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J.D. Salinger, 'Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters' – a critique
Posted on November 28, 2013 by Simon Lavery
J.D. Salinger, Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters; Seymour – An Introduction, Penguin paperback; first US and UK book publication, 1963; first Penguin, 1964; original US edition first published in UK 1994; reissued by Penguin 2010. Raise High and Seymour were first published in The New Yorker in 1955 and 1959 respectively
I've now finished the shorter works of Salinger as published by Penguin: I wrote recently about Franny and Zooey (1955; 1957), then about the story collection For Esmé – with Love and Squalor (1953). In this blog post I shall focus on the first of the two novellas in this slim volume.
Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters develops the story of the Glass family, who featured in many of the other stories, with particular focus here on the oldest of the seven brilliantly precocious Glass siblings, Seymour. As I wrote in my previous Salinger blog posts, Seymour committed suicide in Florida while on holiday with his self-centred wife Muriel in 1948, and his death haunted the family down the years that followed. This story goes some way to indicating why Seymour ended up shooting himself – but as usual it's narrated from his brother Buddy's point of view, and it's difficult to tell how reliable a narrator he is.
Yin and Yang Taoist symbol: duality of all things in nature
The story opens with a typically mystical-ironic account of the time twenty years before this narrative is set (1955) when Seymour soothed to sleep ten-month-old baby sister Franny, the youngest of the Glass children, by reading her an edifying Taoist parable – which she now claims to remember hearing. These passages serve to show that the Glass siblings are set apart, different, but also misfits, whose love for and solidarity with each other are what keeps them, just about, sane.
The narrative then jumps to 1942 and Seymour's wedding day. Buddy, who narrates both these novellas, as he did most of the other Glass family stories, is in military hospital with pleurisy. He's discharged so that he can represent the family at the wedding – the rest of them are unable to attend the ceremony in New York. The two youngest, Franny and Zooey, are just eight and thirteen years old and living with their parents in Los Angeles; they are still continuing the family tradition of appearing on the long-running radio quiz show called, 'with typically pungent Coast-to-Coast irony' It's a Wise Child.
Seymour was at the time a corporal in the Air Corps. Buddy receives a letter from his sister Boo Boo urging him to go to the wedding; although she doesn't directly mention Seymour's mental health problems (which ultimately contributed to his decision to shoot himself – an event which is the subject of the story 'A Perfect Day for Bananafish' in the collection For Esmé – with Love and Squalor), she hints that he's unwell, and her premonition is ominous:
Please get there, Buddy. He weighs about as much as a cat and he has that ecstatic look on his face that you can't talk to. Maybe it's going to be perfectly all right, but I hate 1942.
The novella's title derives from the quotation from Sappho that Boo Boo had scrawled with soap on the bathroom mirror in the apartment that Seymour shared with her and Buddy when they were in town. It's typical of the well-read Glass family, another of the traits that some critics rail at. Here surely it's touchingly ironic that this extract is from an epithalamion, and Buddy reads it at the moment when Seymour has failed to appear at the wedding.
Om symbol as written in Devanagari, the alphabet of Hindi in India, and since the 19C of Sanskrit: it's a mantra and mystical sound sacred in Dharmic religions
All of the Glass siblings are described as possessing preternatural intelligence, and Seymour and Buddy have instilled in the younger ones a spiritual quality derived from the teachings of Buddhism and oriental religions (as Zooey says in Franny and Zooey). In her letter, for example, Boo Boo says that Franny recently described to the radio announcer on air how she 'used to fly around the apartment when she was four and no one was home…He said she surely just dreamt that she was able to fly. The baby stood her ground like an angel.'
Some critics have found this aspect of the Glass family irksome. But Salinger always infuses these passages about their unusual character with ambiguous humour, as we saw with the Sappho quotation; there's also a darker sense that they are outsiders – they often mention that they are 'freaks', they don't fit in with the bourgeois society they inhabit, and can't conform to what is generally considered normal; this saddens them. I don't find them annoyingly hypersensitive, then; they are simply so unusually gifted they find ordinary life almost unbearable. Especially Seymour, whose nature radiates a kind of damaged spirituality through all the Glass stories.
The wedding is a disaster. Seymour doesn't turn up, and Muriel's family is outraged. Buddy finds himself sharing a cab with three of her relatives. The greater part of the novella describes with acerbic humour how Buddy has to listen to their vicious, small-minded demolition of his big brother's character and sanity, as they pretend not to know who Buddy is. One of them says of the radio quiz show the Glass children participated in: 'I loathe precocious children.' Eventually Buddy snaps back at them with a heated retort.
As usual Seymour is physically absent from the narrative ('A Perfect Day for Bananafish' is the only story in which he's a living presence). But as usual his spirit permeates the novella, and his words are presented via the extracts that Buddy reads from his diary, which he finds in his apartment. They are full of his habitual allusions to eastern mysticism, but more tellingly, of his bitter-sweet accounts of Muriel and her family's behaviour: 'A terrible and beautiful phenomenon to watch.' He mentions that her mother thinks he's 'schizoid', and Muriel has told her where he got the scars on his wrists from, 'poor sweet baby'. This seems to be a reference to an earlier suicide attempt that hasn't featured in any of the other stories. They both think he should see a psychoanalyst. Seymour accedes to this; he knows Muriel won't feel 'close', 'familiar' or, more revealingly, 'frivolous' with him if he doesn't get himself, as he ironically puts it, 'slightly overhauled'.
Adi Shankara Bhagavadpada, expounder of Advaita Vedanta, commentator on the Upanishads
Her mother clearly thinks Seymour is insane; like the rest of the normal world she can't understand why he's so detached. When she asked him once what he intended doing after the war he replied that he'd like to be 'a dead cat'; she laughed nervously. He was alluding, he explains in the diary, to a Zen fable.
We see indirectly why Seymour failed to show at the wedding. He says Muriel doesn't really love him, and he doesn't make her happy. All she wants is to be a conventional housewife and to escape from her mother, who is an 'irritating, opionated woman', and Muriel, we feel, is very like her:
A person deprived, for life, of any understanding or taste for the main current of poetry that flows through things, all things. She might as well be dead, and yet she goes on living…
It's easy to see why critics find this sort of thing condescending and smug; personally I think it's just artistic honesty. Countless writers have portrayed characters recoiling from mediocrity. Seymour does so with gentle sadness and a sort of passive serenity; I don't find him smug.
In a later entry, written when he was about to fly to New York for the wedding, Seymour gives a final insight into his conflicted but ecstatic state of mind; he'd spoken to Muriel on the phone:
I really called to ask her, to beg her for the last time to just go off alone with me and get married. I'm too keyed up to be with people. I feel as though I'm about to be born. Sacred, sacred day…I've been reading a miscellany of Vedanta all day. Marriage partners are to serve each other. Elevate, help, teach, strengthen each other, but above all serve. Raise their children honourably, lovingly and with detachment. A child is a guest in the house, to be loved and respected – never possessed, since he belongs to God. How wonderful, how sane, how beautifully difficult, and therefore true. The joy of responsibility for the first time in my life.
Here again there's a beauty in the prose that just about insulates Seymour from the charge of pretentiousness. He's more a Myshkin – a holy fool – than a saint. Nevertheless it's hard to fathom why he goes ahead and marries the awful Muriel. Maybe he just tries too hard to see the God in everyone.
Cover (from the Penguin website)
There's much of Salinger's wonderfully modulated dialogue in this novella; it serves to reveal character with understated precision – there's hardly any narrative description, yet each character is fully, clearly realised through slight, deft touches. The long scene in the limousine where Buddy is trapped with Muriel's venomous, insensitive relatives is dazzling and full of surprising twists: the humour, wit and pathos are sustained in ways that few other writers could manage.
There's weirdness, too, especially in Seymour's self-revelatory diary extracts: he says he has received stigmata-like scars on his hands from resting them on the 'downy pate' of Franny's head when she was a baby, and on Franny's head when he was six or seven.
He goes on to say:
I'm a kind of paranoiac in reverse. I suspect people of plotting to make me happy.
Once again this is not intended as a serious suggestion that Seymour is Christlike; it's an indication of his way of explaining his experience with a poet's licence, in cryptic aphorisms intended to be both mysterious but also revelatory of an ineffable kind of unveiled reality – the hypersensitivity and spirituality mentioned earlier, and which some readers find sententious, uninteresting or ridiculous.
If it is then so are the Upanishads, Tolstoy and The Idiot, which all seem to have had some influence on Salinger's work.
Next time I'll write about the second novella, Seymour – An Introduction.
Posted in American Literature	| Tagged J.D. Salinger, Raise High the Roof Beam Carpenters	| 1 Reply
J.D. Salinger, 'For Esmé – with Love and Squalor': a critique
J.D. Salinger, For Esmé – with Love and Squalor (Penguin paperback, first published in the US and UK in 1953; Penguin edition 1986 in the UK, reset 1994 from the first US edition; reissued 2010.)
I wrote in a recent blogpost about Franny and Zooey by J.D. Salinger (1919-2010). For Esmé, with Love and Squalor was published in America as Nine Stories in 1953, two years after The Catcher in the Rye. Both books were bestsellers. This was also the year he left New York City and moved to Cornish, New Hampshire, where he spent the rest of his life. There he became increasingly reclusive and litigious; he published just four more stories in the next seven years.
Salinger was drafted into the army in 1942, and served in the infantry until the end of World War II; he took part in the D Day invasions, and in the subsequent campaigns across Europe until the downfall of the Third Reich. He was assigned to a counter-intelligence unit, using his knowledge of French and German to interrogate prisoners of war. In spring 1945 he entered a liberated concentration camp. Recent biographies have indicated that he was deeply traumatised by this and other wartime experiences; he possibly suffered from what is now called PTSD, and spent some weeks in hospital recuperating.
Salinger during WWII (photo from NY Times website)
Most of the stories in this collection concern war and its effects on individuals, and the traumatised memories of post-war Americans. Even when its presence isn't directly felt, the war has created in the characters in the stories a damaged, questing quality; as we saw in Franny and Zooey, most of them seek solace in oriental mysticism.
Some (usually children) find enlightenment; others are thwarted. The opening epigraph to the book is the famous Zen koan – what is the sound of one hand clapping? This serves as the theme of the collection: how to transcend or deal with mundane reality when in contact with the dulling, deadening effect of what Holden Caulfield in The Catcher in the Rye and members of the Glass family in other stories call 'phoniness'.
The opening story, 'A Perfect Day for Bananafish' sets the tone with the story of Seymour Glass's suicide in 1948 while on holiday at a Florida beach hotel with his shallow bourgeoise wife Muriel. In the opening section there's Salinger's usual technique on show: Muriel chats distractedly on the phone with her mother – there's minimal authorial intrusion or commentary. This is typical of Salinger's fiction: characters talking. In this way he shows us their foibles, weaknesses and strengths without having to tell us what's going on.
In the story's second section we see Seymour, about whose mental health Muriel's mother had been expressing (not very sympathetically) concern to her daughter, chatting on the beach with a small girl called Sybil. Unlike the women's selfish talk, Seymour shows himself as sensitive and charmed by Sybil's innocent prattle. He teases her gently about the fictitious titular fish, telling her they eat so much they get too bloated to escape from the holes they enter on the seabed, causing their own deaths. The shocking denouement echoes this jolly, innocent narrative, told to amuse and entertain the girl, in a chilling, existentially tortured way.
The edition under discussion (photo: Amazon uk website)
This metafictional form is also seen in the title story; like Seymour, the Sergeant who calls himself 'X' is suffering from battle combat fatigue (or PTSD) – he has the shakes, facial tics, and can't sleep. The precocious, rather coquettish young girl, Esmé, whom he'd met in a tearoom in the first part of the story, when he'd been stationed in Devon undergoing training prior to the D Day landings, brings him the peace of sleep when he reads her affectionate letter to him.
This story also has two sections, also mainly in the form of dialogue, but its structure and form are complex. At the end of the first section the American has promised to write a story for the girl; make it 'extremely squalid and moving', she'd urged him. He obligingly describes the opening of the second section, where he's stationed in Bavaria immediately after the end of the war, serving in an intelligence unit, interrogating prisoners of war (ring any bells?), as the 'squalor' part. The story, therefore, is the one he'd promised, but it ends with a direct address to Esmé:
You take a really sleepy man, Esmé, and he always stands a chance of again becoming a man with all his fac- with all his 'f-a-c-u-l-t-i-e-s intact.
In mirroring her last words to him in the tearoom, and the innocent-adult way in which she'd spelt out the word 'slain' to protect her little brother, X demonstrates that she's brought him the kind of peace (or love) that passes all understanding. It's a deeply moving moment, and one doesn't have to be a believer in Christ, the Buddha or any mystic or guru to respond to it positively.
The cheesy US Ace paperback cover: what were they thinking?
In the unlikely setting of a commandeered Nazi woman's house in Germany, Sgt X finds the epiphanic peace that eluded Seymour, whose death haunts all the stories about the Glass family. That his release is brought about by the innocent affection of an orphaned girl – a lonely soul, like him – is characteristic of Salinger's fiction.
'Down at the Dinghy' is the only other Glass family story in the collection. Boo Boo Tannenbaum, née Glass, talks with her four-year-old boy Lionel, who's been upset by a crass racist remark by one of the servants. As Zooey manages to use big brother Seymour's wit and wisdom to bring about Franny's rehabilitation when she was enduring existential despair in Franny and Zooey, so Boo Boo is able to talk Lionel round to a kind of emotional stability. In his innocence he doesn't realise the full significance of the ugly word the servant had used.
Redemptive innocence crops up frequently in the other stories. In 'Teddy', the eponymous ten-year-old is a kind of savant; he's been touring European universities with his parents, propounding his mystical insights and prophetic visions to incredulous professors. On the ocean liner en route for home in the USA he's engaged in conversation by a young academic who wants to learn about his spiritual gifts. Teddy talks with the precocity blended with naiveté that was seen in Esmé. For example he asks the young man if he's a poet. No, he replies, why did Teddy think he might be?
Poets are always taking the weather so personally. They're always sticking their emotions in things that have no emotions.
He goes on to declare he favours logic over emotions: 'I don't see what they're good for.' He's disparaging about sentimental love. He goes on to discuss his state of enlightenment achieved through meditation, and his theories of reincarnation. In a peculiar passage he talks about a previous incarnation and his current state of spiritual imperfection:
I mean it's very hard to meditate and live a spiritual life in America. People think you're a freak if you try to. My father thinks I'm a freak, in a way. And my mother – well, she doesn't think it's good for me to think about God all the time. She thinks it's bad for my health.
Character wu (mu in Japanese) meaning 'nothing', from the famous Zen koan of Zhaozhu's dog
Like the Glass siblings, Teddy is so gifted, precocious and extraordinary – he's another of Salinger's youthful geniuses – he's sort of deranged, an outsider, unable to thrive in the world of ordinary people. In Franny and Zooey, Zooey says to his mother that he and his sister are freaks; he blames Seymour and Buddy for teaching them oriental religion – it's enlightened them, but made them unfitted for life in unenlightened post-war America. In 'Franny' his sister had declared a similar dissatisfaction with everything.
'Nobody's aiming to please, here. More, really to edify, to instruct', said the narrator of the title story of this collection, in setting down his thoughts about Esmé. Some critics have taken exception to Salinger's precocious, ingenuous young characters and their guru-like tendencies; they don't like what one called his glamorising of self-pity and his elevation of the Glass family to the status of sanctity, full of 'stricken sensitivity'.
That I think is understandable – Seymour and his fellow devotees of Dharma can come across as a little smug or priggish – but the warmth and humanity of Salinger's stories more than compensates for this occasional earnestness. Passages like this one in 'Esmé' could easily grate: Sgt X picks up a book by the German woman Nazi arrested by him and in whose house he now stays. He reads the fly-leaf inscription she'd written in the book by Goebbels: 'Dear God, life is hell'. In his traumatised, nerve-shot state he finds this a 'classic indictment', and struggles, 'against heavy odds, not to be taken in'.
He writes in pencil underneath:
'Fathers and teachers, I ponder "What is hell?" I maintain that it is the suffering of being unable to love.'
This typically enigmatic quotation (from Dostoevsky) is one of many such gnomic, often Zen or Hindu philosophical notes in Salinger's stories (the long list of mystical quotations from Seymour and Buddy's door in Franny and Zooey fits into this same category; we've just seen Teddy's dharma views). Some critics have found such pronouncements pretentious and discordant; I think they're quite endearing. I don't think he's showing off – and why shouldn't he write from his own spiritual point of view? Dostoevsky did.
Why not rail against the 'phoniness' of materialist American culture and insincerity in people, and strive for authenticity?
In her letter Esmé wrote that she hoped that D Day would bring about a 'swift termination' of the war (she loves those polysyllabic nouns!) and 'a method of existence that is ridiculous to say the least.' This is inadvertently what she has brought about for Sgt X. She's shown him an alternative to the phony ridiculousness of life.
Salinger's childhood home in Park Avenue, NYC
I did find some of these stories weak: 'Laughing Man' seems contrived, but it has charm; 'De Daumier-Smith's Blue Period' is too flashy – but it also contains one of the finest lines in the book. The nineteen-year-old narrator, yet another flawed, precocious youth, has taken a post as instructor in a correspondence art school. One of his students is a gifted nun to whom he writes with inappropriately candid ardour. After an epiphanic vision of a woman framed in a shop window, he writes in his diary:
I am giving Sister Irma her freedom to follow her own destiny. Everybody is a nun.
That he does so, pretentiously, in French, adds an ironic dimension that diminishes his pomposity; Salinger's humour and affection prevent the story from overbalancing into affectation – and the young man does seem to have undergone a life-changing experience. The sententiousness is of the same order as Esmé's gauche attempts to sound grown-up by employing expressions she doesn't fully understand.
I'd be interested to hear if others agree with me that Salinger is worth reading…
Images in the public domain via Wikimedia Commons, unless stated otherwise
Posted in American Literature	| Tagged For Esmé with Love and Squalor, J.D. Salinger	| Leave a reply
Apotropaic magic
I've read more Salinger in the past week, but having been to the dentist this morning and had some unpleasantly painful work done I don't feel up to much in the way of literary blogging today; I'll post on the Salinger stories shortly. Meanwhile here are some musings on one of my favourite words: Apotropaic
OED online:
Etymology: < Greek ἀποτρόπαιος averting evil ( < ἀποτρέπειν to turn away, avert)
Having or reputed to have the power of averting evil influence or ill luck.
Middle Eastern Hamsa(meaning 'five', as in fingers)
1883 Encycl. Brit. XV. 570/1 The sacrifice of the 'October horse' in the Campus Martius..had also a naturalistic and apotropaic character.
1904 W. M. Ramsay in Hastings Dict. Bible V. 115/1 The..employment of a bull's head on..sarcophagi..evidently..had at first an apotropaic purpose.
1918 L. Strachey Eminent Victorians 230 The same doctrine led him [sc. Gordon]..to append, in brackets, the apotropaic initials D.V. after every statement in his letters implying futurity.
1945 Proc. Prehistoric Soc. 11 55 In the centre, an apotropaic ornament, a severed head between two volutes.
apotroˈpaically adv.
1956 W. H. Auden Old Man's Road, Apotropaically scowling, a tinker Shuffles past.
A glass 'eye' from Israel
This notion of magic used to ward off evil or bad luck- whether by way of amulets, talismans or other potent symbols – is common in many cultures. In 6th century BC Greece it was frequently found in the form of an eye, exaggerated and enlarged, painted at the bottom of drinking vessels to ward off evil spirits when imbibing. Bad luck tended to be associated with envious looks from others, hence the use of an eye to deflect or reflect back such looks.
In most middle eastern cultures the Hamsa amulet (or Khamsa, meaning 'five', as in fingers of the hand) was thought to be potent in warding off envious looks.
In Turkey the Nazar eye amulet is ubiquitous still, especially on the prow of boats.
Roman-era mosaic from Antioch depicting a plethora of devices against the evil eye
The ancient Romans believed that laughter could keep away evil with the use of deformed or rude images – phalluses, dwarves; deformity was thought funny.
In the mosaic pictured left: Attacking the evil eye – the eye is pierced by a trident and sword, pecked by a raven, barked at by a dog and attacked by a centipede, scorpion, cat and a snake. A horned dwarf with a gigantic phallus crosses two sticks. Greek annotation "KAI SU" meaning "and you (too)". Roman mosaic from Antiochia, House of the Evil Eye. Hatay Arkeoloji Müzesi, Antakya, Inv.-Nr. 1024
Similarly apotropaic are silver bullets (against werewolves); garlic and crucifixes to ward off vampires; crossing one's fingers or knocking on wood to avoid bad luck.
'Gargouille' atop Notre Dame de Paris, construction of which began in the late 11C
Gargoyles on the parapets of churches were intended partly as a deterrent to witches and other evil spirits, especially when placed over doorways and windows, for such liminal positions were thought especially vulnerable; fireplaces were, too.
The Lady of Shalott, by JW Waterhouse, 1888
Mirrors were believed to have apotropaic powers, hence, perhaps, the belief that breaking a mirror brings bad luck. The Lady of Shalott was doomed when she looked out of her window to gaze at handsome Lancelot on his horse, induced the curse against her doing so, and her mirror cracked…the rest went badly for her. He did ok. C'est la vie.
All images in the public domain via Wikimedia Commons
Posted in English Language	| Tagged apotropaic magic, evil eye, Notre Dame de Paris	| 3 Replies
What's in a name? Hypocorism
I thought I'd depart from the world of literature for a change.
In my teaching of entry-level linguistics I try to explain the concept of address terms. There are various technical terms related to these: appellatives, onomastic meaning (onomastics being the term for the academic study of names), and so on. I'm sure there's a word that signifies something like 'names of characters in fiction that indicate their nature or salient feature' – Dickens was fond of these: Gradgrind, Mr McChoakumchild in Hard Times, to name just one novel. Can't recall this term right now. Do let me know in the comment field if you can enlighten me.
They are not characternyms: that's the term for names of characters in literature in general (I think).
Which brings me to hypocorism.
A hypocoristic name is a diminutive, familiar or reduced form of the full name. In England there's Will, from William.
Then there are those which don't just shorten the name, but which distort it: William becomes Bill, then lengthened to Billy; that –y ending is popular, hence Timmy, Dicky (see the next example), Jimmy and Tony); Richard becomes Dick; Margaret becomes Meg, Maggie or more strangely, Peg – it was common for nicknames to substitute Ps for Ms. Mary becomes Moll, then lengthens again to become Molly. Not quite sure why Madonna became 'Madge'…
Ann changes to Nan (from the old form 'Mine Ann'), though that name seems to have died out of use.
Cees Nooteboom
In Holland Cornelis becomes Kees (or Cees, as in the writer Nooteboom, born 1933). Maria becomes Ria (now also becoming popular in the UK). Alexandra becomes Sanna (the name of the little girl in Adalbert Stifter's Rock Crystal, about which I intend blogging soon). Ruud Gullit, the inimitable footballer (and not so imitable football manager) is derived from Rutgerus.
Donnie Darko may owe something to the Croatian hypocoristic form of the name Davorin, which is Darko.
Russian Aleksander becomes Sasha. Natalya becomes Natasha (is that right? Might have misremembered that one).
In Latin, diminutives often involve lengthening the name, hence Ursula means 'little bear' (which is ursus/ursa). The notoriously vicious Emperor Caligula's name is derived from 'caligas', the name for soldiers' sandals. Little Boots, if you like.
French diminutives or feminine endings also involve lengthening the masculine form.
So Nicolas becomes Nicolette, then Colette (as in the author, 1873-1954, famous for Gigi and other sex comedies considered racy at the time). Not very pc, this tendency, for the unmarked term (which is what linguists call the culturally accepted 'normal' form) is invariably the masculine. Compare English 'usherette' and all those other demeaning feminine linguistic terms ('lady doctor', 'actress/poetess', etc., now considered unacceptable in sensible usage).
The French also like reduplicated diminutives generally, like 'dodo', the child's word for 'dormir' (sleep, or bedtime), as well as hypocoristically, as in Didi, etc. (and, I suppose, Gigi).
German Ignatz used to be reduced to Nazi (which was used by Hitler's opponents as a term of abuse, signifying they were all country bumkins, for that was a popular name in provincial, rural Catholic Germany). Heinrich becomes Heinz (so the beans are little Heinrichs).
Polish Tadesz becomes Tadzio – known to me best as the name of the beautiful boy in Thomas Mann's Death in Venice.
Numerous appellations of the Virgin are common for girls' names in Spain; one of my favourites is a person I used to know: Sole, from Soledad – solitude. Inma is from Inmaculada – the immaculate conception (hence the once-popular Irish girls' name, Concepta, an early character in the soap 'Coronation Street').
Mononyms are names for people known only by one element, like Bono. Anthroponyms are places named after people (like Constantinople; or Disneyland). Toponyms are place-names in general; topanthroponyms are personal names derived from places, hence Chelsea Clinton or Paris Hilton.
Endonyms are the names of places as used by the natives of those places, so Köln is what we call Cologne. Similarly London is the English endonym; French people would call it Londres. Paris Hilton would not change. Unfortunately.
Exonyms are what we call these outsider names for endonyms.
Retronyms are fun; these are terms which have had to become modified, usually as compound nouns, as a consequence of technological or cultural developments; examples include TAP water (to distinguish it from bottled); ACOUSTIC guitar (not electric). Previously it was unnecessary to qualify the noun, because there was only one variety.
Hope you enjoyed this little excursion into the world of words.
Posted in English Language	| Tagged hypocorism, names, onomastics	| 2 Replies
Somebody Ate Her Gerbil: Renata Adler, 'Speedboat'
Somebody Ate Her Gerbil: Speedboat, by Renata Adler (This review was first published in Open Letters Monthly on 1st October, 2013)
Speedboat, Renata Adler's first novel, was originally published in 1976; along with her second from 1983, Pitch Dark, it has been reissued this year by NYRB Classics. I found it a stimulating and bravely ambitious but not consistently successful entity.
This is partly because of the structure: there's no linear plot, just a fragmented collection of vignettes and eclectic, reported snatches of conversation. As the reader tries to make sense of the apparently random fragments a unifying consciousness almost comes into focus and just about holds the novel together and prevents frustration from setting in: Jen Fain is a hard-drinking, dysfunctional journalist and teacher (she's 'never been any good at interviews', she confesses).
NYRB Classics cover
Speedboat 's tone is witty but can be slightly irritating in its jerky sequences of arch non sequiturs: 'I know someone who is trying to get rid of a myna bird – I mean, find a loving owner'. Then we're told about a man who offloads an unwanted cat. Next door lives a kid who wants to give away her rabbit, but is concerned that the 'wrong kind of person' might take it in 'bad faith' and eat it:
She thinks somebody ate her gerbil. No one eats gerbils. It is strange to think that most of the children under six whom one knows and loves, gives presents to, whatever, are not going to remember most emotional events of those first years, on the couch, or in jail, or in a bank, wherever they may find themselves when they are twenty-five.
A boyfriend's brother takes her on a surprise treat, which turns out to be a five-hour performance of Parsifal – she's not impressed. She ponders its absurd plot, and her thoughts express something of Speedboat's narrative structure:
The whole magic of plot requires that somebody be impeded from getting something over with. Yet there one is, with an emotional body English almost, wishing that pole-vaulter over his bar, wanting something to happen or not to happen, wishing somebody well.
I began to find I was not wishing Jen well, while admiring the skill with which the fragments were assembled. Jen's an observer, piling them up and recording them, but the pieces drift off into the unexpected and surreal, then fade out with a gnomic generalisation that's funny or provocative, but frequently insubstantial (as with the gerbil story) .
The disconnected nature of the narrative, perhaps, is Adler's way of showing Jen's flawed attempts to make sense of a fragmented world. She's almost defying herself and us to make connections and find coherence as she tries to shore up her life against its ruin. She's vulnerable, self-absorbed, damaged, questing, with a perceptive intelligence – she's examining herself in this out-of-joint Cold War America as if she were a pinned specimen:
I am a fanatic myself, although not a woman of temperament. I get nervous at scenes. I stole a washcloth once from a motel in Angkor Wat. The bellboy was incensed. I had to give it back.
Her insecurity and sensitivity are represented throughout the short episodes she strings together like charms on a bracelet: she's based in New York City or Washington, D.C., with frequent flashbacks abroad – Paris as a student, or exotic locations as a reporter or tourist. Full of intensities and contradictions, she's seemingly involved with a series of men about whom we learn very little. These peripheral guys seem to bore her – they are mentioned sporadically among the dozens of other characters with airy insouciance on Jen's part. She appears lonely yet longing for attachment, toying with the idea of maternity. She says, three pages from the end, 'Anyway, I seem to be about to have Jim's child; at least, I think I will'. Prior to this there's a scene in a maternity ward, where Jen may be a patient or there for a termination. Earlier, in Venice with a boyfriend called Aldo (after many 'separations'), she vomits after a heavy drinking session:
So I was in despair because six fat women of Venice I would never see again thought I was pregnant by a man who did not want to marry me.
This then is the central, noble theme: Jen trying to sort out what her life might mean, what she might want from it all in a world that's largely absurd, hostile or indifferent.
As if to anesthetize herself she attends all kinds of social functions (the food is always awful, she says) but with an ironic, anguished detachment:
I go to parties almost whenever I am asked. I think a high tone of moral indignation, used too often, is an ugly thing. I get up at eight. Quite often now I have a drink before eleven. In some ways, I have overshot my mark in life in spades.
Sometimes she is surely testing our credulity with her creations:
I once met a polo-playing Argentine existential psychiatrist, who had lived for months in a London commune…
I used to live with a graduate student of political science, a kind of Calvinist in reverse; that is, he was uncompromisingly bohemian. His mother was a dancer. His father was a judge. Our mattress was on the floor.
I appreciate that these abrupt shifts and accretions of information represent Jen as constantly picking over such items as a therapeutic narrative act. But it's simultaneously ironic, earthy and bathetic – that unglamorous student mattress on the floor, ruefully, rawly remembered:
Being neurotic seemed to be a kind of wild card, an all-purpose explanation. Other ways, of course, are straighter. I don't know.
Near the novel's end she reflects: 'It is possible that we are really a group of invalids, hypochondriacs, and misfits. I don't know.' Jen says 'I don't know' or 'whatever' quite often.
It's not just Jen's personal life that's presented as eclectic – there's a cultural, existential disjunction in her world reflected in these atomized narrative fragments and ephemera: 'Down the block a woman shouts: "You are nothing, nothing, nothing"'. She understands herself and her world incompletely or sporadically, so is vigilantly watchful of everything around her, but most particularly of herself in this world of disorder, doubtful integrity and disintegrating morals, politics and beliefs. Is the world going mad, or Jen? The image of America is shown as tainted: there's a scene set in Paris in 1961 where people are demonstrating against US policy on Cuba. Jen had gone abroad as a student with the 'usual American smile', and is disconcerted to find that she's not universally welcomed. This is the 1976 of insecurity – nothing it seems can be relied on: 'And so, class,' her schoolteacher used to say at the end of each year's American History Week, after her discourse on the 'treachery of Roosevelt' who got them into war to 'save his Russian friends' and the 'sinister effects' of those Russians: 'Don't say you have not been warned.' Jen and her classmates 'never said it. Nobody I ever met who grew up in the fifties…would have said it.'
Also towards the end Jen thinks this about the 'solid enthusiasms' of the coterie of 'educated women' in the age group to which she belongs:
Our ambitions were, nonetheless, what those of any sensible group of women at that time, perhaps at any modern time, ought to have been: to become safe and successful; to marry someone safe and successful; to have for our children some sort of worldly safety and success. From time to time, however, there is something, I don't know, wistful, about how it has turned out.
This time her 'I don't know' is poignant and moving. 'We are thirty-five', she says elsewhere. 'Some of us are gray.'
Reflexive incomprehension seems to be the social norm. Only the watchful eye and hypersensitive consciousness of Jen remain a narrative constant; we make our inferences about what everything means on the frame she creates – and this surely only half makes sense to her. She and one of her boyfriends charter a boat from three deracinated Swiss people who are baffled by the behaviour of their clients:
They thought of selling their boat again and returning to Geneva. The jet, the telephone, the boat, the train, the television. Dislocations.
This list of apparently unconnected objects, concluding with the abstraction of 'dislocations' embodies what Adler is maybe trying to achieve in Speedboat through Jen's pondering the way things pile up, people, events. The lack of verbs in so many such sentences, the lack of agency in others, the adjective-free descriptions, point up the fragile dislocations of Jen's cluttered, urban life.
Renata Adler
Although the narrative is largely engaging, then, and I admire Adler's brilliant attempt to render an intelligent person's struggle to make sense of things, it's not always possible to find this novel completely satisfactory. The accumulated details and pronouncements can seem inconsequential or contrived. 'The radical intelligence in the moderate position is the only place where the centre holds. Or so it seems', Jen muses, alluding to Yeats presumably; what's presented as an aphoristic, poetic truth is surely just muddled thinking presented as if debatable (that apparently uncertain final tag), but it's dogmatically asserted.
A sub-plot about her murdered landlord is taken up and dropped, but not before this enigmatic reflection of Jen's:
It is possible that I know who killed our landlord. So many things point in one direction. But too strong a case, I find, is often lost. It incurs doubts, suspicions. Perhaps I do not know. Perhaps it doesn't matter. I think it does, though. When I wonder what it is that we are doing – in this brownstone, on this block, with this paper – the truth is probably that we are fighting for our lives.
I felt, by the end of Speedboat, that perhaps this novel itself, witty and daring, dazzling in parts, really 'doesn't matter'; like the image Adler uses when Jen is thinking about stories and plots, it's like a 'game of solitaire or canasta', the narrative is shuffled and dealt, but doesn't ultimately 'come out'. But it's much to Adler's credit that she puts up such a spirited fight in playing this game of Jen's life.
Photos as they appeared in the Open Letters Monthly review.
Posted in American Literature	| Tagged NYRB Classics, Open Letters Monthly, Renata Adler, Speedboat	| 3 Replies
Brian Moore, 'Black Robe': a critique
Brian Moore, Black Robe. Paladin paperback, 1987; first published in Great Britain 1985
In this visceral quest narrative, James Fenimore Cooper's Leatherstocking novels meet Conrad's Heart of Darkness and Graham Greene's whisky priest/Catholic crisis stories.
Samuel de Champlain, map of New France, Canada, 1612
At the age of twenty Daniel Davost, a French orphan, has arrived at Sieur Samuel de Champlain's early seventeenth-century French settlement that will become Québec city in New France, Canada. He asks to accompany the Jesuit priest, Father Paul Laforgue, on a dangerous river expedition by canoe, with Algonkin 'Savages' (as the French settlers in the region hypocritically call them) as guides – they are on their way to their winter hunting grounds, and are given gifts as inducement . Word has reached Champlain that the two priests at a Jesuit mission deep in the 'country of the Hurons', have succumbed to sickness, or may have been murdered. A replacement is needed.
Daniel harbours a secret: he is not motivated by missionary zeal, as he leads his countrymen to believe; he has fallen passionately in love with Annuka, a young Algonkin woman, who is to accompany the group with her family. Daniel is aware he is in mortal sin for this deception.
The group undergoes numerous tribulations on the way,
Québec settlement, 1608, by C.W. Jefferys after a drawing by Champlain; book illustration from Champlain's 'Works', 1925, vol. II, p. 39
culminating in their capture by the fierce enemies of the Algonkin – the Iroquois; not all of them survive. They call the cruel torture to which they subject their victims, with typically fierce 'Savage' irony, 'caressing' them.
After a not entirely convincing escape scene, Daniel, Laforgue, Annuka and her father resume their quest. Laforgue goes on to the mission village alone; there he finds old Father Jerome dying, having suffered two strokes. His assistant had been murdered. The villagers are dying of fever, presumably smallpox, and their sorcerers accuse the 'Blackrobes', as they call the Jesuit priests, of bringing the illness among them:
…the Blackrobes did not speak of curing rituals to combat sickness, but of death and another life to which they wished to lead the people. The Blackrobes spoke this way because they were the sorcerers of death…[they] were devils of great power.
But the Algonkin sorcerers are forced to concede, and agree to let the village be baptised – they have no choice, for their people have no resistance to the disease which the Europeans tend to survive; this is seen as evidence of the superior power of the Jesuits' god.
There is more than a culture clash here; the rival belief systems are mutually incompatible. As Aenons, a local sorcerer says to Laforgue:
You and your god do not suit our people. Your ways are not our ways. If we adopt them we will be neither Norman [the Savages' name for the French] nor Huron. And soon our enemies will know our weakness and wipe us from the earth.
Iroquois-Algonkin battle: engraving based on a drawing by Champlain of his 1609 voyage to America's NE coast
It's hard not to feel saddened when they agree to give up their animistic beliefs, that there is a life-force or spirit in all living things – trees, animals – which the Savages respect and embrace joyfully. They despise the French desire for material possessions and lack of sympathy for the spirit of the country. One of the strengths of this novel, however, is that Moore avoids sentimentalising either side; he portrays the barbarity of much of the Savages' society – its casual cruelty, polygamy, sexual licence and misogyny, foul-mouthed 'filthy banter' in their talk (there are almost as many profanities in their speech as in Trainspotting), and the ambiguity of the Jesuits' faith and mission. Was the coming of the Europeans a deliverance for benighted heathens into the enlightenment of Civilisation, or was it a tragedy for a noble, ecologically balanced world? Moore is able to keep most of these questions open without attempting to provide pat answers. But the sorcerer was right: some ten years after the Algonkin agreed to submit to baptism, they had been wiped out by the Iroquois.
Central to the dramatic success of the novel is the conflicted character of Laforgue. His apparently indomitable Christian faith weakens and almost breaks by the end of the novel. From the start he longs to be called to undertake the mission, but lacks complete conviction in his fitness to fulfil it; as early as p. 41 he muses on the 'Jesuit house in Dieppe' he had left behind, its priests reading their breviaries in their cloisters:
He had been one of them. But from now on he would read his office in some clearing in a strange forest, or behind the wooden palisades of a distant mission house. He looked again at the rabble of Savage women, emaciated, burdened by years of toil, limbs gnarled, faces worn by sun and wind; at the brown laughing girls; at the children, wild as the forest which was their home. With these people he would live for years, perhaps for the rest of his life. A sudden sadness came upon him.
Algonkin couple, 18th century watercolour
He dreads failure, or going native, as most of the depraved, greedy, fur-trapping French settlers have; their descent into the sexual depravity (as they see it) of the Savages disgusts him. Even Champlain wears a beaver-fur robe, like an Algonkin chief.
By the end, he clashes with the fanatical Fr Jerome; as he reasons, the villagers at the mission only ask for baptism because they fear death:
'Or because they fear God,' the sick priest said. 'Alas, most Christians do not perform their duties because they love God, but because they fear Him. This fever is God's hand.'
The priest's paralysis and declining health – he almost seems to be putrefying while still alive – highlights the tensions between his zeal for converts, for saving souls, as he sees it, with the fever God's missionary tool, and what Laforgue sees as the 'sophism' of baptising the heathens uninstructed, under spiritual and mortal duress. 'The end is good!' insists Jerome.
Brian Moore (1921-1999)
The style throughout is lucid, and the prose is spare, as the quotations above demonstrate. The pace of the plot is cracking; in fact there's almost too much dramatic action. But this slight weakness is countered by the powerful, sympathetic portrayal of this clash of belief systems. Moore never slips into hagiographical representation of either side; neither does he demonise them. When the village sorcerer at the novel's end asks Jerome if those who are not baptised will die of the fever, Jerome replies, 'That is for God, not me, to decide.' 'That is not an answer', snaps the sorcerer; he demands one. Jerome repeats he doesn't know, then says:
'But let me ask you. If you were our God, who would you spare? Your friend or your enemy?'
'That is an answer' [says the sorcerer].
Laforgue looks on, more and more disenchanted. Daniel has become a Savage, he reflects:
And I, what am I? Do I still have the right to challenge Jerome, who is strong in his faith, I who am an empty shell?'
Later he thinks:
What are these baptisms but a mockery of all the days of my belief, of all the teachings of the Church, of all the saintly stories we have read of saving barbarians for Christ? Why did Chomina [Annuka's father] and go to outer darkness when this priest, fanatic for a harvest of souls, will pass through the portals of heaven, a saint and a martyr?…The hosts in the tabernacle were bread, dubbed the body of Christ in a ritual strange as any performed by these Savages. God, whose wishes he had dedicated his life to fulfil, was, in this land of darkness, as distant as the pomp and magnificence of the Church in Rome. Here in this humble foolish chapel, rude as a child's drawing, a wooden box and a painted statuette could not restore his faith. Yet somehow he must try.
Whether he manages to find his faith again is left unclear; what he does find is a redemption that I found more satisfying; he finds that he has come to love these 'Savages' in their 'vast, empty land'. As he pours baptismal water on a sick brow, a 'true prayer' comes to him at last.
All images in the public domain via Wikimedia Commons.
Posted in Literature	| Tagged Black Robe, Brian Moore, Jesuits	| 7 Replies
'Franny and Zooey', by J.D. Salinger: a critique, part II
The novella 'Zooey' completes the book Franny and Zooey by J.D. Salinger, and was first published in The New Yorker in 1957, then with the short story 'Franny', about which I wrote recently here, in book form in 1961.
Its first section takes place bizarrely in the bathroom: Zooey, an exceptionally good-looking 25-year-old actor, soaks in the bathtub, smoking and reading a long letter from his older brother, Buddy, which had been written four years earlier, and a script for a TV drama. When his mother enters he's irritated but wryly amused; a long conversation ensues, with Zooey screened behind the shower curtain while his mother sits on the toilet seat and, like her youngest son, smokes continuously. The precocious Glass siblings all address their parents by their first names; Bessie has come to report her concerns about the spiritual and emotional breakdown of her youngest daughter, 20-year-old Franny. The story 'Franny' serves as a kind of prologue to this novella – it shows her argument with her cynical, poseur boyfriend Lane, and her existential distress.
Autumn in Central Park
Now she has come home to the shabby genteel Manhattan apartment where the Glass parents live, and has taken to the sofa with her scruffy cat Bloomberg, and sleeps and frets there like a latter-day Elizabeth Barrett, refusing to eat or do anything. When Bessie urges Zooey to do something about his sister's emotional collapse, he banters with and teases her, repeatedly ordering her to leave and afford him some privacy. Bessie, like most of her children, is an eccentric, and accepts his breezy irony calmly, simply wondering how Zooey turned out so like his older brothers and they all lost their sweet innocence.
In the second part of the story Zooey has dressed and entered the living room to speak to Franny. Their conversation is also lengthy. He questions her motives for adopting the 'ceaseless prayer' mantra of the Pilgrim book (which I described in the previous post), upsetting her deeply.
He then retreats to the former bedroom of his older brothers; Seymour had committed suicide some years earlier, and his spirit haunts all of the surviving family. Buddy has moved north and become a teacher (a foreword to the story written from his perspective suggests that he is the true 'author' of this story). The story ends with Zooey tapping in to the spiritual wisdom of Seymour in order to get through to Franny.
The narrative fizzes with colloquial vigour, but the dominant voice, Buddy-Salinger's, is literary and sophisticated. The dialogue, as in 'Franny', is witty and animated, with carefully placed emphases to show up the speakers' intonation and character – this is Bessie in full flow, complaining that her husband isn't taking enough interest in Franny's spiritual-emotional breakdown:
Right after the eleven o'clock news last night, what do you think he asks me? If I think Franny might like a tangerine! The child's laying there by the hour crying her eyes out if you say boo to her, and mumbling heaven knows what to herself [that'll be the Jesus Prayer], and your father wonders if maybe she'd like a tangerine. I could've killed him.
Later, after another plaintive request from Zooey that she leave the bathroom and let him complete his ablutions in peace:
'I wish you'd get married,' Mrs Glass said, abruptly, wistfully.
Everyone in the Glass family – Zooey certainly not least – was familiar with this sort of nonsequitur from Mrs Glass. It bloomed best, most sublimely, in the middle of an emotional flareup of just this kind.
Although the narrative teeters occasionally on the brink of tweeness or whimsy, as here, Salinger manages to infuse sufficient seriousness to hold it all together: Franny's crisis is real, and despite his laconic sarcasm, Zooey's love and concern for his little sister is palpable. Similarly the mystic theme, as in 'Franny', because it's treated by Zooey with such scepticism, doesn't become intrusive or embarrassing. This is Zooey who, like Franny, is having a bit of an existential crisis of his own; he hates the arty-creative TV types he has to mix with:
They're as happy as pigs till I show up. I feel like those dismal bastards Seymour's beloved Chuang-tzu warned everybody against. "Beware when the so-called sagely men come limping into sight."' He sat still, watching the snowflakes swirl. 'I could happily lie down and die sometimes,' he said.
Ilya Repin (1844-1930), watercolour study of a pilgrim; in the State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow
He accuses Franny of indulging in an emotional 'Camille routine', and is ironic about her love of Epictetus and Emily Dickinson; he's also dubious about her commitment to the Jesus Prayer business:
'But I still say I don't like it. It's rough on Bessie, it's rough on Les – and if you don't know it yet, you're beginning to give off a little stink of piousness. God damn it, there isn't any prayer in any religion in the world that justifies piousness. I'm not saying you are pious – so just sit still – but I am saying all this hysteria business is unattractive as hell.'
As an antidote to the plotless metafictions I've been reading lately Franny and Zooey works well; it's slight, a little pretentious (all those quotations from Kafka and oriental mystics on the bedroom door of Seymour and Buddy's old bedroom), but beautifully crafted, and a highly rewarding read.
All pictures from the public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Posted in American Literature	| Tagged Franny and Zooey, J.D. Salinger	| Leave a reply


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Two distributors of public radio content to merge
Two distributors of public radio content are merging, in part to capitalize on the growing demand for podcasts. Cambridge-based PRX and Minneapolis-based PRI, both nonprofits, announced the dea Wednesday, bringing together PRI's award-winning journalism and PRX's audio distribution technology. WGBH, the Boston-based public TV broadcaster, acquired PRI in 2012 and has pledged to contribute $10 million to the new organization over five years. Kerri Hoffman, the CEO of PRX, will be CEO of the new company, while PRI CEO Alisa Miller will become executive chair of the new board. About 90 people work for PRI and 30 for PRX. The deal is expected to be completed in the fall. The new organization will be based in Boston with offices in New York and Minneapolis. — JON CHESTO
RIDE HAILING
Uber continues growth, narrows losses
Just over a year after Travis Kalanick was ousted as chief executive of Uber, the ride-hailing company released new financial results that showed continued growth and narrowing losses as it advances toward an initial public offering. On Wednesday, Uber posted a loss of $891 million for the second quarter, compared with a loss of more than $1 billion during the same period a year earlier. The company took in $12.01 billion in gross bookings in the quarter — or the amount of passenger fares and food delivery fees — up 41 percent from a year ago. After paying out fees to drivers, revenue was $2.7 billion. When Uber turned a profit last quarter because it offloaded businesses in Russia and Southeast Asia, it cautioned that bump would not last as it planned to reinvest the money. Uber is not required to disclose earnings because it is privately held, but it has made a habit of publicly releasing its numbers. — NEW YORK TIMES
Fox Business anchor explains comments on Denmark
A Fox Business Network anchor has clarified her comments on socialism in Denmark after triggering outrage among some of the Nordic country's most prominent government members. Trish Regan was criticized by Danish Finance Minister Kristian Jensen and the country's ambassador to the United States, Lars Gert Lose, among others, for a broadcast in which she juxtaposed Denmark with Venezuela in order to condemn socialism. Regan responded to the backlash with what she said was a clarification of her position on the subject. ''I do want to clarify my point from a segment last week on socialism,'' Regan said in a statement distributed on behalf of the Fox Business Network. ''Just to be clear, I was never implying that conditions in Denmark were similar in any way to the current tragedy on the ground there in Venezuela,'' she said. ''I was merely pointing out, using reports from The Atlantic, The Independent and other publications, that socialism is not the way.'' — BLOOMBERG NEWS
Employee dies in vat of oil in facility that provides services to Disney World
Authorities say a worker has died after falling into a vat of oil at a facility near Walt Disney World. Authorities told the Orlando Sentinel the 61-year-old man slipped and fell into the vat early Wednesday while emptying oil and grease from a tractor-trailer. Local news outlets reported the facility is part of a district created to provide municipal services to the Disney theme park. Deputies said witnesses couldn't pull the man from the oil. He became overwhelmed by fumes and slipped further down. The Reedy Creek Fire Department recovered the man's body. His name wasn't immediately released. In a statement to WKMG-TV, Disney said the victim worked for Harvest Power, a Massachusetts-based company that converts food waste and yard waste into biofuel, compost, mulch and fertilizer. — ASSOCIATED PRESS
Ford to spend more than $700m to renovate Detroit's vacant train depot
Ford Motor Co. plans to spend roughly $740 million renovating Detroit's long vacant train depot and redeveloping other area properties for research and development of self-driving vehicles. The Dearborn-based company in June used the Michigan Central depot as a backdrop while publicly laying out plans for the 105-year-old train station and surrounding Corktown neighborhood, but the anticipated cost wasn't detailed. The automaker's Ford Land development arm announced Tuesday it expects to seek $250 million in tax incentives to help offset the cost. Ford's plans call for the depot to be redeveloped over the next several years. The last passenger train left the station in 1988. — ASSOCIATED PRESS
Macy's progress does not impress investors
Macy's has some momentum, but investors are spooked by the cost of maintaining it. Although the department-store chain posted same-store sales that beat estimates and boosted its earnings and sales guidance, the stock tumbled nearly 16 percent. The decline is another sign that retailers still face deep pessimism on Wall Street as consumers flock to e-commerce. Macy's has been spending to win back shoppers by offering discounts and cutting back on unnecessary inventory. Like its peers, the company is struggling with a broader shift by consumers to online shopping and away from brick-and-mortar stores. — BLOOMBERG NEWS
Productivity rises in second quarter
US productivity grew at an annual rate of 2.9 percent in the second quarter, the fastest pace in more than three years, while labor costs actually fell. The April-June increase in productivity followed a much weaker 0.3 percent rate of gain in the first quarter, the Labor Department reported Wednesday. It was the strongest advance since a 3.1 percent gain in the first quarter of 2015. Labor costs actually fell at a 0.9 percent rate in the second quarter, the weakest showing in nearly four years. Productivity, a key factor determining how fast the economy can grow and how much living standards can increase, has been anemic throughout this expansion. — ASSOCIATED PRESS
New Zealand to ban foreigners from buying residential property
New Zealand's government will ban foreigners from buying residential property, making good on its promise to crack down on offshore speculators who it says are partly to blame for spiraling house prices. Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern campaigned on a foreign buyer ban in last year's election, saying overseas speculators had driven up house prices and made property unattainable for many young Kiwis. Prices have surged more than 60 percent in the past decade amid record immigration and a construction shortfall, driving home ownership to its lowest since 1951. While data suggest foreign buyers play only a small role in New Zealand's housing market, wealthy Americans such as tech billionaire Peter Thiel and former broadcaster Matt Lauer have made headlines for snapping up some of the most pristine property in the country. — BLOOMBERG NEWS
Consumers went shopping in July
Americans shopped at a healthy pace in July, buying more cars, clothes, and appliances, evidence that consumers are helping drive robust economic growth. Retail sales rose at a 0.5 percent annual rate in July, after a 0.2 percent increase the previous month, the Commerce Department said Wednesday. June's increase, though, was revised lower from a previous estimate of a 0.5 percent annual rate. Consumers appear to be feeling upbeat and are in overall solid financial shape. The unemployment rate is near an 18-year low. And economic growth, along with hiring, has accelerated. On average, Americans are saving more, which may encourage future spending. — ASSOCIATED PRESS
With Dad's support, one teen is playing 'Fortnite' instead of going to high school
'I am my dog's emotional support animal'

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


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Ginebra pummels TNT, 90-79
by: Ivan Saldajeno-Philippine News Agency | 15/01/2019 15/01/2019
BOCAUE, Bulacan — Barangay Ginebra scored the first win of the new Philippine Basketball Association season with a 90-79 trumping of TNT KaTropa at the Philippine Arena here on Sunday night.
The Barangay pulled away late in the first quarter and finally repulsed the KaTropa in the last quarter, but not without some scare in the second and the third periods.
The lopsided win was led by Japeth Aguilar who went 8-for-13 from the field for 21 points with four rebounds, three blocks, and one steal for Ginebra.
Greg Slaughter added 15 points, seven rebounds, and one assist, while Sol Mercado chipped in 11 points, six rebounds, and four assists.
Teytey Teodoro put up four points in his first PBA game for Ginebra.
RR Pogoy made 21 markers, 16 boards, one assist, two steals, and one block for TNT.
Jayson Castro had his own double-double of 17 points and 10 assists with four rebounds, two steals, and one block.
Brian Heruela put up 14 points, two rebounds, two assists, and two steals, while David Semerad and Mike Miranda were scoreless in their respective debuts for the PLDT franchise. PNA-northboundasia.com
San Miguel breaks ground for new brewery in Pangasinan


The history of Hartzell Propeller dates back to the earliest days of aviation, with a conversation between Robert Hartzell and Orville Wright. But what does it mean to be "built on honor?" And how does a company sustain its passion for aviation for 100 years?
In our retrospective video, you will see pilots, enthusiasts, partners, and longtime employees share their thoughts about the world's largest manufacturer of aircraft propellers. As we look toward the future of aviation, one thing is abundantly clear: Hartzell Propeller will continue to be leaders in aviation innovation and stay true to their mantra, "Built on Honor," for the decades to come.


text:
Festival season drives auto sales in Oct
Our Bureau New Delhi | Updated on March 12, 2018 Published on November 01, 2012
The general inflationary trend, high fuel prices and interest rates, which have an impact on sentiment, are seen as challenges.
Car companies reported better than expected sales in October. The largest car maker Maruti Suzuki recorded a 94 per cent jump in car sales during the month over the same month last year. However, its sales in October 2011 were down by a little over a half because of labour problem at its plants, which hit production.
In October 2012, Maruti Suzuki sold 79,811 cars against 41,192 in the same month last year. Its total domestic sales, including utility vehicles and vans, were up 87 per cent at 96,002 units.
With exports, sales crossed the one lakh mark to touch 1,03,108 units, an 85 per cent jump.
Hyundai Motor India sold eight per cent more vehicles in the domestic market, at 35,778 while exports were up 50 per cent at 23,007 units. Total sales for October were up 21 per cent.
Mahindra & Mahindra reported a 44 per cent increase in passenger vehicles at 26,932 units, while its total vehicles sales including commercial vehicles increased to 53,438 units, a 29 per cent growth over October 2011.
"The festivals brought in positive growth in domestic sales with resurgence in petrol variants. All models showed a growth especially with strong demand of Eon and Elantra," Rakesh Srivastava, Vice-President- Marketing and Sales, HMIL, said.
The challenge, he said, would be to convert customer interest into sales as the general inflationary trend, high fuel prices and interest rates were affecting sentiment.
Tata Motors' total sales (including exports) including commercial and passenger vehicles in October were 71,771 vehicles, up by 6 per cent, over October 2011. Honda Cars India registered a 46 per cent increase to 8,085 units against 5,526 units sold in the same period last year.
Toyota Kirloskar Motor sold 12,281 units in the month, up 14 per cent compared to 10,762 units in the corresponding month last year.
Nissan India's sales were down by 38 per cent to 1,862 units, compared to 2,990 units in 2011.
Ford India sold a total of 10,948 units compared to 10,906 units in October 2011. General Motors India's sales were down 49 per cent at 6,754 units against 10,062 units sold in same period last year.
Renault India sold 6,790 units. In October last year, it sold only 173 units with two products.
German luxury car manufacturer Audi sold 850 units compared to 482 units in October 2011.
Two-wheeler category
In the two-wheeler category, Hero MotoCorp reported its highest-ever sales with 5,29,215 units during the month compared to 5,12,238 units in same month previous year.
India Yamaha Motor sold 49,522 units, up five per cent to 47,240 units sold in October 2011.
Honda Motorcycles and Scooters India reported a 28 per cent increase to 250,606 units.
TVS Motor Company reported four per cent growth in sales with total sales of 190,438 units across all categories including two- and three-wheelers (domestic plus exports).
In the commercial vehicles segment, VE Commercial Vehicles Ltd sold 3,945 (domestic plus exports) units of its Eicher brand of trucks and buses, down 6 per cent.
> ronendrasingh.s@thehindu.co.in
scooters and motorbikes
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text:
A Call to Subversion
Posted on August 3, 2005 by Baron Bodissey
This blog has repeatedly asserted that the critical front in the Great Islamic Jihad is the struggle within the soul of the West. It is a bitter but non-violent civil war between those who would surrender to the deconstruction of Western culture and those who would resist it.
The fortunes of this war vary from country to country in the West. The reports by Fjordman and Rune suggest the inevitable conclusion that Scandinavia has all but lost the war. The combination of state-enforced political correctness and mass Muslim immigration is a lethal one, leaving Swedish civil society on the verge of collapse.
Britain threatens to tolerate itself out of existence, as chronicled repeatedly by Norman Geras. An Islamic radical like Sheikh Omar Bakri continues to preach violent jihad against the infidels, while he and his disciples enjoy the generous benefits of Britain's welfare state.
In Australia, pastors are jailed for defaming Islam when they quote the Koran. The primary religious text of Islam is "defamatory" by its very nature, but it is apparently unwise for Australian citizens to point this fact out.
Oriana Fallaci has to stay out of her native Italy or risk jail time for printing her opinion of Islam. The Netherlands… Germany… France… Canada… Each is a front in the Great Jihad, and each is succumbing in its own way to the enemy tide.
Here in the USA we are not as badly off — in some cases the First Amendment still manages to protect the right to voice an opinion — but the forces of Multiculturalism and Political Correctness still tighten the screws on most sensible discourse. The situation is so severe that major national media do not dare to call this war what it is: the Third Wave of the Great Islamic Jihad.
How did we get to this sorry pass? What happened?
You can chalk it up to the victory of Soviet communism. Communism was defeated empirically, in the real world, by democratic capitalism. But in the marketplace of ideas — in the media and academia, among the mandarins of pop culture, and in the permanent federal bureaucracy — the Soviets won. Capitalism has to be tolerated, since the engine of modernity will not run without it, but it will never be respectable, and its associated virtues — hard work, thrift, religious values, and civic culture — have been permanently discredited.
Thank the KGB for its tireless work infiltrating and financing student radicals, black activists, labor unions, and any organization that sought to undermine traditional Western values. Thank the innumerable fellow travelers, the Marxist theoreticians and deconstructionists, who gladly drilled and dynamited and demolished until our common culture was a field of rubble. Thank the forces of leftist subversion who ate their way through the body politic like termites through an old stump.
The socialist left may be a spent force on the political scene, but its legacy is still with us. Each of us labors under a great burden of unexamined premises that inhibits honest discussion. To make a profit, to judge an idea on its merits, to observe real differences among people and groups — each of these actions carries the risk of elite disapproval. Each of us has witnessed the telltale glance over the shoulder and lowered voice whenever an un-PC thought is uttered.
This suppression of meaningful discussion has allowed the Great Jihad to enjoy success within our midst. Because dissent on such issues is not allowed, taxpayers in Britain have to fund Islamic education in the schools, and Swedish police are not allowed to release rape statistics based on the ethnicity of the perpetrators. Islam is a Religion of Peace, and scrutinizing its tenets and practices is — horror of horrors! — racism. Our toxic tolerance looks the other way while Muslim women are suppressed, straitjacketed, abused, and even killed, all in the name of the most noble of ideals.
So what can be done to hinder this suicidal juggernaut?
Since subversion brought on the current crisis, the time has come for counter-subversion. The duty of a warblogger, as I have said before, is to storm and occupy the national conversation. We have to subvert the dominant paradigm.
We will have to it with no help from the mainstream media, committed as they are to the PC worldview. And we will have to do it despite the Bush administration and our elected politicians, who seem constitutionally incapable of taking action without the approval of the New York Times and the network news. It will truly be a task for "the distributed intelligence of the Internet".
We can begin by asking questions, dangerous, politically incorrect questions. We must ask them forcefully and repeatedly until they become part of the collective dialogue. Here are some examples, and you can add your own:
Is Islam inherently dangerous, or just its most radical forms?
Are journalists aiding and abetting our enemies in the way they cover stories and utilize terrorist sources?
Is the UN part of the problem rather than part of the solution?
Does the destruction of common values by a degraded popular culture play right into the hands of the Great Jihad?
Why are we so reluctant to tackle the Saudi and Iranian problems?
To jump-start this conversation we have to be willing to ignore the nagging inner voice that tells us, You can't say that! We have to inure ourselves to the label "racist". We have to expect that we will be called "tools of the neocons". We have to learn to brush away the insults.
If we want to succeed in this fight, we have to be subversive. And subversion is a thankless task.
It's time to take back the culture.
31 thoughts on "A Call to Subversion"
someguy on August 3, 2005 at 2:52 pm said:
Excellent post, Baron. (And thanks for the link.)
I just wrote a very pessimistic post this evening about the last entry Steven Vincent made in his blog before he was kidnapped and murdered. It is proof of what I live every day: that PC multiculturalism is producing an Oprah-fied military that goes through the motions of fighting well enough without the conviction that our values are worth fighting for.
My question is this: It took the Soviets 72 years to accomplish what they did. Do we have 72 years to reverse the damage?
Baron Bodissey on August 3, 2005 at 3:03 pm said:
Someguy — thank you for the valuable task you're performing in getting the words out of Italian and into English for poor monoglots like me. Undoubtedly you will eventually feel the full Fallaci anger for your translations, but the rest of us bless you. I've blogrolled you.
Yes, I had already seen your Vincent post. Did you see some of the nasty troll comments on his blog's last post (not the one by him)? Some people just can't help themselves.
Let's hope we continue to be a lot more efficient than the USSR…
Thank you! I've added yours to mine as well.
To answer my own question: I hope we can turn it around in less than 72 years because, quite frankly, I don't think we have that much time.
Rick Darby on August 3, 2005 at 3:55 pm said:
Marvelously concise and perceptive analysis of the situation.
For years I have watched uneasily as every traditional virtue has been demeaned. In their place, we now have only two acceptable qualities in public life: "compassion," which has been drained of its true meaning and been re-branded as handing out money and favors to interest groups that identify themselves as victims; and non-judgmentalism, which in many quarters represents the highest state of being that a person can aspire to.
It is the second contemporary "virtue" that has made it impossible to deal with the world as it is. Every response to a threat must first pass the test of offending no one, certainly no minority group or even crackpot self-appointed spokesman for a minority group.
I thought nothing along these lines could surprise me any more. Then I read the article about how one police force in England had issued orders that no raids to arrest terrorist suspects were to be conducted on Muslim premises without the police first removing their shoes, waiting until the praying-toward-Mecca routine was over, and a host of other "sensitive" rules had been observed.
["Ahmed? I say there, old boy, so sorry to disturb you, but you'll notice we're all in our stockings to show our respect to Allah, peace be upon his blessed name, and … where was I? Oh yes, I'm afraid we're under orders from our racist Islamophobic gov'nors to take in for questioning a couple of the residents, I'm sure it's just a bit of a muddle and that. Is this a convenient time? You're at prayer? Frightfully sorry — what time would work for you? Oh, I see — well, here's my card, just ring me any time day or night when the boys are ready to come round to the nick, we'll have tea on and no mistake! Now good bye, sir, and may Allah (peace be upon him) bless you and all the faithful … "]
How can we fight an enemy who has sworn our destruction and the replacement of our society by his own while we must ignore such antique qualities as vigilance and common sense, and throw incense on the altars of multiculturalism? When we must pretend that it's only a few extremists who are the problem, and not a widespread world view that is overtly contrary to our own ideas of fairness and decency and acceptance of differences?
Political correctness must die.
Rick — those are good additional questions!
I guess what I'm calling "toxic tolerance" combines compassion & non-judgmentalism. Or maybe it's just the praxis of the same characteristics…
Always On Watch on August 3, 2005 at 5:25 pm said:
This doesn't really belong here, but I wanted to reach you quickly.
The following comment was left on my blog by Cubed of 6th Column:
They're baaaaack!
CAIR has just turned loose its attack dogs on Geoff Metcalf, Michael Graham's replacement at WMAL.
CAIR's "Action Alert #464" calls on its followers on Wednesday, August 3, to "Ask WMAL to address incitement of anti-Islam hate by talk show hosts."
Here's what the fuss is all about.
On Friday, July 29, Geoff Metcalf said "And by the way, let me just add a sidebar here that's significan, and everybody forgets this, but according to the Quran, believers in Islam are not required to tell infidels, and that's us, the truth. So they apparently have permission to lie when it is appropriate."
CAIR went on to say that most callers to the program expressed similar hostility to Muslims and to the faith of Islam.
You can listen to the quote at: http://www.cairfl.org/audio/050729wmal-Metcalfe.mp3 .
For a really good discussion of the terms used in Metcalf's talk that made CAIR so angry, go to http://sixthcolumnagainstjihad.blogspot.com and look for Eleanor's blogs. They were first posted quite some time ago, but in honor of the occasion, George Mason has re-posted them today.
It's time to roll up our sleeves again!
Cutler on August 3, 2005 at 11:34 pm said:
ik on August 4, 2005 at 1:00 am said:
ik,
Great Post. We have similar problems in India. The leftists and Islamists have taken over all the media / film outlets. It is almost impossible to get the word out.
The critical point in Academia and the movie industry. Some of us with skills have to start making movies trying to remove this leftism.
Academia has been bought out by money. Cut out Saudi money from Academia.
On a personal level – I try my best not to buy anything produced in any Islamic country
Baron Bodissey on August 4, 2005 at 7:14 am said:
Ik — maybe making & distributing independent movies will become easier because of the internet. It has changed the market for books — conservative books that would have been buried (e.g. the Swift Boat Vets in the election last year) are now publicized & sold via the blogosphere.
As for not buying products from Islamic countries — that's fairly easy, since Islamic countries (with exceptions for Pakistan & Egypt) don't produce much that people want to buy. Not counting oil, that is. And there's the problem: it's hard to stop buying oil, or products made using oil.
In fact, if it weren't for oil, Islam wouldn't even be a issue now.
Goesh on August 4, 2005 at 8:34 am said:
Does the Left really think their ideology and lifestyles would be tolerated by muslims in control of the political process? That is what amazes me the most. Can you imagine jihadis allowing PETA, NAMBA and gay rights parades for instance? All it takes is a simple majority and the sale of alcohol would be prohibited on Fridays, and that is but a trivial example. Secondly, the Left appears to not realize that with numbers comes intimidation in the election process. Is the Left really just a bunch of closet muslims? Abortion would not be tolerated by fundamentalists. Well, there goes the local tavern and no more watching football and sipping a beer on Monday night, that's for sure. I'm serious – all it takes is numbers in a democracy. Look at Galloway in England for crying out loud! Like I said in another post in another blog, ya' gotta' love a Constitution that protects the forces seeking its very destruction. I for one am writing my Congressman about CAIR given the public statements many of them have made and their background and affiliations. We need to all be contacting the advertisers with WMAL are remind them that boycotting is a two-way street.
a4g on August 4, 2005 at 11:17 am said:
…hard work, thrift, religious values, and civic culture — have been permanently discredited…
I think your view is unnecessarily bleak, Baron.
Like all good subversives, we have two faces. Certainly our public face is that of blogger, yammering and trying to change minds in the here-and-now, approaching but never crossing the line. But we do our most important work in hiding.
Because in the quiet of the evening, millions of us carefully wire the Improvised Educational Devices of the shadow war: we homeschool our abundant children in the ways of cultural revolution.
Just as the self-indulgent gluttons of PC are attenuating themselves out of existence, an army of off-grid intellectual warriors is slowly being raised to join the battle. They are not polled. They are not counted.
But they have actually read the Constitution. They have learned– in latin– from the lessons of Republican Rome.
They see.
And they are coming.
Baron Bodissey on August 4, 2005 at 11:59 am said:
Goesh — As I have said before, the appeasers are probably not really thinking through the consequences of their position. The goal is to make all the bad stuff go away, so that we can return to normal, living our nice government-funded socialist permissive lives.
Jihad? What jihad?
Baron Bodissey on August 4, 2005 at 12:22 pm said:
a4g — You are, of course, right; there is an optimistic view of all this. Sometimes I even adhere to it!
And, demographically speaking, we are bound to win — we will simply outbreed the Left. But will we do it before we are overrun by the mujahideen? That is the question…
Newvictorian on August 4, 2005 at 12:22 pm said:
Yes, a4g! I have an 8-month-old son, and as I change his diaper I whisper in his ear that he will be a leader, a champion, and a stone killer, if necessary. In addition to the Latin he's going to learn Spanish and Arabic–now I'm thinking of adding Chinese (I'll learn them with him).
And on the current, intellectual battlefront let us just keep on thinking, speaking and blogging, and we'll wear down the gloomy PC crowd. I think they're already so hollowed out inside that they will collapse (as a cultural touchstone) faster than we think). Reality is an unstoppable force when it comes to the test of ideas.
It just takes longer than we like sometimes to wear away the masks.
PD111 on August 4, 2005 at 3:38 pm said:
The demeaning of the most vibrant and successful culture in history by the PC and Ultra-liberal brigade, has thrown our whole system into confusion. Note the confusion and division in Britain over the Belmarsh detainees – Magna Carta, Bill of Rights, all have been called into question. These were issues that had been settled a long time ago. It is the presence of Islam and its social requirements that has thrown us right back to the Middle Ages. The Islamists though, care nought for our legal, judicial or constitutional systems, except as rope to hang us with.
Bodissey had a picture of the three proverbial monkeys. All three of them are symbolic of the PC culture that now pervades the West. The deaf monkey will not hear unless the speech is politically correct. Similarly the second monkey for sight, and the third will not speak anything that has not been filtered through political correctness.
What is the key? Subversion, as Bodissey suggests, and as I posted in a tangential manner a week ago, is the answer. Subversion is what has been going on for the last 30 years and subversion is the key to put a spanner in the works of Political Correctness and Ultra-liberalism. The tactic is to use Political Correctness and Ultra-liberalism as tools, to tread the PC path and lead it into a dead alley, an impasse, to a logical absurdity.
We have complained that MSM, being totally liberal and politically correct, does not hear or see the Blogworld. The three monkeys are on different wavelengths from the Blogworld wavelength. So subversion in this context means, that we have to frame our articles, speech, and any other form of communication, and put it on the same wavelength as the MSM.
The MSM will not see an attack on religion as politically correct or fit in with their Ultra-liberal view of society. We thus have to shift the battleground to the secular field. Another reason to shift the battleground from the religious to the secular is that the "religious" battleground suits Islam perfectly, as it further raises the profile of Islam in the West, which is the main purpose of the Jihad.
In the first instance, we need to start putting real pressure on two issues, both of which are social and legal issues.
1. The enslavement of women in Islam.
It is damnably unfair that Muslim women have to bear the responsibility of "honour" in Muslim society, a deadly serious matter, but get no power that goes with such awesome responsibility. It is damnably unfair that a Muslim woman has no power to decide her fate. It is unjust that Muslim women have to bear the pains and penalties of FGM. Women are also regarded as chattels in the world of Islam – in effect slaves.
The public manifestation of our acceptance of institutionalised slavery in the West is the burqa. It is an acknowledgement, that we as a Western society have recognised the institutionalised slavery of women in Islam, as legitimate in the West. This cannot be accepted in a liberal and socially just society.
Our sense of justice and compassion for the cruel injustice heaped on Muslim women, is what concerns us as liberal compassionate humans. Once Muslim women are free, as it is their right to be in the West, then the after effects on Islam are of no concern to us. It is a private matter within Islam.
2. The sentence of death on Apostates of Islam.
Freedom of choice is the hallmark of a liberal and just society. Yet we countenance the fact that people who leave Islam, have to go about in daily fear of their lives. Hour by hour that fear stalks them, even here in the West.
How could we have allowed such a situation come to pass in the citadel of liberalism? How did we ignore the cries for help from the weak, the vulnerable and the isolated?
Such social issues are not the fault of Muslims. Muslims are the first and most oppressed victims of Islam. They are just as kind and nice people as any other. It is the doctrine of Islam that gives rise to social values that are so cruel and unjust on individual Muslims. My heart goes out to the weak, the trammelled and the vulnerable Apostates of Islam. They are truly the most marginalized and victimised individuals in the world. Let it not be said, that even here in the West, we allowed such injustice to continue.
The moral high ground is ours if we choose to seize it. Hope for all those in the thrall of Islam, and Compassion for those who are the most marginalized and vulnerable victims of a doctrine that needs to be made humane.
Fjordman:
Have you heard about the BBC Question Time programme after the Islamic terrorist attacks in London. The BBC packed the audience with Muslims, just as they did with the QT programme after 9/11. This QT was just as hideous and macarbe as the 9/11 one. The BBC BTW is funded by the license payers in Britain. BBC – Lord Haw Haw is more appropriate.
Biassed BBC has more details.
OoPs:
Previous post should have been on Fjordman's site, as all of you may have guessed.
Plead guilty, though in defence, the comments section look alike.
Not only that, but a lot of the same commenters are here. But you never know — Fjordman might look in and see your comment…
Jason_Pappas on August 4, 2005 at 7:41 pm said:
Excellent post and orientation to the problem we face today. This war will be won or lost at home. We face cultural taboos that thwart debate and pre-empts consideration of the important questions that you list.
Is Islam inherently dangerous, or just its most radical forms? I argue yes, yes, definitely yes.
Is the UN part of the problem rather than part of the solution? And how!
Why are we so reluctant to tackle the Saudi and Iranian problems? Lack of moral leadership.
Andrew Scotia on August 5, 2005 at 12:16 am said:
I have two sons who are conservatives and have avoided political correctness even though they attended public schools. They were raised in an atmosphere of skepticism about revealed truth. I won't bore you with the details except to recount on method.
I would pretend to swallow whole what the used car ads on television said about Cal Wothington and his dog Spot. Which could be a bear or an ostrich or any silly animal he could get. I would say, "…that's the oddest dog" "Dad, its a bear not a dog. "But the television says it's a dog and it's named Spot. "Dad, bear." "Do you mean the television would lie to me?" Five year old answers, "All the time, Dad, all the time." Dialogs like this, increasingly more complicated were features of their lives until they went to college.
Now, they are both able to spot crap and say, "That's crap." Liberals fear them in our town since they have no compunction about saying the unsayable and back it up with citations and footnotes.
Jason — we're definitely on the same wavelength. I've blogrolled you.
Andrew — intelligent skepticism is a skill worth teaching. I homeschooled my son until he was 12, and tried to instill that capability in him.
Dymphna on August 5, 2005 at 11:25 am said:
The Baron is right about his boy. However, the BB was told recently by a college professor that he was "too upbeat." I reminded the Baron's Boy that this professor may be a bit disgruntled since he is courting the professor's beautiful daughter.
Truth & Consequences on October 18, 2005 at 5:58 pm said:
Great post, Baron and unlike many others, offers a solution. I agree that the fight is and always has been in the marketplace of ideas, which we lost miserably thanks to the effective subversion of all the devious players you mentioned. We have also failed to support politicians with the courage and intellectual firepower to meet this daunting challenge.
We "countersubversives" need to get involved at the political level as well, rather than just sit on the sidelines throwing stones, so that when our dialogue finds a wider audience there is a pool of experienced people willing and able to articulate and legislate it.
Baron Bodissey on October 18, 2005 at 7:07 pm said:
Truth — one important way to get involved at the political level is to THROW THE RASCALS OUT.
There are plenty of squishy Republicans in Congress who do nothing but ladle pork and preen for the TV. The Club For Growth targets vulnerable ones in the primaries.
That's one way to effect some change.
Baron:
Absolutely! Throw them all out. But we have to have something better to replace them with.
BTW Baron. I like your blog immensely. Have posted it on my fledgling site.
Muncle Mike on November 21, 2008 at 11:48 pm said:
Great Blog all around. I personally as well as my family am glad there are people like you out there. Doesn't seem quite so lonely anymore. I definately won't be keeping my big politically incorrect mouth shut. I linked to your blog on mine and proud of it. I'm fairly new at this, but have lots of time to make waves.


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text:
Dorinda Katz
Actress | Producer | Writer
Known for SFG Power the Beginning, Internetrix (2005), Getting Out (2001), SFG Power Takes Manhattan
Mar 15, 1969 (age 52) | 5' 0" (1.52m)
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