and crowds are still things that are experienced by many western tourists as a turn-off. Everyone likes looking at the Taj Mahal, but no one like going to the Taj Mahal! There's no easy way to solve it -- the heat and the crowds certainly aren't going anywhere (though heat can be an attraction, especially to people from cold places) -- but T. Thomas has some good ideas.

Fortunately, in my opinion, we as a nation have become confident enough in our own standing and achievements that we can rise above anti-colonial feelings and talk about the colonial period without inhibitions or resentment. Although the Mughals colonised India and even converted our people to their religion four centuries ago, today we take pride in showing tourists monuments like the Taj Mahal as the pride of India. With the passage of time, the same is happening to the monuments and cities built by our European colonisers -- the Portuguese, the Dutch, the French, and the British. For a European tourist it is often more interesting to see remnants of the adventurers from their own countries. Even for the Americans, it is easier to relate to such sites as most of them are descendants of Europeans.

Fortunately, we have several such monuments and sites bearing witness to the history of our European colonisers. We should use them to market our country. Take Pondicherry. It has several French remnants, including the use of the French language. In France schoolchildren are still taught about the French empire in India, which consisted of Pondicherry, Mahe, Karaikkal, and Chandannagar.

I think he's right on the money here. Everyone goes to Churchgate, but no one really talks about why it was built, or what happened there. And: last summer we went to the beach in Bandra (near the Taj Land's End Hotel), where one finds strange ruins with Portuguese inscriptions on them -- remnants of a fort. But the plaques at the site don't explain very much. What do the Portuguese inscriptions mean? What was life like for the Portuguese who lived in this fort? What is the historical value of these particular ruins? Are there other such forts along the coastline? I was a little disappointed to find that no one there seemed to know very much. (This website has some information about the Portuguese "North Provinces," but nothing specifically about that particular fort.

An example of a book that does something along these lines is Krishna Dutta's Calcutta, which is a kind of Travel Guide for History Wonks. I picked it up last year in Amherst, Massachusetts (of all places)... More books like these could do wonders for India's reputation as a "colonial tourism" destination.

Certainly, when it comes to Bombay, Delhi, and Calcutta there is lots to work with in terms of celebrating (rather than shunning) British architectural achievements, as well as key moments in British colonial history. I believe it is possible to do this critically and educationally -- without succumbing to what Rushdie called "Raj Nostalgia."

The trick might be to find "colonial" tourist attractions that are a little off the beaten path... A few months ago I remember reading somewhere that George Orwell's birthplace is in the town of Motihari, in Bihar, and is essentially unmarked (read this interesting account of one visitor's experience there). Why? Finally, I have to disagree with T. Thomas on one point, and that is the desirability of younger, less wealthy tourists -- the backpackers. His plan is to lure in European and Japanese retirees, who have money to spend and time to kill:

These are usually people who have retired and can afford to explore the world outside their own immediate reach. The younger backpackers or student-type tourists are not sufficiently well funded. Therefore, they are not our primary target group although they should also be encouraged and welcomed to this country as they can be our brand ambassadors to the older generations of their countrymen and one day when they can afford it, they may come back with their own families.

I'm glad he softens his line towards the end, but I think he's probably underestimating how much money the average backpacker really has to spend. Certainly, some tourists (mainly Europeans) come to India because it's cheap -- you can stay at a hostel-y type of place for Rs. 100 ($2 USD) a night, even in tourist towns. Others are looking for these types of bargains, but in fact they are still carrying Daddy's Credit Card with them, and often end up spending a fair bit while traveling after all. Backpackers might stay in cheap hostels or "non guidebook" hotels, and eat relatively cheaply. But they are nevertheless highly likely to shell out Rs. 5000 or more on a plane ticket to get to someplace fast (Indians, in contrast, tend to take the train), and then buy a rather pricy Kashmiri shawl or art-work to take back with them to Sweden. So to T. Thomas I say: don't underestimate the backpackers! They might not look like much, but they're trying not to look like much. They are still loaded, and should be included in the proposed Scheme to Sell India.

Tourism is a business based partly on the availability of leisure (sun, beaches, mountains to climb, food to taste, stuff to buy, etc.). But these days it is also potentially enabled by opportunities to learn -- about history, culture, religion, or the environment. Some of these might seem distasteful to some, but it's quite possible to self-consciously "exploit" one's geo-historical heritage tastefully. And by this point in history, the histories of British, French, and Portuguese colonialism in India ought to be far more interesting as a selling point to potential British, French, and Portuguese tourists than as a source of angst for Indians themselves.

One way to balance historical tourism of the sort I've been describing might be to attach it to important sites in the freedom struggle. Places where Gandhi did something interesting... that sort of thing. (The latter might appeal to NRI tourists in particular.)

The Rza

Did anyone listen to the RZA on Terry Gross?

He talks about the "de-tuned" (discordant) piano sample that is such a trademark of the early Wu-Tang records, his own records (under the Rza alias), and finally the Ghost Dog soundtrack. (Rza also did Kill Bill: Volume 1, but they discussed that in an earlier interview.)

He also explains his various aliases: "Prince Rakeem" (early days), "Rza" (1992-1997), and "Bobby Digital" (1997-2000 or so). The turn to militancy and self-discipline in the middle phase explains how it was possible for him to be so prolific for a period. And the turn back to a 'party' persona also explains why he hasn't done anything comparable since then.

The most interesting part for music heads will be the first 15 minutes. The most interesting part from a biographical perspective is the last 10-15 minutes, when Rza and Terry talk about ODB (who was actually Rza's cousin), and how growing up poor makes it impossible to ever really experience childhood.

A Conference on the Tsunami at Columbia's SIPA

On Friday I went to a conference at Columbia on the seismic, social, and political impact of the Tsunami at the School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA) at Columbia University. The schedule can be found here.

I missed the morning panel on the seismic impact of the Tsunami. However, I did come across this article at the Guardian, which discusses it.

Afshan Khan, of UNICEF, gave the keynote address, highlighting her organization's efforts to assist children affected by the Tsunami. She made the point that in many of the affected areas, there were severe problems in terms of security and quality of life even before the Tsunami. One example is the water supply, which was talked about as a concern after the Tsunami wave left salt in fresh water sources. In many places in Southeast Asia, there were severe problems in the water supply even before the Tsunami.

Another issue much talked about in the coverage of the Tsunami was the danger that recently-orphaned children might be abducted by child-traffickers. Khan argued that this isn't as big a problem as has been reported, largely because many of the children who lost parents are being looked after by extended family. Moreover, there were significant problems in the trafficking of children all throughout Southeast Asia before the Tsunami as well.

Vector-borne diseases. One of the morning speakers alluded to the relief that many aid workers have felt that the explosion in diseases like malaria, cholera, and Denge fever, which the WHO had predicted soon after the Tsunami hit, have not materialized. With malaria, the Tsunami actually helped to slow the disease, as mosquitoes can't breed in brackish water. (See this link at Tsunami Help)

Khan added that here, as with water and child protection, there are actually opportunities to "leverage up" the quality of living in the wake of the Tsunami. That is to say, the influx of aid money and the current attention on the above problems can be an opportunity to raise standards to a level above where they were before the tsunami. Khan gave examples on how this might work with regard to fighting vector-born diseases (she mentioned the increased use of bed-nets). But she didn't say much about how this "leverage up" strategy might work in terms of fighting child-trafficking in particular.

Another speaker whose presentation I found interesting was Anne Marie Murphy, of Seton Hall University (no home page, but she's quoted here). She talked about how the domestic political situation in Indonesia has affected their government's response. The Indonesians have set a three-month deadline for NGO aid workers, as well as groups such as the UNHCR, to leave Aceh. (See the Jakarta Post)

She also explained some of the particulars of the conflict between the Indonesian government and the rebels in Aceh province. The rebel fighters (the "Free Aceh Movement" or "GAM") started an insurgency in 1976. After Suharto's government fell in 1998, the GAM and the TNI had come close to signing a peace deal; a senior general had even gone to the province to apologize for earlier military-sponsored atrocities in the region. In the Indonesian media, there was quite a bit of sympathy for the Acehnese. But the progress of that peace was derailed by the events in East Timor in 1999. Following the failure of the referendum-strategy, the government was reluctant to make any compromises with a separatist movement that might lead to any further secessions. In 2003, the fragile peace collapsed, and the government again declared martial law. Things were as bad as ever when the Tsunami hit in December, but the two sides signed a provisional truce in the wake of the disaster. (The truce is now in danger of falling apart again, as this report shows.)

Corruption in the Indonesian military. According to Murphy, there are some elements in the Indonesian military that would like to see the conflict continue. According to her information, only 30% of the military's budget comes from the state. The rest comes from "military businesses" and illict activities like smugggling. The generals have a free hand in "military operations areas" like Aceh, and therefore they have an interest in keeping the conflict going. Indonesia is one of the most corrupt (or to put it in a more friendly way, "least official") economies in the world, and this is going to be a huge problem for brokering a more stable social and political environment in Aceh, irrespective of the progress of Tsunami relief and rehabilitation.

On the same panel, I was interested in what Sreenath Sreenivasan had to say about the Indian government's hesitation about receiving aid at a time when it wants to establish itself as a regional power. Sreenivasan pointed out that the Indian military played a major role in providing assistance in the immediate aftermath of the Tsunami. An Indian navy hospital was in Sri Lanka within a few hours of the Tsunami, delivering medicines. In contrast, the U.S.S. Duluth didn't arrive in Sri Lanka until January 10. When the U.S. Navy came, however, they made sure the cameras were rolling... Perhaps India has to do more PR internationally to ensure that its good works are noted by the international media.

Sreenivasan lamented that the "self-sufficiency" of South Asia as a region isn't widely recognized. He alluded to this article in the Globalist, by Ashutosh Sheshablaya, on the "Great Indian Absence" from the relief story.

Finally, Sreenivasan pointed out that in international disasters, there is often a gap between the amount of money that is donated, and the amount of money that can actually be spent, due to human and organizational limitations. After the devastating Hurricane in 1998 ("Hurrican Mitch"), US $1 billion was pledged, but only $200 million spent. After the earthquake in Iran in 2003, again, $1 billion was pledged, but this time only $20 million spent! An unprecedented $4 billion has been pledged for the Tsunami relief effort. It is an open question whether it will be humanly possible for all that money to be used quickly.

As a side note, Sreenivasan mentioned that he had recently met with the Sri Lankan parents of "Baby 81". The parents of the baby and the baby himself (Abhilash) were recently brought to the U.S. by the Good Morning America TV show as a "symbol of hope." Sreenivasan's wife had served as a translator, and he was able to talk with the parents and get their side of the story. Apparently, the father, who lost his barbershop business in Sri Lanka, had borrowed a lot of money to rebuild his shop. He had accepted the American offer to visit the U.S. partly because he wanted to try and raise money to pay back the debt. The amount he owes: $600.

And just a few small comments on the media panel. The question the panel was asking -- did the mainstream media do a good job covering the Tsunami? -- seems to me to be somewhat unanswerable, at least as long as the role of the media in covering disasters remains a little unclear. Should the media be merely reporting events dispassionately, or should it use the dissemination of information to raise awareness with an explicitly moral, humanitarian aim? The other unanswerable question is whether readers should dictate the shape and scope of the news, or whether that responsibility lies with editors and journalists. The journalists on the panel argued that the limitations in the western media's coverage of the Tsunami (one thinks of the inordinate coverage of the supermodel who was stuck in a tree in Phuket) are a function of the audience.

Suleman Din, one of the panelists, is a journalist for the Newark Star-Ledger, who normally covers the "desi NJ" beat. But after the Tsunami he was sent to Sri Lanka, where he filed a series of groundbreaking reports. The Star-Ledger's archives require payment, but I came across a couple of his Tsunami pieces here, and here.

Born Into Brothels: Ethical Questions, and Links

We finally saw Born Into Brothels last night. The documentary won an Oscar last week, but it will never be shown in India, apparently to protect the identities of the mothers of the children in the film.

There have been some complaints about the film's negativity, but I think it's fair to dismiss those. Though the filmmakers are clearly making Born Into Brothels with an ethical and humanitarian goal in mind (i.e., help keep these kids out of the life of prostitution and crime that seems to be their fate), it's not a protest film or an "exploitation" film. These are the children of prostitutes, living in a notorious neighborhood in Calcutta, but remarkably, there are no scenes of violence against them or explicit sexuality around them in the film. (There is one scene with implied violence, which also features a string of the most aggressive Bengali curse-words imaginable, but it only lasts a few seconds). Instead, the film focuses on the mundane aspects of their lives, and of course on photography -- which is often quietly remarkable (as the above image shows).

One of the interpreters Briski worked with has also complained about the film:

Meanwhile, the documentary has had its share of controversies. It has "ethical and stylistic" problems, says Partha Banerjee, interpreter between the filmmakers and the children. He has reportedly written to the Academy Of Motion Picture Arts And Sciences, complaining that the children's lives had worsened. Authorities at Sabera Foundation's home, where some of the children live, said other kids didn't know about their Sonagachhi connection. Now, the award has brought the kids into global prominence.(link)

The fact that the lives of some of the children worsened doesn't surprise me. Briski is quite clear that her goal isn't to extract the kids, or save them at any cost. Rather, she wants to help them help themselves, without severing them from their families or their surroundings. With that goal and that methodology, it's virtually inevitable that there will be some failures.

One can also justify the film along a "greatest good" argument. Some good will come from the money that the sale of the children's photographs has presumably raised, as well as from the revenue from the film, and even from funds sent in by viewers of the film who see it and want to help. Briski has already started a school. It's possible that the lives of many more kids than just these seven or eight will be helped by what she started.

And finally, many of the American reviewers had issues with the film's tone. Here I have to concede they have a point. Briski tries hard to ensure that this isn't a movie about herself (i.e., as a saint), and also not a voyeuristic "look at how miserable these kids are" affair. The result is a film with an approach I haven't seen before. It's original -- and that, more than anything else, is why it probably deserved the Oscar -- but it sometimes seems a little unsure of what it's trying to do.

* * * * *
Some links
A commentor on Tiffinbox posted some additional links about the film, including the site Kids With Cameras, which many other blogs have linked to:

It leaves out, for instance, the work of many other photographers who have introduced young people who have few worldy prospects to a new life by introducing them to photography.

Shahidul Alam and his colleages have worked for eight years with a group of young photographers who call themselves Out of Focus. (link).

Nancy McGirr teaches photography to children who worked in a garbage dump in Guatemala. (link. Also here)

And Zana Briski is doing her best to make her work in Kolkata more than a one-time event. She started Kids With Cameras (link)
to send other photographers to countries around the world to train children to become photographers. Gigi Cohen (whoalso has worked with Child Labor & the Global Village) is currently in Haiti.

And Ms. Musings links to an NPR interview with Briski the day after she won the Oscar.

UPDATE: See Shashwati Talukdar's response to the nasty review in Outlook.

Le Tigre: A Little Jolt of Disco/Electoclash Dadaist Aerobics

This guerilla Le Tigre video, done by someone in France (and presumably not the band itself) is too damn dada. One wants to laugh, one wants to cry... one wants red sneakers and a yellow hat.

Le Tigre! Post-riotgrrrl geek-core.

Not to be confused with Tigerstyle. Or Tigritude: "A tiger does not shout its tigritude: it pounces. A tiger in the jungle does not say: I am a tiger. Only on passing the tiger’s hunting ground and finding the skeleton of a gazelle do we feel the place abound with tigritude" (Wole Soyinka).

Others: Tigropolitical, Tigro-American, Tigro-Globalization, Tigromystics.

And of course, Tiger Chutney.

NYPL Image Archive Free and Online

Through the NYT, I find that the New York Public Library has made hundreds of thousands of images in its archival book collection freely available over the internet. I did a search for "India" and found this image, titled "Tattoo of the Sikhs at Fort Lister." These are Sikh soldiers stationed in Malawi in the late 19th century:


(Click on it to see the original context.)
QUESTION: Why the word "tattoo"? What does this image have to do with tattoos?

Orality vs. Text: Hiking, Writing, Blogging, Podcasting...

Our friend Elck, at Vernacular Body, has an intriguing post on orality vs. textuality in storytelling.

Written text unfolds in space. It's visual first of all, before that miraculous convoy of conversions that make it sensible to the reader. It's a seen thing.

Audible narratives, in contrast, extend in time. They are measured in minutes and seconds, not in column inches. And as each new fragment is heard, the old one is dying away, no longer audible.

So, memory is a part of what makes it work: there is no page to scan, the listener must remember the story. Each word makes sense because of the memory of the ones that preceded it.

This work of memory commands closer attention. And that is even more true now, because most of us can read much faster than we can talk (and much faster than we can comprehend spoken language).

I'm not 100% sure I accept Elck's distinctions (I think written texts are also temporal in a sense -- moreso in printed books than on the internet), but I enjoyed following through on the test he proposes.

Elck's recorded his friend Dale's story about hiking, bad knees, and memory. He wants you to listen to it.

Then read the actual story: here. Whether or not this experiment does anything for you, there's no doubt it's a nicely-written story.

Incidentally, this question of voice vs. text is an interesting one in the world of podcasting and audioblogging. On the internet, text and photos are still king. Though I definitely dabble a fair bit in the podcasting world (latest find: Starfrosch), I don't listen to any audioblogs with the degree of seriousness that I apply to textual blogs. But perhaps that might change, as the number of audioblogs grows, and the mechanism by which one downloads and listens improves.

For instance, with text blogs it's common that one quickly scans and samples what folks are writing (either in the MSM or in the blog-world), to see if one really wants to invest 10-15 minutes in a post or an article somewhere. But with audio samples and podcasts, it's usually necessary to download the whole thing before listening. Or, if you listen-while-downloading (that little Quicktime bar that shows up in your web browser), you have to start at the beginning and wait to see if it pans out. Wouldn't it be helpful if there was some kind of software that would produce an immediate compressed, dissociated "blurb" from a larger MP3, to let you sample some phrases, sentences, and sounds -- the texture of the piece? Audioskimming.

Open Access to Academic Journals?

There was a conference at Southampton University in England this past week on providing open access to scholarly information over the internet.

Though I'm strongly in favor of open access, I don't know how this model would work. Scholarly journals make most of their money from institutional subscriptions, which only make sense if material is not easily available for free to anyone.

What is being suggested at Southampton is a model where scholars archive their published works on their university servers. The universities, not the journals, provide the open content. But why would the journals allow or encourage this? Don't they have the publication rights? Or maybe I just don't understand what is being proposed.

That said, according to the article in the Guardian, most publishers in Europe at least are in favor of allowing open access for materials that are self-archived.

Take 'em down

I'm with the NYT: the Ten Commandments should be taken down from the courthouse displays in Texas and Kentucky.

It looks like it will all come down to Justice Sandra Day O'Connor; the other four justices on each side are already pretty solid one way or the other. I think she will vote to have them taken down; from what I hear of the Texas monument in particular, it seems like a pretty cut-and-dry case.

1) There's no evidence that the Commandments are the foundation of the American legal system. There's no reference to God in the U.S. Constitution, and the Declaration of Independence clearly asserts that humans make laws, not God. 2) These displays are quite different from the historical display to be found in the U.S. Supreme Court: these displays are ostentatious and they stand alone. And 3) There is no question that these 10 Commandments are essentially Jewish/Christian.

There is some confusion on point 3, as there are actually three different sets of "Ten Commandments," one Jewish/Hebrew, one Protestant, and one Catholic. See the PDF here. Moreover, there are many more than just 10 commandments in the Old Testament, as Christopher Hitchens pointed out some time ago, and as any quick glance at Exodus 20-21 will confirm. Hitchens' snarky commentary on the stupidity of situating these as foundational to the American legal system remains definitive.

Ankle Monitors or Jail?

Which would you take, the electronic ankle monitor or jail for three to six months? As much as it sounds crazy, I would probably prefer the Department of Homeland Security know where I am every single moment of the day than be locked in a cell while I was waiting for my case to be heard.

Listen to Sarah Berry's choice on NPR (via Crooked Timber).

And why is this Liberian woman being deported? DHS turned down her application for asylum (she was gang raped and her family members were murdered back in Liberia; guess that's not serious enough).

Now she's been here for ten years, and is married to a U.S. citizen... So it's only timely and appropriate that she is about to be deported.

An Indian Speculative Fiction Writer: Vandana Singh

Vandana Singh's story "Delhi," from the anthology So Long Been Dreaming: Postcolonial Science Fiction and Fantasy (remember Matt Cheney's review?), has been nominated for a prize. During the evaluation period, she's made the story available on her website here (expiring link -- so go now, if you're going to go).

I read it, and liked it. The mix of history, speculative thinking, real science, and observations about the chaotic, contradictory city of Delhi seems to have a lot of potential. Is there a novel here?

Here's my favorite passage from the story:

Staring unseeingly into the bright clamor of the highway, he has a wild idea that, he realizes, has been bubbling under the surface of his consciousness for a while. He recalls a picture he saw once in a book when he was a boy: a satellite image of Asia at night. On the dark bulge of the globe there were knots of light; like luminous fungi, he had thought at the time, stretching tentacles into the dark. He wonders whether complexity and vastness are sufficient conditions for a slow awakening, a coming-to-consciousness. He thinks about Om Prakash, his foolish grin and waggling head, and his strange intimacy with the bees. Will Om Prakash tell him who Pandit Vishwanath really is, and what it means to 'work for the city'� He thinks not. What he must do, he sees at last, is what he has been doing all along: looking out for his own kind, the poor and the desperate, and those who walk with death in their eyes. The city's needs are alien, unfathomable. It is an entity in its own right, expanding every day, swallowing the surrounding countryside, crossing the Yamuna which was once its boundary, spawning satellite children, infant towns that it will ultimately devour. Now it is burrowing into the earth, and even later it will reach long fingers towards the stars.

I won't explain all the reference points here (read the story). Rather, a comment: what seems different (Indian?) in Vandana Singh's style is her juxtaposing of the ongoing reality of poverty in Indian life with the imaginative freedom of speculative metaphors from science.

Warning: the story is kind of hard to read -- some kind of formatting problem.

Also, Vandana Singh's writing main page is here.

Snow object

I know what what it looks like. The resemblance really wasn't intentional. We just piled snow for awhile, and this is what we ended up making. I know. I know.

We're proud of it anyways.

On Snow

The line between middle class American childhood and adulthood can be boiled down to a simple distinction: children play in the snow, adults drive in it.

In snow, children experience a world transformed. The entire outdoors becomes the beach -- vacationy, and pliable in a way that practically demands one embark on various sorts of massive construction projects. One builds castles, fortresses, and large piles of snow that one hopes will eventually look vaguely humanoid ("snowman"). And one finds a whole world of other playing children.

Not that things were perfect in this idyllic "snow day" universe. Boots that were supposed to keep your feet dry rarely worked for more than an hour or two. Same with gloves. And only the most spoilt kids, whose parents regularly took them to fancy ski resorts, had coats really designed for the more intensive kind of rolling around -- sloppy sledding, snow angels, and of course, snow wrestling. The rest of us had feet and hands that were cold much of the time, even freezing. Every so often some extremity or other started to turn a little blue.

But so what? There were huge icicles hanging from the sides of buildings. The trees looked fluffy and a little stuffed, but happy. There's snow...

And what if you're an adult? If you're a car-bound person, you barely feel the difference. Indeed, you hardly dress differently at all. You also probably still have to go to work. If you have a significant commute, or live in a heavily populated area, you are liable to encounter both significant traffic and various kind of stressful road hazards.

Worst of all, the magic of the snow-ified world is more or less lost. Instead of a limitless set of construction projects, one's primary concern is the windshield of one's car. Because of the salt and sand that is sprayed on the roads to melt snow and ice and provide traction (respectively), snow means cars and trucks produce a grimy gray-brown spray that lasts for days after the initial snowfall. For an adult, snow entails no romance at all, and very little pleasure.

By this definition, I myself haven't been an adult for all that long. I went to college at Cornell in Ithaca, New York, which had lots of snow and a huge -- if rather dangerous -- "slope" that one sledded on using trays from the dining hall. (The practice of sledding on "Libe Slope" has now been rendered illegal, I gather...) That's pretty much what you thought of when you thought of snow. No cars to worry about, and nothing to shovel or clean.

And it was more or less still the case in grad school, though I was paying my own way and driving a car, which did need to be cleaned and shoveled, eventually. But what's the rush? After one particularly impressive blizzard towards the end of my time in Durham, four of us built a large, ironic "snow couch" near a main road. As I recall, we also made a little snow TV, and simulated watching it for pictures (I have to go see if I have any of those pictures...).

It was intended as a sort of ironic commentary on consumer culture, though it could also be described as someone's stupid idea (mine?), which was no less fun for being stupid.

And today: driving, grime, traffic. I did cancel my morning class (I still have that luxury), but that's about it. The rest has been the usual grind.

This evening, however, I will insist upon going for a walk, with all the snow gear I can find in the house. (There's not very much -- I don't even really own a proper pair of "snow boots" anymore, nor am I likely to drop $100 on shoes that I will only use three times a winter...)

The sound of adulthood is ugly, but there might still be hope. If the snow is still the right consistency (indeed, if it hasn't already melted), perhaps there will be a snow edifice of some kind constructed by the Singh household tonight? I can't promise an upright humanoid -- perhaps the most that can be hoped for is some kind a vertebrate mammal.

Authors in exile -- from themselves

Though the latest biography of D.H. Lawrence doesn't seem like it's anything too too shocking, I was struck by the following paragraph in the review in the Independent (via A&L Daily) :

Worthen's theme - the theme of practically every literary biography that gets written these days - is deracination. Most creative writers spend the early part of their lives trying to escape from the small-scale and ultimately limiting environments in which they were born. They then find themselves stuck on a kind of spiritual pontoon bridge between old life and new, grimly aware that while the past may have given them their material it is almost impossible to revisit. For all his much advertised loathing of England and English bourgeois stupidity, Lawrence, one sometimes feels, was a classic type of deracinated Englishman, the kind of permanent exile who, in whatever foreign clime he happens to be in, preserves just enough of his origins to remain conspicuous.

Yes, no one ever really loses one's past. It's always there in the psychic background, causing interference in the revelations and choices of the present moment. I generally find Lawrence's bravery (bravado?) impressive, but it sounds like this biographer is arguing that it's a facade.