Monday, November 15, 2010
There are a lot of little markers of celebrity which I have fantasized about: back in the 80's I wanted to model for one of those black and white Gap tee shirt advertisements, for example. Being asked to guest edit the Best American Essays collection would be another. My travel schedule was such that I got to 2010 collection a bit early this year, a dependably worthwhile volume suitable for reading on any form of transportation not involving horses. Christopher Hitchens is the guest editor, this yeara writer that I don't feel I get most of the time. Is the point that he's English? Is it that English people probably think he's American? I'm surprised that I've read as much of his output as I have, and I guess it's because he is chiefly an essayist, and because he shows up in publications that I follow. The job of guest editor seems like pleasant work: the series editor, Robert Atwan, culls through the submissions for the year, then hands a stack over to the guest editor who picks the finalists and writes an introduction. The introduction can be tricky, because it should comment on the form, (at this point I award a mental bonus to writers who avoid mentioning Montaigne), and it should define the theme of the collection. I think the essay that will stay with me from this set will be Elif Batuman's account of attending a Tolstoy conference. Batuman's trip to the conference, held on Tolstoy's estate, included a long flight, so she dressed in sweatpants, a tee shirt and flip flops,so that she could could sleep comfortably on the plane. Naturally her luggage is lost, so she spends the first few days at the conference in this get-up. The other attendees assume that she dressed this way because she was emulating the eccentric Tolstoyans, who dressed simply and wore sandals year-round. Tolstoy is the alpha and omega of this collection, evoked again in the final essay, James Woods' piece on George Orwell, a Hitchens favorite.
Wednesday, August 04, 2010
Christopher Hitchens on the country of illness.
"The new land is quite welcoming in its way. Everybody smiles encouragingly and there appears to be absolutely no racism. A generally egalitarian spirit prevails, and those who run the place have obviously got where they are on merit and hard work. As against that, the humor is a touch feeble and repetitive, there seems to be almost no talk of sex, and the cuisine is the worst of any destination I have ever visited. The country has a language of its own --a lingua franca that manages to be both dull and difficult and that contains names like ondansetron, for anti-nausea medication -- as well as some unsettling gestures that require a bit of getting used to."
EGA is having her port removed today, the final totem from her visit to that place. And have I mentioned that she is getting married? A stay in another country, and then the journey continues.
"The new land is quite welcoming in its way. Everybody smiles encouragingly and there appears to be absolutely no racism. A generally egalitarian spirit prevails, and those who run the place have obviously got where they are on merit and hard work. As against that, the humor is a touch feeble and repetitive, there seems to be almost no talk of sex, and the cuisine is the worst of any destination I have ever visited. The country has a language of its own --a lingua franca that manages to be both dull and difficult and that contains names like ondansetron, for anti-nausea medication -- as well as some unsettling gestures that require a bit of getting used to."
EGA is having her port removed today, the final totem from her visit to that place. And have I mentioned that she is getting married? A stay in another country, and then the journey continues.
Tuesday, June 12, 2007
Christopher Hitchens gets it almost exactly right, I think, on the Paris Hilton sentencing debacle, but then screws it up by trying to draw a comparison with Scooter Libby. There is a difference between the trivial butterfly the California legal system is trying to break on the wheel and Libby, one of the architects of a foreign policy so catastrophic that it'll be a generation before the US is in a position to assert any moral authority on a consistent basis. In a sense both offenders took the legal process too lightly-- Paris shouldn't have been driving with a suspended license, and Scooter shouldn't have lied to FBI agents. The distinction is that Libby's offense was to the process. He was contemptuous of the government he was serving, a government of laws, not of men. Paris was just foolish, which actually is her job.
As I said earlier on the Libby sentence, in general it seems to me that the sentences that get handed out in US courts are unduly harsh. From time to time I sit it court, waiting for my turn, and listen to a sentencing. The calculations that are involved-- particularly on the federal level-- are harder than Chinese Arithmetic. The way it goes is the lawyers make their arguments, citing the circumstances of the crime, then whatever aggravating or mitigating circumstances there might be. These are often things that didn't come out during trial, and letters to the court about what a swell person the defendant is are often referenced. When that's done, the judge lets the ball drop. Sometimes its a more in sorrow sort of thing, but lots of times it seems like it's all the judge can do to keep from smacking his lips. I've seen a lot of heavy time get handed down, and more often than not the guy on the receiving end is a young black man, who will be a middle aged black man when he is next seen. I feel worse for those guys than I do for either Paris or Scooter, both of whom are getting off pretty light in the greater scheme of things.
As I said earlier on the Libby sentence, in general it seems to me that the sentences that get handed out in US courts are unduly harsh. From time to time I sit it court, waiting for my turn, and listen to a sentencing. The calculations that are involved-- particularly on the federal level-- are harder than Chinese Arithmetic. The way it goes is the lawyers make their arguments, citing the circumstances of the crime, then whatever aggravating or mitigating circumstances there might be. These are often things that didn't come out during trial, and letters to the court about what a swell person the defendant is are often referenced. When that's done, the judge lets the ball drop. Sometimes its a more in sorrow sort of thing, but lots of times it seems like it's all the judge can do to keep from smacking his lips. I've seen a lot of heavy time get handed down, and more often than not the guy on the receiving end is a young black man, who will be a middle aged black man when he is next seen. I feel worse for those guys than I do for either Paris or Scooter, both of whom are getting off pretty light in the greater scheme of things.
Tuesday, December 28, 2010
Christopher Hitchens is on again about Henry Kissinger. Nothing he says is wrong, and I'd welcome the war crimes trial of the guy, but I'm caught up in a thought experiment: if one were to rank the greatest American monsters would Kissinger be worse than Dick Cheney? We can't turn to Hitch for his opinion, but I think his defense of the Iraq invasion may be in the background of his decision to dredge up the Kissinger stuff at this late date.
And as long as we are reminiscing about the Bush Administration, this review of "Decision Points" by Eliot Weinberger, from the London Review of Books, is worth reading in its entirety, and is particularly notable for being the first time in ten years that I've seen someone acknowledge that it was obvious that Bush intended to topple Saddam Hussein from the moment he took office.
And as long as we are reminiscing about the Bush Administration, this review of "Decision Points" by Eliot Weinberger, from the London Review of Books, is worth reading in its entirety, and is particularly notable for being the first time in ten years that I've seen someone acknowledge that it was obvious that Bush intended to topple Saddam Hussein from the moment he took office.
