Unfortunately, people don't read books that bite and sting. They read
books that tell them what they already know. I'm doing that right
now. I'm reading Morris Berman's Dark Ages America and boy do I agree
with it. I did once go to one of the major 'conservative' sites so
called and there was no biting and stinging, just a lot of flapping of
ideology. Nearly every word was of the democracy is on the march
variety, it was a virtual parallel universe. I suspect few will read
Berman's book, because, quoting from Berman who quotes from W.H.
Auden, "The Age of Anxiety", "We would rather be ruined than
changed." It it ain't broke, don't fix it. Another quote from Berman
regarding our supposed multiculturalism: "America is as diverse as a
one string guitar." He further makes the point, among a gazillion
other points, that America was founded without a cohesive sense of
identity, ultimately leading us to form a 'negative identity', which
is to say, our never-ending need for an enemy to oppose; i.e., we are
what they are not (good/evil, etc.). On page 244 "...during the
Revolution the colonists abandoned their monarchical allegiance,
leaving them without a glue to hold their society together. They thus
turned to Enlightenment values to replace the traditional ones; but
these values, with their emphasis on 'natural virtue,' proved to be
too idealistic in actual practice, and so the glue of the new society
eventually became nothing loftier than the freedom to make money
[culminating in the spiritual malaise we're in today]." His treatment
of Islam is equally nonideological.
Berman directly addresses the American propensity toward violence, but
also indirectly. I recently was told that there's a television
program on NBC at 10:00 called Fear Itself. From what I understand
it's a horror show, graphic in nature. I'm also told that there are
movies in the theaters now that are, subjectively, ten times worse.
Why would we not invade Vietnam and Iraq if our entertainment is a
virtualized Roman gladiator arena? Since shock has a way of needing
to be ever escalated for the same buzz, one has to wonder at what
levels of horror this will finally wind up. Curiously, we virtualize
through entertainment our violence (when we're not doing it in 3D),
while cleaning up on CNN and other news outlets of the hideously
graphic violence we inflict with our wars; al Jazeera on the contrary
shows the burned limbless bodies of noncombatants while we scream
unfair propaganda. I was offended at Donal's youtube link, but it's
downright civilized and gentle compared to what Americans are watching
for entertainment.
I also heard an interview with the director (he happens to be Russian)
who made a new movie on Genghis Khan. The interviewer made the
requisite statement about GK being a mass murderer to which the
director replied to the effect of that the 20th century took GK to the
nth degree so it's a bit hypocritical to be offended at GK's
violence. Humans are a violent species, and Americans are very human,
however much they like to think otherwise. We're unique, just like
everybody else. And when things happen to us they happen out of a
complete vacuum because we're so good. Rather ruined than changed...
--- On *Sat, 6/7/08, Ursula Stange /<Ursula@xxxxxxxxxx>/* wrote:
From: Ursula Stange <Ursula@xxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: [lit-ideas] Books that bite and sting...
To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Date: Saturday, June 7, 2008, 4:08 PM
I'll send you my list if you send me yours...
"Altogether I think we ought to read only books that bite and sting us.
If the book we are reading doesn't shake us awake like a blow to the
skull, why bother reading it in the first place. So that it can make us
happy, as you put it? Good God, we'd be just as happy if we had no books
at all; books that make us happy we could, in a pinch, also write
ourselves. What we need are books that hit us like a most painful
misfortune, like the death of someone we loved more than we love
ourselves, that make us feel as though we had been banished to
the woods, far from any human presence, like a suicide. A book must be
the axe for the frozen sea within us. That is what I believe."
--- Franz Kafka to his friend, Oskar Pollack, 1904
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