Friday, November 23, 2007
Books at the NYT
We stopped subscribing to the NYT a year or so ago. It wasn't anything in particular, more a weariness with the Times. The careerist, Yuppie, materialistic, status-driven conformism of the Times became oppressive, although no particular candidate comes to mind as emblematic of the dreariness.
We still get the Times' email notifications of new articles and periodically dip in to see how much they have changed. Not much is the answer. But what the Times lacks in depth it makes up for in enthusiastic scope. Here are some reviews in the book review section that were interesting and a few comments:
This review, Artist Apple Cart, of a book about the death of modernism is particularly dreary. Here is what the reviewer says,
Mr. Gay’s enthusiasms and his insights are unevenly distributed. On painting, especially 19th-century painting, he rarely rises above banality. Edvard Munch, a second-rater by most estimations, gets promoted to the first rank, largely because his psychological obsessions dovetail with Mr. Gay’s Freudianism.
Peter Gay is a scholar of the first order. The reviewer's objection seems to be that there is “nothing new” in Gay's book. This criticism from a reviewer who says Edvard Munch is a “second-rater by most estimations”. That is, a great artist, currently out of favor in the rectory of received notions, is therefore dismissible.
This review by George Johnson of a book by Watson was entertaining. Watson's obsessive (mental) skirt-chasing becomes a hilarious refrain in the piece.
This review of a book criticizing Tocqueville seemed to suffer from an author's confusion.
This review of a book satirizing Steve Jobs was itself pretty funny.
Finally, the net being the web, one of these links led (somehow) to this piece by Hitchens. At the conclusion Hitchens offers a series of suggestions that anyone running for president should adopt.
Hitchens proposes (edited so this entry doesn't become overly long — read the whole thing),
1. An end to one-way multiculturalism and to the cultural masochism that goes with it. … Now, though, all manner of antisocial practices find themselves validated in the name of religion, and mullahs have begun to issue threats even against non-Muslims for criticism of Islam. This creeping Islamism must cease at once, and those responsible must feel the full weight of the law. Meanwhile, we should insist on reciprocity at all times. We should not allow a single Saudi dollar to pay for propaganda within the U.S., for example, until Saudi Arabia also permits Jewish and Christian and secular practices…
2. A strong, open alliance with India on all fronts, from the military to the political and economic, backed by an extensive cultural exchange program, to demonstrate solidarity with the other great multiethnic democracy under attack from Muslim fascism. A hugely enlarged quota for qualified Indian immigrants and a reduction in quotas from Pakistan and other nations where fundamentalism dominates.
3. A similarly forward approach to Nigeria, São Tomé and Príncipe, and the other countries of Western Africa that are under attack by jihadists and are also the location of vast potential oil reserves, whose proper development could help emancipate the local populations from poverty and ourselves from dependence on Middle Eastern oil.
4. A declaration at the UN of our solidarity with the right of the Kurdish people of Iraq and elsewhere to self-determination as well as a further declaration by Congress that in no circumstance will Muslim forces who have fought on our side, from the Kurds to the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan, find themselves friendless, unarmed, or abandoned…
5. Energetic support for all the opposition forces in Iran and in the Iranian diaspora. A public offer from the United States, disseminated widely in the Persian language, of help for a reformed Iran on all matters, including peaceful nuclear energy, and of assistance in protecting Iran from the catastrophic earthquake that seismologists predict in its immediate future. … These concerns might help shift the currently ossified terms of the argument and put us again on the side of an internal reform movement within Iran and its large and talented diaspora.
6. Unconditional solidarity, backed with force and the relevant UN resolutions, with an independent and multi-confessional Lebanon.
7. A commitment to buy Afghanistan’s opium crop and to keep the profits out of the hands of the warlords and Talibanists, until such time as the country’s agriculture— especially its once-famous vines—has been replanted and restored. We can use the product in the interim for the manufacture of much-needed analgesics for our own market and apply the profits to the reconstruction of Afghanistan.
8. We should, of course, be scrupulous on principle about stirring up interethnic tensions. But we should remind those states that are less scrupulous—Iran, Pakistan, and Syria swiftly come to mind—that we know that they, too, have restless minorities and that they should not make trouble in Afghanistan, Lebanon, or Iraq without bearing this in mind…