The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung reports that the Swedes have been working hard for two years developing the world’s best mattress. Apparently, this dream factory will put you back 51,000 Euros.
Sadly, however, getting a good night’s sleep won’t keep all of Europe’s nightmares at bay.
A few days ago our editor, Joseph Bottum, observed with a shake of his head that none of the many Junior Fellows at First Things in recent years reads novels with any regularity.
I had to confess I was no exception, thus perfecting his despair. “The dominant Western literary form for the past two hundred years” he said “but you all say, ‘Nope, we’re done with that.’”
Why is this? I can’t speak for anyone else, but, for my part, I just don’t get drawn into fictional narratives the way I did as a child.
I turned towards the philosophical and historic in my mid-teens, which gave me Plato’s kind of impatience with lying poets. At some point I found that I had to force myself to turn the next page because I really did not care in the least what happened to imaginary persons. The only narratives I now read with easy pleasure are travelogues, histories, and biographies, packed as they are with the red meat of the real.
But I’m making a good-faith effort to regain a taste for novels. I’ve started with Jane Austen, hoping that the goodly helping of edification will help me painlessly transition from my addiction to propositional truths to a healthy appreciation of the formal properties of a well-wrought story. I’ve read Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility and am now in the middle of Persuasion. She’s quite as wise, perceptive, and delightfully ironic as everyone says, but I’m still having the hardest time staying interested in the plot.
Are there any other philistines out there who can relate to my struggle?
Back in college I took a class on medieval Spain. The professor, one of my favorites, always emphasized the fact that, when you look the history of the Iberian Peninsula, you shouldn’t just see a series of battles or conflicts but rather an amalgamation of cultures, traditions, and peoples. To bring this point home, we read a lot of the literature produced in Medieval Iberia, from the shorter Arabic and Hebrew poems to the Castilian epics.
Of all the fascinating things we read, the Arabic poetry impressed me most. Beautiful, delicate, and refined, it has a way of conjuring up romantic and nostalgic images of lost loves, warm summer evenings, and youthful joy.
Here are a few of my favorites (taken from a collection
The wind does the delicate work
of a goldsmith
crimping water into mesh
for a coat of mail.
Then comes the rain
and rivets the pieces together
with little nails
—Abu l-Qasim al-Manishi (12th century, Sevilla)
A serene evening.
We spend it drinking wine.
The sun, going down,
lays its cheek against the earth
to rest.
The breeze lifts
the coattails of the hills.
The skin of the sky
is as smooth as the pelt
of the river.
How lucky we are to find
this spot for our sojourn
with doves cooing
for our greater delight.
Birds sing,
branches sigh
and darkness drinks up
the red wine of sunset.
—Muhammad ibn Ghalib al-Rusafi (12th century, Ruzafa, Valencia)
The goblets were heavy
when they were brought to us
but filled with fine wine
they became so light
they were on the point of flying away
with all their contents
just as our bodies are lightened
by the spirits.—Idris ibn al-Yamani (11th century, Ibiza)
My friend Manolo the Shoeblogger has, of course, some advice for a woman in need of shoes today:
Dear Manolo,
I’m a small town girl with big time dreams, who has just been given the job of a lifetime. The next eight weeks will be super demanding and I’ll be in the limelight a lot. . . . What would you recommend to make me seem a little more sophisticated and polished?
Sarah
Manolo says, congratulations on your recent success, clearly you are the woman to be reckoned with!
It is always the same with the small town girls who make it big; on the one of the hands, you wish to give yourself the making over so as to seem more fashionable, while on the other of the hands you do not want to lose that refreshing American naturalness which others recognize as the heart of your charm. . . .
Naturally, the Manolo suggests starting with the shoes. You must shed those pedestrian, low quality shoes and move up market with something truly super fantastic. Look, here is the Karolina in black patent from Kate Spade, both super fantastic and all American!
Truly super fantastic!
Despite Jody’s observations, I think McCain was absolutely right not to spend a lot time talking about abortion and related issues in his acceptance speech. Consider:
(a) You’ve got to get possession of the bully pulpit before giving the sermons.
(b) Those on both sides for whom the life issues are paramount already know McCain’s and Obama’s positions and (except for a few people in the grip of some delusion, like Doug Kmiec) are going to vote accordingly.
(c) One cannot argue that by not emphasizing abortion McCain forfeits the right, if elected, to claim a “mandate” in this area. Everyone knows that he would not really have a specific pro-life mandate in any event. Everyone knows this because everyone knows that public opinion is deeply divided and somewhat confused on the issue, and because they know that this election is largely being driven by other concerns—the economy, the war in Iraq, weariness with partisanship, etc.
Unfortunately, most of the independents who need to be appealed to are not strongly pro-life. One reason that Republicans are hurting, is that many people have come to the conclusion that the Republican Party has been so focused on social issues and foreign policy issues, that it has neglected economic issues. And some plausibility is lent to this claim by the fact that Pres. Bush allowed Congress to spend profligately, vetoed no bills no matter how wasteful, and seemed to have no domestic agenda that he was willing to fight for.
That is obviously why McCain spent by far the greater part of his speech on matters like energy, education, taxes, and spending. He underplayed foreign policy as well as the life issues. People already know he would be a strong Commander-in-Chief and that he is forthrightly pro-life. What he had to convince them of is that he has some definite plans for dealing with the energy problem, the economy, and so on.
There is in conservatives a strong Romantic streak that loves the lost but righteous cause. They want to ride over the cliff with all flags flying. But that went out with the Jacobites—or should have. I hear some of my pro-life friends saying, “Why did we fight for the Republicans all these years? What have they done for us? Look at Souter.” They seem to be half in love with easeful defeat. “To hell with mere politics,” they seem to say, “we’d rather be right than win a meaningless election.” Not that you, Jody, are in that camp. But you might be encouraging those who are.
If it be true that man must always have some kind of religion, then a thoroughly scientistic future might look something like this.
Some friends have written in to ask whether or not it’s hyperbolic to suggest that the left “hates” Sarah Palin, as I suggested yesterday.
As an additional data point, I offer this essay from Salon. The author begins by repeating the smear that Trig Palin is not the governor’s son, and saying that the rumor makes sense, before declaring glibly that he doesn’t believe it. But that’s not the worst part. The author, a medical doctor, claims that Palin’s decision not to kill Trig in utero is “a sign of her hypocrisy.”
If this isn’t a symptom of deranged hatred, I don’t know what is.
I find Will Saletan’s statistical analysis cum speculation on the probability that other political daughters have been pregnant out of wedlock a bit offputting. Some things should be private.
But he does make a good point along the way:
Is Sarah Palin the first nominee on a major-party presidential ticket whose daughter got pregnant out of wedlock? Or is she just the first whose daughter didn’t get an abortion?
The reason you’re reading about Bristol Palin’s pregnancy is that she’s taking it to term. If she had aborted it, you’d never have known.
…
Remember that before you judge or poke fun at Sarah Palin. She’s not the candidate whose daughter messed up. She’s the candidate who didn’t get rid of the mess.
Looking back at the 1993 June/July issue, I found an interesting meditation on friendship between men and women by Gilbert Meilaender. It also has what may be the only citation of Dave Barry in our pages.
A clever overview, by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, of last week’s poetry lesson. These amusingly mimetic lines are from “Metrical Feet, a Lesson for a Boy“:
Trochee trips from long to short;
/ v / v / v /
From long to long in solemn sort.
v / v / v / v /
Slow Spondee stalks, strong foot!, yet ill able
/ / / / / / / / / v
Ever to come up with Dactyl’s trisyllable.
/ v v / v v / v v / v v
Iambics march from short to long.
v / v / v / v /
With a leap and a bound the swift Anapests throng.
v v / v v / v v / v v /
And from Alexander Pope, on why prosody matters–having a little fun as he illustrates how meter makes a difference:
But most by Numbers judge a Poet’s Song,
And smooth or rough, with them, is right or wrong;
In the bright Muse tho’ thousand Charms conspire,
Her Voice is all these tuneful Fools admire.
. . .
True Ease in Writing comes from Art, not Chance,
As those move easiest who have learn’d to dance,
‘Tis not enough no Harshness gives Offence,
The Sound must seem an Eccho to the Sense.
Soft is the Strain when Zephyr gently blows,
And the smooth Stream in smoother Numbers flows;
But when loud Surges lash the sounding Shore,
The hoarse, rough Verse shou’d like the Torrent roar.
When Ajax strives, some Rocks’ vast Weight to throw,
The Line too labours, and the Words move slow;
Not so, when swift Camilla scours the Plain,
Flies o’er th’unbending Corn, and skims along the Main.
One reference to a “culture of life,” buried in a laundry list in the twenty-fifth paragraph? That’s it in John McCain’s acceptance speech? The sole mention of abortion in the combined hour and a half of oratory from the two Republican nominees over the last two nights?
