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Henry Miller

[ 51 ] January 30, 2012 | Erik Loomis

Very interesting Jeanette Winterson take on Henry Miller in the Times Book Review.

I suppose my problem with Miller isn’t that he was a misogynist per se. Philip Roth is a misogynist and he’s one of my favorite living authors. It’s that Miller was a hypocrite. Roth knows he’s an asshole. Miller seems to have legitimately believed that he was some sort of revolutionary in his lifestyle of making women prostitute themselves to support him and paying for sex himself if he couldn’t get it for free. This is what is so galling about Miller as a talking head in “Reds”–it’s not that the dates don’t work out right and Miller never knew John Reed. It’s that they would have found him abhorrent.

The other huge difference between Miller and Roth is that most of Miller’s fiction just isn’t very good. There is something about Miller that attracts the literate male in his 20s. That included myself, around 1999 or so, though I quickly grew out of it. And while “Tropic of Cancer” is a good book, it is not a great one. And it is a stretch to call most of his other fiction more than passably good.

More problematic are smart people turning Miller into a hero today, as the Frederick Turner, author of the book Winterston reviews, seems to do. The mythology around Miller says a lot about the psyche of the American male who loves him, longing for days of empty sex, literary poverty, and before feminism. Says Winterson:

Miller had attended political meetings as a young man, but he was uninterested in political activism — and when the war broke out, he left Paris to return to America. Not for him the heroics of Resistance. Yet his lifelong pose was as a warrior fighting with homemade weapons against an indifferent, crushing industrial machine for which nothing mattered but profit and every­thing was for sale.

It never occurred to him that no matter how poor a man is, he can always buy a poorer woman for sex. It does not occur to Turner either, who calls Miller throughout a “sexual adventurer.” This sounds randy and swashbuckling and hides the economic reality of prostitution. Miller the renegade wanted his body slaves like any other capitalist — and as cheaply as possible. When he could not pay, Miller the man and Miller the fictional creation worked out how to cheat women with romance. What they could not buy they stole. No connection is made between woman as commodity and the ­“slaughterhouse” of capitalism that Mil­ler hates.

Turner loves Miller’s “war whoop” against modern industrial America. Hope is hopeless, but the lone voice of the prophet cries out like a Jeremiah among the brothels. Confusingly, Turner asks us to believe in both the war whoop and Mil­ler’s Buddhist-like acceptance of the world as it is. The last chapter is written as a rapturous riff on “what if” we could shed our illusions and live in the “moral” Miller universe, with its “realities,” “learn how to love it?” “Le bel aujourd’hui.”

Well, what if we accept Turner’s assertion that “Cancer” has traveled from banned book to spiritual classic that tells us “who we are”? A reasonable objection is that “we” cannot include women, unless a woman is comfortable with her identity as a half-witted “piece of tail.”

I’m sure some of you will disagree, so have at it.

A WPA For History

[ 79 ] January 29, 2012 | Erik Loomis

The highly respected historian and radical Jesse Lemisch has taken the American Historical Association to task for its unwillingness to deal with the field’s employment crisis. Lemisch compares the AHA’s milquetoast market-speak to the lameness of Democratic Party solutions to the modern economic crisis. Both institutions have become infected with centrist market-oriented solutions to problems, a business model that has failed the country, leading to determined unemployment levels, millions of Americans giving up trying to look for work, and the Occupy Wall Street movement.

Lemisch has a particular idea in mind that the AHA and other academic institutions like the Modern Language Association should promote–a WPA for academics. How do you put thousands of unemployed historians and others to work? You create work for them, a la the New Deal. Lemisch provides concrete examples of creating digital archives, bringing obscure primary sources to public light, compiling important demographic information from public records, writing biographies, and any number of other interesting projects.

If historians need work, the AHA should promote the creation of work.

Alas, the AHA has done a pathetic job of serving a useful purpose in guiding its unemployed members to a job. The ideas AHA leaders have created–more archivists, more public historians–are almost without value. All are being destroyed by the same broken model of government disinvestment and corporate profiteering that torpedoed the rest of the profession and much of the economy. Several AHA leaders have scoffed at Lemisch’s WPA for historians model, saying that the market will take care of it. Not only does the insistence of smart people to argue that “the market” is an independent entity uncontrolled by human actions bug the living heck out of me, it’s just not true. The market is not an invisible hand, it’s a series of decisions of governments, economists, everyday people, and employers that create policies by which a nation guides its economy. This rhetoric just obscures who is shifting the levers of the economy.

The other problem with promoting the WPA idea is inherent within the AHA. It is an organization of the elite historians, by the elite historians, for the elite historians. The rest of us just pay dues, or not. Leadership within the AHA is controlled by the most senior and respected academic historians at the most elite schools. They see the ultimate goal of a history Ph.D. as one thing only–an academic job. Those who don’t get that job must not be worthy. Those who are getting Ph.Ds at a school like the University of New Mexico are too lowly to count. This elitism is evident:

After the above was completed, new information came in that the reader should have in hand, since it calls into question the whole position that the AHA has taken previously. At the heart of what Grafton and Grossman have been seeking is a claim of anti-hierarchalism: in order to deal with the job crisis, they want to change the culture of the profession so that non-academic work will no longer be seen as “plan B,” but will rather be given dignity and respect equal to that of traditional scholarship and teaching. But in fact, the argument is a stalking horse for a new hierarchy in which PhDs from elite institutions will get what will still be seen as the real jobs as scholars, and the academic proletariat will have to settle for non-academic jobs.

Grafton (University of Chicago AB 1971, AM 1972, PhD 1975) is one of four contributors (three of whom, including Grafton, hold named chairs) to “How Can We Better Prepare PhD Students for Nonacademic Careers?” University of Chicago Magazine, January-February 2012. Grafton argues, as he has previously, for preparing history graduate students for careers outside academe. But he also stresses his agreement with Chicago sociology professor Andrew Abbott, who believes that “we should not at all modify our teaching, our aspirations, and our emphases. We are in the business of perpetuating critical scholarship… we should teach to the top of the market.” Grafton states in response: “I agree with Andy that we have to keep the knowledge machine rolling, and that elite departments should be teaching people to join that machine at the top… [emphasis added].

This is not surprising–top 20 institution historians want to perpetuate their own control of academic knowledge, setting everyone else adrift. That might be slightly more defensible if it was even clear that historians from those schools were doing that much better finding academic positions than those of us who excelled at less prestigious schools. Of course, like law schools, history PhD programs do a terrible job of tracking and publicizing information on the success of their students after they leave the program. You might know of the big star who got the Duke or Brown job, but what about the other 10 students of x professor whom you have never heard of? What are they doing? Who knows.

It’s probably true that a WPA for historians isn’t going to happen. We have to think realistically, we are told. But there are no good easy policy options without a radical change in how we allocate resources. Of course, the WPA isn’t even radical, but a proven success. And even if it’s not going to happen tomorrow, the leading organization of historians needs to commit itself to being a lobbying force to find members jobs. If it doesn’t do that, what good is it? Not much.

Alternative Energy Subsidies

[ 28 ] January 29, 2012 | Erik Loomis

If there’s one thing more frustrating to environmentalists than the reluctance of the government to subsidize clean energy production, I don’t know what it is. Not only is it central to any reasonable plan for fighting climate change, but it just makes sense on so many levels. Subsidies have brought the prices of renewables nearly to that of dirty energy and it is falling all the time. And of course, the government subsidizes the heck out of fossil fuel production in ways both direct and indirect. The federal government made its decision to go all the way with the fossil fuel industry in the 1950s (if not before) and that might have made sense at the time. That it doesn’t see the future today and continues to favor dirty energy over clean hugely hampers America’s future. Future leading nations will have access to renewable energy and affordable prices with governments building connections between industry and itself to press for national growth. The U.S. remains stuck on an antiquated model.

On top of that, it continually amazes me that petroleum companies don’t rethink themselves energy companies and get behind renewables with all their capital. Money is money. Renewables are the future. Make them profitable. Does it really matter whether you are burning fossils or channeling the sun’s energy? Some oil people like T. Boone Pickens get this. Most do not. Insane for future corporate bottom lines, the future of people on this planet, and our national interest.

Engineering Nature

[ 7 ] January 29, 2012 | Erik Loomis

I found the comment section on my bayou post of yesterday interesting for a couple of reasons, including that saving the marshes is an impossible task. This really is not true. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers have shaped the river to satisfy a number of masters, including the petroleum and shipping industries, the U.S. and Louisiana governments, the desire of New Orleans residents to stay dry, and their own need to justify their existence and expansion. The Mississippi is a fully engineered river system. But the marshlands are still savable within that system. Obviously, no one is going to call for the Mississippi to flow freely, in no small part because of the likelihood and historical frequency of it changing course (which was a real worry last spring with the floods). That will happen someday and will cause a massive economic disaster for the United States. But short of that, much can still be done. Water can be diverted into canals throughout the system and then allowed to flood locally over the marshes while still allowing plenty of water for shipping needs. The levees can be broken downstream and water can pass through of its own volition. In fact, there are several test projects for restoring marshlands that have proven locally successful. It really doesn’t take a lot for the marshes to come back–just let the silt settle and the alligators and land will return.

Moreover, it’s worth noting that in the United States and most of the world in 2012, all landscapes are engineered and controlled spaces. Even wilderness areas are heavily managed, in this case to not be commercially or industrially developed. But these are completely artificial boundaries that say much about our relationship with the natural world. Given this reality, we can choose to engineer nature in any number of ways to serve any number of purposes. We can’t completely control nature of course, although most Americans have a very difficult time understanding this. But we can and do shape the land for commercial development, residential development, parkland, wilderness, whatever. Managing it to create marshes is a question of political will, not engineering.

Save Louisiana

[ 44 ] January 28, 2012 | Erik Loomis

Outside of the larger spectre of climate change, the biggest environmental crisis in the United States is the melting of southern Louisiana into the ocean.* A combination of diking the Mississippi River to prevent flooding and facilitate commerce and petroleum companies challenging through the marshes have decimated this unique and beautiful ecosystem to the onslaught of seawater. The channeling causes erosion, the dikes prevent natural replenishing of the marshes. This is not only about some alligators either. A great deal of our seafood comes from the area, particularly our shrimp, oysters, and crayfish. It is also much more than an environmental issue. The bayous are home to one of America’s most unique cultures; without the environment that shaped it, that culture wil disappear.

This is a solvable problem, at least for now. The long-term implications of rising sea levels will cause problems down the road. But we could reengineer the Mississippi to flood in various places in its delta to create new marshland. The area can recover fairly quickly. In an age where New Orleans has proven vulnerable to hurricanes, this is all the more important because the marshes provided a buffer against storms, sucking down their power before the storms hit New Orleans. By 2005, the marshes’ ability to do this had been severely attenuated.

Randy Fertel has an op-ed laying out the legislative options, which I fully support. I also highly recommend Mike Tidwell’s Bayou Farewell for an overview of both the environmental and cultural issues involved here.

* I know there’s some serious competition for biggest environmental crisis, with the strip mining of West Virginia the most obvious competitor. Not surprisingly, our insatiable demand for energy and to control nature to serve our economic desires is at the heart of both problems.

A Rising Republican Star

[ 65 ] January 27, 2012 | Erik Loomis

Looks like the Republican Party has another state politician sure to appeal to the wingunttia masses. This time it’s in North Carolina, where state Rep. Larry Pittman is calling for the return of public hangings:

“We need to make the death penalty a real deterrent again by actually carrying it out. Every appeal that can be made should have to be made at one time, not in a serial manner,” Pittman wrote in the email. “If murderers (and I would include abortionists, rapists, and kidnappers, as well) are actually executed, it will at least have the deterrent effect upon them. For my money, we should go back to public hangings, which would be more of a deterrent to others, as well.”

Abortionists, rapists, and kidnappers.

Sounds like a rising Republican star to me!

Can’t We Find the Good in Slavery?

[ 43 ] January 27, 2012 | Erik Loomis

I’m not saying that any of you didn’t already understand the deep-seated racism in Tea Party members. But if you needed any additional evidence, please see the legislative goals of the Tennessee Tea Party, which includes outrage over history classes teaching that the Founding Fathers owned slaves and that slavery was bad.

We talked to Tea Party leader Hal Rounds Wednesday. He described the way slavery is taught now as race-baiting. When asked if kids are walking out of school thinking our founding fathers were evil, he said “(The kids) are being taught (the Founding Fathers) were hypocrites and slave owners and part of the teachings about slavery was that it was inherently cruel.”

Rounds first petitioned the state for the changes last year and is continuing the fight now.

We asked if you can seperate slavery in our country from the centuries old struggle for racial equality, Rounds believes you can adding “White people were whipped to.”

More

Wolf

[ 35 ] January 27, 2012 | Erik Loomis

Appropriate given Wolf Blitzer’s increasingly embarrassing existence on CNN, watch him score what might be the lowest score ever on Celebrity Jeopardy.

Also, Andy Richter is a beast. Not that this is surprising.

How White Are You?

[ 314 ] January 26, 2012 | Erik Loomis

It’s hard not to be bouncing off the ceiling for the chance to make fun of Charles Murray’s new book, Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010. I really need a comedy fix right now and this could be the funniest book of the year. The only problem with Murray is that he’s really hard to parody since he’s routinely kicking parody’s decaying corpse. Example one is this excerpt from Murray’s book, where he provides what is essentially a whiteness quiz. This is great stuff:

12. Choose one. Who is Jimmie Johnson? Or: Have you ever purchased Avon products?
13. Have you or your spouse ever bought a pickup truck?
14. During the last year, have you ever purchased domestic mass-market beer to stock your own fridge?
15. During the last five years, have you or your spouse gone fishing?
16. How many times in the last year have you eaten at one of the following restaurant chains? Applebee’s, Waffle House, Denny’s,IHOP, Chili’s, Outback Steakhouse, Ruby Tuesday, T.G.I. Fri-day’s, Ponderosa Steakhouse.

Of course, Murray is conflating whiteness with heteronormativity and political conservatism. The writers of this blog certainly aren’t real whites, except maybe for Farley since he probably does eat at Chili’s. A non-fishing professor who thinks NASCAR is dumb and drives a small car is the wrong kind of white and therefore doesn’t count. After all, I’d probably let my daughter have sex with a black man and we know Murray’s uncomfortable with that. This is almost on a play on the Stuff White People Like blog that was big a couple of years ago. In both, there are lots of white people but only certainly kinds of whites count. Whereas for that blog, the writer was making gentle fun of a certain kind of white person, Murray actually takes this seriously.

This book is going to be a rich text.

Nostalgianomics?

[ 140 ] January 26, 2012 | Erik Loomis

Megan McArdle delivers a typically hackish column on Obama’s SOTU address. After noting her TV appearance with such bright bulbs as John Stossel and Gary Johnson, she proceeds to get after Obama for his nostalgic view of the economy. I’m not going to quote at the length necessary to completely eviscerate her points; you can click on the link should you feel the desire to beat your head against a wall. But I will quote this:

Finally, there’s the fact that the 1950s ended in the 1970s. In the 1950s, American products were envied all over the world; by 1980, they were a joke. This is not some radical disconnect; it is the beginning and end of the same process. The technocratic American institutions became sclerotic agents of inertia. Bosses whose pay was capped poured their energy into building personal empires instead of personal fortunes. Unions like the UAW began making demands on their companies so heavy that even the UAW president who had negotiated these amazing pay increases began to fear that his members had lost their minds.

So much just in this one paragraph. The conflation of some shitty cars made by the Big Three in the 1970s with all American products, a stereotype about American manufacturing at best. The gratuitous apologism for maximizing CEO pay (Megan knows her masters). The completely unsourced, uncontextualized, and probably untrue anecdote about the UAW president thinking UAW members are crazy for asking too much of their bosses. The between-the-lines blaming of union pay scales for the supposed decline of American products.

I may be critical of Obama on his economic and labor stances, but let’s be clear–the mid-20th century was the glory years of the American working class precisely because unions were so strong, forcing companies to divert resources from their ivory back-scratchers to worker paychecks. McArdle somehow sees this as counterproductive to the American economy, linking to a blog post making bizarre claims that capping CEO pay causes deep problems in the economy because CEOs are hypermasculine beasts or something and just can’t be stopped. But thirty years of Republican obfuscation of economic reality has failed to cloud one key fact–the only period in American history when working-class people got a fair shake was the precise period when unions were the strongest. She’d rather serve her corporate masters, but we should not be fooled by her capitalist shilling. Obama may not be willing to go all the way in understanding why the 1950s worked and the 2010s don’t work, but he’s at least pointing us in the right direction

FDR’s 52nd Birthday Party

[ 11 ] January 25, 2012 | Erik Loomis

How do you celebrate your 52nd birthday if you are Franklin Delano Roosevelt?

Toga party of course.

Via

Labor Responses to the State of the Union

[ 10 ] January 25, 2012 | Erik Loomis

The general tenor of the labor community is that Obama was typically tepid on labor issues in his State of the Union. He mentioned in passing a union workplace in Milwaukee as an example of jobs being brought back to the United States, but the union was incidental to the point. He praised the UAW for taking concessions in the GM deal. And he talked about his usual teacher reform game, one of only two places Mitch Daniels said there was common ground among the two of them. Given that Daniels is leading the anti-union charge in Indiana (in fact, the right to work a person to death law passed the Indiana House today and is virtually guaranteed to become law), that’s both a very bad sign and quite typical of Obama’s weak support for his labor allies.

Of course, Obama presented a lot of common-sense ideas in his speech and his support for a functioning NLRB is commendable. But even though he needs union support desperately in his reelection campaign, all he’s really offering labor is that he’s better than a Republican. Which is something, but not enough. Despite internal annoyances at Obama, all the unions will fall in line and support the president; many unions sent out press releases praising the speech, though with varied amounts of enthusiasm.

A couple of links:

Timothy Noah calls “unions” the “most conspicuously absent” word in the speech and notes rightly that Obama’s reference to the so-called greatest generation and their successes existed precisely because strong unions forced bosses to shift resources into the pockets of working-class people. Obama either doesn’t get that or is more or less indifferent to it.

Mike Elk provides a good overview to the entire issue, both the disappointments and positives of the speech.

Of course, we might be disappointed in Obama, but he’s vastly better than Mitch Daniels’ pro-capitalist hackery. Josh Eidelson discusses the brazenness of Republicans choosing Daniels to give their response and discusses the issue of his unionbusting in great detail. He also notes the odd appeal that Daniels has to a lot of left-center media types, ranging from Chris Matthews to Ezra Klein.

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