Freedom, Justice, and Economics

“You fight your superficiality, your shallowness, so as to try to come at people without unreal expectations, without an overload of bias or hope or arrogance, as untanklike as you can be, sans cannon and machine guns and steel plating half a foot thick; you come at them unmenacingly on your own ten toes instead of tearing up the turf with your caterpillar treads, take them on with an open mind, as equals, man to man, as we used to say, and yet you never fail to get them wrong. You might as well have the brain of a tank. You get them wrong before you meet them, while you’re anticipating meeting them; you get them wrong while you’re with them; and then you go home to tell somebody else about the meeting and you get them all wrong again….. The fact remains that getting people right is not what living is all about anyway. It’s getting them wrong that is living, getting them wrong and wrong and wrong and then, on careful reconsideration, getting them wrong again. That’s how we know we’re alive: we’re wrong. Maybe the best thing would be to forget being right or wrong about people and just go along for the ride. But if you can do that–well, lucky you.

Early in American Pastoral, Philip Roth’s stand-in Nathan Zuckerman reflects thus in the midst of recounting his dinner encounter with The Swede. I think Roth/Zuckerman are right that it’s common to undertake this kind of presumption about people, and common to feel all too alive as a result. No doubt people are free to presume like this….

But what’s most interesting to me are the last two sentences, the idea that (i) people might be better off not to presume like this, and (ii) we might have a choice about it (not to mention (iii) that getting people badly wrong might do them injustice). It would be no surprise to me if Roth himself can’t help his long flights of speculation, if upon seeing someone he immediately begins constructing a narrative about him or her, full of family, inner life, and childhood sources of persistent angst. Roth’s objective in doing so is presumably to entertain, either to entertain a present or future audience, or just to entertain himself. If I were to launch into such a flight of speculation about, say, a professional acquaintance, I could be detrimentally distracted from the substantive content of our interactions. It would be better for me to concentrate on the equilibrium we’re discussing than to imagine whether his parents made his favorite baked ziti often enough when he was a kid.

… So to react to Roth’s last sentence above, I guess I think many of us are “lucky”– but lucky in a deliberate way, lucky to be able to concentrate on what matters to us about other people, lucky to be able to concentrate on the substance and character they choose to put forth. And if “unlucky,” we have a choice about how to speculate, too. I most often choose to speculate sympathetically– and if wrong, sure, plenty content to be alive.

Grudgingly, I acknowledge being impressed with this 1972 Richard Adams tale of a troupe of rabbits. Looking past the floppy chapter-opening epigrams, the nibbles of contrived rabbit language, and the diminutive hop from rabbitdom to transcendent themes, three pieces gave me particular delight.

Adams imitates Tolkien and endows his rabbits with a full mythology, with deity, villains, and heroes. Storytelling thrives among his rabbits, who never tire of good re-tellings of favorite myths. Not only are the myths themselves brilliant, reinforcing faith in rabbits’ canny drive to survive, the myths balance and propel the troupe’s adventures.

Second, Ibn Fattouma-like, we encounter rabbit warrens with a variety of political structures. The Threara presides over a somewhat chaotic warren; Cowslip fosters arts, intellectualism, and detachment; General Woundwort runs a fascist warren; and of course Hazel is an enlightened leader.

Third, Hazel is an enlightened leader. From the book’s opening he instantaneously sizes people (er… rabbits) up, and decides what he can and can’t count on them for. The skill to consciously assemble a team-of-all-comers in this way– and maintain peace and cooperation among all– is rare and valuable. Adams’ craft shines bright in sharing what he gives to Hazel.

Between Wind in the Willows and Lord of the Flies, for children and adults, Watership Down certainly does transcend rabbitdom (though it need not have in order to be great).

I’ve needed the several weeks since the Friday, April 4, show to achieve sufficient composure to write about the Royal Shakespeare Company’s current incarnation of The Merchant of Venice in Stratford-upon-Avon. The play of course is inherently incendiary. I have nothing to contribute to the longstanding debate about whether the Bard was Anti-Semitic. But I left the Courtyard Theater that night horrified at this production’s choices, with only one possible source of redemption for it in sight (and, I fear, lost to near all the inattentive audience).

This production matter-of-factly illustrated every evil of a calculating Shylock. He was unfair and unsympathetic in his business dealings; he loved his daughter little, and his gold much; he would never share a table with a Gentile. Beyond the text, in the courtroom, when Shylock is about to use his knife to extract his pound of flesh, he perches above a prostrate Antonio who has his arms outstretched. This image, with Antonio as Christ, invokes the most pernicious of the historical calumnies against Jews.

After the lamb is saved, and Shylock’s level (pointed?) “Is it the law?” is answered affirmatively, the production lightly carries on to Portia’s and Nerissa’s practical joke and the standard comedic ending of multiple nuptials. Shylock appears again only in the musical reprise, interrupting a bit of the dancing to angrily twist arms with his new son-in-law.

What do director and cast hope to achieve with–what could be redemptive about– this portrayal of an irredeemable Shylock? My best speculation is that they wish to offend as thoroughly as Borat.

In contrast to John Peter of The Sunday Times, I didn’t find the production “sloppily directed,” but rather distressingly directed.  In contrast to Michael Billington of The Guardian, I found nothing to “enjoy” about this excruciating production. I’m not sure I could find anything enjoyable about any production of this play. But many wisely directed productions could give me leave to depart with faith in what humanity has learned, rather than fear about what it may have not.

… throughout Africa, says a wise former teacher in The Gambia, would make a world of difference.  Why not flood schools with Dr. Seuss?

In writing about Thornton Wilder’s Bridge of San Luis Rey, I can do no better than to try to emulate its directness. The book begins by describing the plunge of five people to their deaths when the renowned bridge of the book’s title collapses. The individuals’ lives are shaped by asymmetric, non-romantic love, powerful enough to confuse speech and thought. The Marquesa de Montemayor obsesses about her daughter, Dona Clara, sending monthly letters to her in Spain. Esteban becomes adrift when his twin brother Manuel dies of an infected wound. Uncle Pio’s genuine, fatherly generosity toward the Perichole eventually earns a share of her general mistrust.

The collapse of the bridge is a pure tragedy, as Brother Juniper concludes in a frame, because the Marquesa, Esteban, and Uncle Pio undertake freeing self-transformations immediately before. (The Marquesa’s servant Pepita and the Perichole’s son Jaime, the other two casualties, also face new hope.) Their deaths–and Brother Juniper’s at the stake–take on meaning in the realizations of those, still living, who they had loved.

Kingsley Amis’s Roger Micheldene is a poor English cousin to Ignatius Reilly. Though both are supremely bloated on themselves, Roger is more self-aware (perhaps, older, owing to more time away from overprotective maternal influence), and unapologetically lacking in the consolation of philosophy. Some might appreciate One Fat Englishman for its charms, but for humor I’d say skip it in favor of rereads of Wodehouse, and for singular, hysterical experience John Kennedy Toole’s Confederacy of Dunces is supreme.