The Personal is Political. The Political is Personal.

 
"Es ist eine Falle!!"

Exactly twenty years on, the fresh reminders of context & background that Andrew Curry presents in his new "Before the Fall" piece are terrific.

TiR especially liked:

For the dissidents who had been filled with hope at the sight of East Germans rallying to their cause, the fall of the wall was initially seen as a huge setback. "We were disappointed," [Uwe] Schwabe admits. "We thought everyone who would help us change the country would leave, and there would be no reason to come out on the street."

A friend of [Rainer] Eppelmann’s made it a few hundred yards across the border that night before panicking and running back to East Berlin, afraid the entire scene had been a Stasi trick to get rid of troublemakers so the door could be closed firmly behind ­them.

Curry's piece (in The Wilson Quarterly, Autumn 2009) is here.

Not that Thatcher & Mitterrand would have been displeased at such a trick, as we've since learned.

However, a loony or perverse practitioner of the skeptical arts might ask: How much time (/evidence) must needs pass (/be amassed) before Eppelmann's friend is necessarily proved wrong?


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Meanwhile, every once in a while, the Ž-man pulls his tongue out of his čheek and lapses into straightforward language. He hardly could have picked a better day to do so.

posted by Jamie at 7:01 AM

 
every comma counts

Behind the glass doors that seal the shelves along the walls in the most perfect space of this room, in this museum, among the colorful spines of the items in the children's book section, stands a slim volume by one "Leinstein" with the curious title, Punctuation in Verse.

What on earth is it?

One guy found out. George Burnham Ives

[b. 1856, Salem, MA; Harvard man, lawyer, then author, translator and, proofreader, and father of lawyer Frederick Manley Ives]

[Why, in 1890, did G.B. Ives leave the law, & rather abruptly at that?

The sordid details are here.]

     once got a peek at the publication. He wrote about it in 1921:

In connection with the "formal periodic arrangement" of sentences . . . this is, perhaps, a convenient place to refer to a rare little volume, called "Punctuation in Verse: or the Good Child's Book of Stops," by one Madame de Leinstein, of which there is a copy in the Children's Department of the New York Public Library; this copy, through the courtesy of Miss Annie Carroll Moore of that department, the writer was allowed to examine. It was printed in London, presumably a great many years ago, -- it bears no date, -- consists of only thirty-odd pages, of which one half are blanks, and is "Embellished with Twelve handsomely colored Engravings." The two couplets following (put in the mouth of "Cook Comma"), --

At the Comma, each reader should stay, and count one;
As, "Charles had an orange, a tart, and a bun."

At each Semicolon, take breath and count two;
As, "This is a Christian; that other, a Jew," --

[are those] with which the little books opens . . .

See Ives' Text, Type and Style: Compendium of Atlantic Usage, p. 59, herein.


One can read information about the wonderful Ms. Moore, Ives' courteous benefactress, here and here.

Last year, a writer for The Oxford Times provided additional clues about the contents of Leinstein's volume & its apparent agenda, here:

The earliest book entirely about English punctuation -- A Treatise of Stops, Points, or Pauses (1680) -- recommended that, when reading, you should count one when you reach a comma, two at a semi-colon, and four at a colon. Madame Leinstein's Punctuation in Verse; or, The Good Child's Book of Stops, published about 1825, disagreed: For the Colon count three -- for the Period, four; As, "The robin is dead: he now is no more."

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What do we know about Madame Leinstein? Basically nothing.

We do know that Punctuation in Verse was not her only children's book.

Her 1826 Mamma's Tales; or Pleasing Stories of Childhood, Adapted to the Infant Mind, is on-line here. The book includes stories that begin like this:

Tom was a good boy, and he could not bear to see dumb animals ill used; but Sam was a bad boy, and he was fond of ill-treating every thing.

Can you guess, in general terms at least, how things end up for Sam?

On the other hand, she could also write sentences like the following, for non-children:

Comalvin is scarcely equal to the furious strokes of the monster; his strength, subdued by long suffering, gives way; he sinks upon his knee; the dreadful arm of Fin-Dallan is uplifted; his blade gleams wrathful above his head; "die!" he exclaims; Ilvena knows the voice, her hand graps the dagger rusted in Cuth-Ionor's blood; she makes suddenly between the combatants, and buries the weapon in Fin-Dallan's heart.

The foregoing is from her story, "The Fatal Scarf: A Legend of Cuth-Ionor," included in the 1840 collection, The Evening Museum: A Collection of Deeply Interesting Tales and Legends, Together with Several Affecting Narratives and Surprising Adventures, here.

How many (beats? seconds?) does she tell us to "count" at a comma? One.

And for a semicolon? Two.

The above passage from "Fatal Scarf" contains 4 commas and 7 semicolons. Thus, we should "count" at least to 18, as we read the above passage?


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Madame Leinstein seems to have been one of those who would have advocated a function for punctuation in written English much like that of the rest in musical notation.

Why did written English never incorporate certain useful elements of musicial notation, such as the rest?

Or did it?

Rare books curator Paul Saenger (interviewed here), in his Space Between Words: The Origins of Silent Reading, conjures up a time when punctuation and notation were not so far apart, with common roots in the opening up of intratextual space:

The compatibility of punctuation and musical signs is evidence of the advantages for ocular movement and text perception that intratextual space afforded the oral reader who in the new medium could more readily decode not only the text's meaning but also indications for pitch, intonation, and tempo. Intratextual space was a prerequisite for maintaining an eye-voice span sufficiently broad to enable the fluent matching of syllable to pitch necessary for the performance of medieval chant.

(p. 36-37)

A historically blurred line between "words" and "musical notes" is easiest to consider in liturgical performance:

Early musical notation also consisted of interlinear letters and tironian word notes to indicate both pitch and tempo. As signs, they were at times identical to the letters used for the notation of syntax, and experienced scholars have more than once mistaken the one for the other. The same neurophysiological processes that necessitated space for the effective reception of signs for word sequence were required for the perception of these notae, which provided encoded information for the oral performance of liturgical texts.

(Saenger, p. 74)

Hebrew cantillation marks come to mind as a regularly observable example today of "musical" annotation in texts.

For written English in verse form, Julia Parker Dabney in her Musical Basis of Verse: A Scientific Study of the Principles of Poetic Composition
(1901, here) proposed use of musical notation to "cut the Gordian knot of scansion fairly in two." Dabney "notates" some Tennyson like this:

|    ♪    [quaver rest]    [quaver rest]    |    ♪     [quaver rest]    [quaver rest]     |    ♪    [quaver rest]    [quaver rest]    |


Break,                                                     break,                                                     break,

Several years later, Raymond Macdonald Alden commented on some of the obvious flaws in this method, in his Introduction to Poetry (1909).

Other ideas come along in Mallarmé, and Olson and "field poetics," about how to textually represent silence or a pause for breath, usually indeed through manipulation of intratextual blank space or layout/array on the page.

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Leading away from Leinstein's Punctuation in a different direction could be the notion of a mathematical substratum to the reading experience.

Do we "count" as we read? Ought we to? Does each reader have a silent metronome that ticks away underneath the reading mind? Should our reading of punctuation conform to it, if so? Is reading-time elastic? Alden suggests it is. Even if so, does the phenomenlogy of reading involve a steady click track beneath the elasticity, as the ground against which the latter is measureable, perceptible?

TiR imagines one end result of this line of thought to be a world in which every page of text is recast to resemble a page of the Principia Mathematica -- or, to bring it back to music, certain scores by Elliott Carter, a former math teacher. As Masumi Rostad of the Pacifica Quartet put it several years back:

I like to joke that because of [Elliott's] rhythmic complexity, every bar ends up looking like I’m in school again taking a math quiz I didn’t study for.

In other words, this post may be a roundabout pointless way to ask: How does Elliott Carter read commas?

posted by Jamie at 7:01 AM

 
Die Expropriateurs werden expropriiert.


What was TiR wondering about, a year ago today?

TiR's pointless internal records reflect that among the numerous links saved that day were a few that suggest our asking, "Is theft from thieves not theft?"

The abovementioned alleged "wondering" (in fact monkeyesque websurfing, as usual) seems to have ricocheted from Proudhon ("le propriété, c'est le vol", etc.) to Rothbard to Nozick.

What in the world might have been going on, a year ago, to make TiR wonder about this? We can't imagine.

posted by Jamie at 7:01 AM

 
obituary hidden within an obituary


From an appreciation of the late Irving Kristol, by Joseph Dorman, the person behind the most excellent "Arguing the World":

One day, I walked around the corner from the building in which I worked and picked up a copy of Kristol's "Reflections of a Neoconservative" at the     old     Coliseum      Books.

To pile digression atop digression, obituaries for the former site of the "old" establishment are here and here.

posted by Jamie at 7:01 AM

 
so wrong, so badly, so often


Searle,     recently:

It is much easier to refute a bad argument than to refute a truly dreadful argument. A bad argument has enough structure that you can point out its badness. But with a truly dreadful argument, you have to try to reconstruct it so that it is clear enough that you can state a refutation.

Yes. Where even to begin?

posted by Jamie at 7:01 AM

 
great moments in heckler response


For a moment, we imagined BHO channeling Zimmy in Manchester in 1966, turning to face Biden & Pelosi and stage whispering (sic):

"Play healthcare reform f--king loud!"

===========================================================

Meanwhile, David Kurtz flags an analysis that situates the (more recent) heckle within the decisional calculus of what we think of as a sort of Tribunal of Absurdity, in which an increased quantum of evidence in favor of innocence makes more imperative a verdict of guilt.

TiR has been fascinated by this almost-beautiful

[but only "almost-", because of its gratuitous & scary destructiveness]

            dynamic for years. We'd sometimes like to imagine that its definition of individuality and person/selfhood is planted in a dream logic that demands autonomy to the last, even against the coercive dictates of linear rationality. However, underneath it instead here seems to be a cynicism all too linear and economic.

                                                                                  [lordy what noodly gibberish]

posted by Jamie at 7:01 AM

 
Steely



the ability of the nyt to get thru the whole obit & discussion of the context of s&c's contribution w/out appearance of the phrase "sleng     teng" appears a bit astounding . . .



. . . otoh, the bdp connection is astute, & the story itself tho sad is a reminder that contra stereotype not every post-marley figure in ja music dies of gunshot . . .

posted by Jamie at 7:01 AM

 
monosyllabism

Rick Perlstein now has reiterated, here, a point that perhaps cannot not not not not not not not be reiterated enough:

Much of what passes for analytical discussion about politics on American TV resembles celebrity gossip -- the celebrities just happen to be politicians.

TiR idly wondered about the American overlap between the realms of entertainment & political media coverage two summers ago when, for a day or two, we entertained the pet theory that in the USA:

all political pundits secretly wish that they were movie reviewers (e.g., Medved);

all movie reviewers secretly want to become political pundits (e.g., Ebert); and

both sides will go out of their way to push their actual job closer to their dream job at every opportunity, for a convergence somewhere in the middle.

For example, we will see political pundits with increased openness "review" political speeches, press conferences, campaigns and, of course, broadcast advertisements exactly and only as if they were reviewing movies -- and expect their audiences to see nothing stupid, strange or troubling in this practice.

Related, we imagined, were:

the phenomena of commentators who aspire to wear hats in both the film & politics worlds (e.g., Steve Sailer);

the unremarkability in the USA's experience of movie or TV performers who become politicians (e.g., Reagan, Schwarzenegger, Fred Thompson);

the rise of the political movie documentary blockbuster (e.g., Michael Moore, "Inconvenient Truth"); and

the possibly tangential connnection, useful for comparison, between the punditries of politics & sports (e.g., Rush, Olbermann, Malzberg).

Anyway, as per usual, TiR got bored [someone will say: understandably] with the material and shelved it before we could be bothered to develop it into a blog post.

[Note: Many readers should automatically say in response to whatever Perlstein has to say & to anything that anyone (esp. us) could possibly have to say about it:

"Duh! Yawn. What a trite and therefore stupid observation. Tell us something we don't already know! Please try to come up with something new to say. Lame. Superficial. Shopworn. Highly unoriginal. Next! Booooring."

These rejoinders are well nigh unanswerable.

Dilemma though: How to react to the old, busted, boring, superficial, non-engaging?

One possibly creditable thing to say in defense of the font of celebrity gossip is that it will at least always keep you tuning in every day, trying to guess what it will say next.

Yes, if you are an expert on knowing what's lame and what's not, you successfully will be able to predict, on most days, what the next new gossip will be, especially if you word your prediction vaguely enough (always a winning wording to use: "More b.s.").

However, no matter how smart, savvy, cynical and jaded you are, you will nevertheless be surprised on some days by celebrity gossip.

We imagine that the surprise enwraps the humiliating revelation that you were unable precisely to guess the new day's next plot twist because you as audience member must realize that you have not yet sunk low enough to become even more cynical, jaded, pessimistic, and all-knowing about the infinite aspects of the cruelties & idiocy of other humans than you already believe you have. You somehow have been outflanked by someone even more cynical than yourself. You thought that you were an expert but you see that you're still an amateur.

[Helpful & inevitable suggestion: What could boost your expertise on human stupidity better than paying a little more attention to celebrity gossip?]

To win such a race to the bottom is a constant challenge.

If that's your thing.]

============================================



We remembered all this because of a new dispatch from the fault zone between celebrity entertainment gossip and political analysis, here.

TiR's favorite response so far to the piece is here:

Still, there was something rather troubling about the article: Almost none of the words within it were more than two syllables long. . . .

Wouldn't it be even more authentic if every word, excluding proper nouns, that came out of Levi Johnston's mouth were only one syllable? You can be the judge of that.

A "translation" into single syllable words of LJ's account is then provided.



TiR encourages the author of the piece, Mr. Johnston or anyone else to take up and complete our monosyallabic translation of Kant's first critique, the CPR, here. We never made it past the first paragraph. Or wanted to.

Monosyllabomaniacs can find efforts in a similar spirit, so we now discover, in the "Words of One Beat" poetry sites, here and with numerous translations here.

The translated sonnet "Shall I say how thou'rt like a mid-year's day?" by one "Will the Bard" is especially brilliant.

(A link to the text of the original sonnet, with its words of up to three syllables, is here.)

posted by Jamie at 7:01 AM

 
the "inverse Sprezzatura" strategy

Ms. Dowd counsels that pseudonymous bloggers check themselves before giving offense, and mentions almost off-handedly:

The great poet Fernando Pessoa used heteronyms to write in different styles and even to review the work composed under his other names.

However she then fails to pursue the thought to its logical

[or "logical," as in TiR "logic"]

      conclusion, one that the technology itself almost seems to invite.

Bloggers should set up parallel, heteronymous blog sites to critique, review, heckle, ridicule and heap abuse on

[or engage in dialogue, tri-alogue, "try"-alogue, multilogue, or revise & extend . . . ]

            their own posts.

Pessoa, for example, could have had one blog under his own name, and others for Alberto Caeiro, Álvaro de Campos, Ricardo Reis, etc.

A less cumbersome stragegy would be to bracket or parenthesize then insert the critique directly into the texts of the original posts.

[No it wouldn't.]

[Yes it would.]

[No it wouldn't!]

[And so on.]

[update 9/1/09:

Meanwhile, last month's Boston Review drew a momentary but fecund connection between use of pseudonyms and boredom, specifically via dull clerical work:

There are certain similarities here [i.e., with "Flann O'Brien," a/k/a Brian    O'Nolan, a civil servant] to another genius stuck in a boring office job: Fernando Pessoa, the alcoholic Portuguese poet and novelist (1888-1935), who in his writing invented an immense number of noms de plume, which he called heteronyms, not primarily as a means of concealing his identity but mostly to give a different name to each aspect of his literary personality -- the poet, the diarist, the novelist, etc.

The review is "We Laughed, We Cried: Flann O'Brien's Triumph" by Roger Boylan, here.]

posted by Jamie at 7:01 AM

 
if it ain't braked, can't fixe it



Speaking of burgeoning fields of research & inquiry (esp. fields that do not yet realize that they're fields), TiR appreciates new contributions to the field of Fail Studies, like this one. Nevertheless, we are not entirely sure we'd like to work under this fellow, who may represent another case worthy of study:

In Florida, Fugate was notorious for what he called "Thunderbolt" drills. Once a month, he’d walk into the office with a large Starbucks coffee and tell everyone to stop what they were doing and respond to a catastrophe baked in his imagination. Sometimes it was a blackout; other times it was a small nuclear bomb.

"People are afraid to fail. I’m seeking failure," he told me. "I want to break things. I want to see what's going on so we can fix it."

(as per the current Atlantic)



Hence TiR's practice of steering its car into a ditch with each post -- unto "the 12,000th" fail -- tho we're not really sure that a "fix" is the ultimate project -- and moreover the practice is usually not evident to us (but then it becomes stupidly so) until each time TiR find itself crawling from the

posted by Jamie at 7:01 AM