William Deresiewicz

Critic, and former Yale professor, William Deresiewicz did a really excellent job of savaging Lawrence Buell’s The Dream of the Great American Novel

Buell’s book tells us a great deal about American fiction. What it also tells us, in its every line, is much of what is wrong with academic criticism. We can start with the language…. Here is a fair sample of Buell’s prose:

Admittedly any such dyadic comparison risks oversimplifying the menu of eligible strategies, but the risk is lessened when one bears in mind that to envisage novels as potential GANs is necessarily to conceive them as belonging to more extensive domains of narrative practice that draw on repertoires of tropes and recipes for encapsulating nationness of the kinds sketched briefly in the Introduction—such that you can’t fully grasp what’s at stake in any one possible GAN without imagining the individual work in multiple conversations with many others, and not just U.S. literature either.

That’s one sentence. There is an idea in there somewhere, but it can’t escape the prose—the Byzantine syntax and Latinate diction, the rhetorical falls and grammatical stumbles. Schmidt’s smooth sentences urge us ever onward. Buell’s, like boulders, say stop, go back.

The truth is that by academic standards, Buell’s writing isn’t especially bad—which makes him, as an instance, even worse. By the same token, he isn’t noxiously ideological in the current style, isn’t an “-ist” with an ax to grind or swing—all the more reason to deplore how thoroughly (it seems, reflexively) his book bespeaks the reigning ideologies. Buell, whose careful terror seems to be the possibility of saying something politically incorrect—the book does so much posturing, you think it’s going to throw its back out—appears to have absorbed every piety in the contemporary critical hymnal. You can see him fairly bowing to them in his introduction, as if by way of ritual preparation. There they are, propitiated one by one—Ethnicity, Globalism, Anti-Canonicity, Anti-Essentialism—like idols in the corners of a temple.

The frame of mind controls the readings. Novels aren’t stories, for Buell, works of invention with their own disparate purposes and idiosyncratic ends. They’re “interventions” into this or that political debate—usually, of course, concerning gender, race, or class, as if everyone in history had the same priorities as the English professors of 2014. Nearly every book is scored against today’s approved enlightened norms. Gone With the Wind loses points for “containing” Scarlett and embodying an “atavistic conception of human rights” but wins a few back for being “even more transnationally attuned than Absalom,” exhibiting “maverick tendencies in some respects as pronounced as Faulkner’s,” and engaging in “an act of feminist exorcism that Absalom can’t imagine.” Go team!

In the case of Uncle Tom’s Cabin—a book that makes this kind of reading sweat, being heroically progressive by the standards of its day but embarrassing by ours—pages are spent parsing its exact degree of virtue. Witnesses are called:

Here, as critic Lori Merish delicately puts it, Stowe “fails to imagine African Americans as full participant citizens in an American democracy.” George Harris’s grand design to Christianize Africa looks suspiciously imperialistic to boot, veering Stowe’s antislavery critique in the direction of what Amy Kaplan trenchantly calls “manifest domesticity.”

I feel as if we’re back in Salem. Maybe he should have just thrown the book in the water to see if it would float. Buell is a person, one should say, who uses terms like cracker, redneck, and white trash without self-consciousness or irony, which makes his moral teleology all the more repulsive—his assumption (and it’s hardly his alone) that all of history has been leading up to the exalted ethical state of the contemporary liberal class.

The one kind of standard that Buell will not permit himself is an aesthetic one. Like many academics now, he’d rather cut his tongue out than admit in public that he thinks a book is good or bad.

Silicon Beat:

It’s old news that the Internet has become an essential part of daily life. But now Yahoo Japan is offering to help people prepare for their eventual death online.

A new service called “Yahoo! Ending” promises to delete personal data from online accounts, send out a digital farewell message to friends and even host a memorial web page where people can leave condolences – once the service has confirmed that a subscriber has died.

That’s according to a report in the Wall Street Journal, which said the service will also help people plan their funerals and even compose their wills. (We checked out the Yahoo Japan site, but the English-language version provided by Google Translate left us confused about some details.)

This isn’t actually a new idea: We’ve reported previously on smaller companies that offer this kind of service. But it’s the first time we’ve heard of a comprehensive death package offered by a large Internet company. Yahoo Japan is a joint venture between Sunnyvale-based Yahoo and the Japanese giant SoftBank.

A US version would be poised to make a fortune.

Two cellists perform AC/DC‘s 1990 hit Thunderstruck.

Jeremiah Heaton and Princess Emily display the flag of the Kingdom of North Sudan.

The Telegraph reports that the Age of European Reconnaissance is not yet over.

A father from Virginia has gone to extreme lengths for his daughter, flying to Africa and claiming a “kingdom” between Egypt and Sudan so that she can be an actual princess.

Jeremiah Heaton began his unusual quest for the unclaimed piece of land sandwiched between the two countries after making a promise to seven-year-old daughter Emily that she would one day be royalty.

After reaching the desert region of Bir Tawil in June, the father-of-three planted a flag his children had designed, and made the first steps towards claiming the land.

On his return Mr Heaton and wife made a crown for their daughter and asked friends and family to refer to her as Princess Emily.

Her kingdom covers about 800 square miles of desert that has never been claimed by Sudan or Egypt.

Mr Heaton found Bir Tawil, one of the last unclaimed pieces of land on the planet, after searching for how he could fulfill his promise to Emily.

Several attempts to claim ownership of the region have been made online, but Mr Heaton believes that by actually traveling to the site and planting the flag gave his claim an edge.

Read the whole thing.

Via Fred Lapides.

Woman thought she saved a puppy in an alley but it turned out to be a coyote.

Via Ratak Monodosico.

Michael Robbins, at Slate, reviews Nick Spencer’s Atheists: The Origin of the Species, which seems to constitute a well-deserved attack on the “New Atheists,” i.e., the smug, self-congratulatory secular materialists of the Richard Dawkins-ilk.

Nietzsche realized that the Enlightenment project to reconstruct morality from rational principles simply retained the character of Christian ethics without providing the foundational authority of the latter. Dispensing with his fantasy of the Ãœbermensch, we are left with his dark diagnosis. To paraphrase the Scottish philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre, our moral vocabulary has lost the contexts from which its significance derived, and no amount of Dawkins-style hand-waving about altruistic genes will make the problem go away. (Indeed, the ridiculous belief that our genes determine everything about human behavior and culture is a symptom of this very problem.)

The point is not that a coherent morality requires theism, but that the moral language taken for granted by liberal modernity is a fragmented ruin: It rejects metaphysics but exists only because of prior metaphysical commitments. A coherent atheism would understand this, because it would be aware of its own history. Instead, trendy atheism of the Dawkins variety has learned as little from its forebears as from Thomas Aquinas, preferring to advance a bland version of secular humanism. Spencer quotes John Gray, a not-New atheist: “Humanism is not an alternative to religious belief, but rather a degenerate and unwitting version of it.” How refreshing would be a popular atheism that did not shy from this insight and its consequences.

It is, I suppose, perversely amusing, and confirming of Chesterton’s prediction that, post Religion, people will not believe in nothing, but will believe in anything, that the typical contemporary enlightened elite position involves both the contemptuous rejection of traditional religion and the uncritical acceptance of an even-more-simplistic catechism composed of sentimental humanitarianism constituting a sort of attenuated Christianity, sexually-emancipated but even more enthusiastic about ressentiment.

Hat tip to Karen L. Myers.

Kendall Jones

A 19-year-old Texas Tech cheerleader became “the most hated woman on the Internet” after she posted photos of herself on Facebook posing with various big game trophies, including lion, leopard, elephant, and cape buffalo.

Her photographs and praise of hunting provoked a tsunami of abuse, and within days Facebook fell into line and deleted the young lady’s photographs.

Facebook deleted a series of photos that showed her posing with a variety of animals, including a leopard and a lion, that she had shot earlier this month on safari in Zimbabwe.

The pictures were said to break a rule about “graphic images shared for sadistic effect or to celebrate or glorify violence,” as outlined in this page on Facebook Community Standards, Mashable reported.

“We remove reported content that promotes poaching of endangered species, the sale of animals for organized fight or content that includes extreme acts of animal abuse,” a Facebook spokesperson told Mashable.

But Juneau Empire reporter Matt Woolbright noticed the stunning contradiction when he tried to report the “Kill Kendall Jones” community page, and Facebook said it didn’t violate their standards.

It took slightly longer for Facebook to decide to delete the newly-created “Kill Kendall Jones” page.

The cheerleader not only received death threats. She was condemned by Hollywood actress Hillary Duff, while Virginia democrat Mike Dickinson (now running for Eric Cantor’s 7th district Congressional seat) offered a $100,000 reward for nude photographs of the cheerleader, stating that “she deserves to be a target.”

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Axelle Despiegelaere

Meanwhile, during World Cup coverage, 17-year-old Belgian beauty Axelle Despiegelaere won a modelling contract with L’Oreal after television “honey shot” photos of the young lady in the stands went viral.

But her contract was quickly cancelled when the Internet discovered the above trophy photo of the young lady with an oryx on Facebook.

L’Oreal accompanied her firing with the assurance that the cosmetics company “no longer tests on animals, anywhere in the world, and does not delegate this task to others.”

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Stephen Spielberg and deceased Triceratops

Finally, right-wing wag Jay Branscomb, last Sunday, posted an on-set photograph of director Stephen Spielberg posing with a model of a Triceratops. labelled “Disgraceful photo of recreational hunter posing next to Triceratops he just slaughtered. Please share so the world can name and shame this despicable man.”

What has been described as a perfect Facebook trainwreck of sanctimony, hysteria, and clueless stupidity ensued, with more than 6000 comments furiously condemning the heartless director.

Commenter Tim, at Gun Nuts Media, defends the Beretta M9:

The Beretta M9 has actually been a pretty good sidearm.

We’ve talked a bit about the Beretta 92/M9′s track record as an issued sidearm for the military and law enforcement before, but it’s worth reemphasizing here that the biggest problem the Beretta has had in military service is bad maintenance practices by the military itself. Springs don’t get replaced, parts that aren’t supposed to be reused get reused, and the military went out and bought a bunch of cheap magazines for them that didn’t work well. Remember that this is the same organization which preached minimal or no lube on carbines like Jimmy Swaggart on cocaine and then seemed somewhat stunned by the fact that guns shut down when used in combat. When you talk to people from units who took maintaining their issued M9 sidearms seriously, and who bothered to actually lubricate them properly, you hear that they were pretty darn reliable.

And he doesn’t think getting a sidearm chambered for a round larger and more powerful than the 9mm Parabellum will make that much difference.

40 S&W ball ammo, .45 ACP ball ammo, or .357 sig ball ammo is going to suck about the same as 9mm ball ammo.

One of the stated reasons for pursuing a new handgun is to get one that’s in a chambering with better terminal ballistics. That’s really a non-starter unless the military is willing to start using ammunition with expanding bullets. It’s particularly amusing to see the .357 sig in the list of considerations because the .357 sig is a .40 S&W case necked down to take a 9mm bullet…as if a .355 FMJ from a .357 sig is going to perform better than a .355 FMJ from a 9mm. If the Army wants better terminal ballistics, start issuing Gold Dots. No, dear reader, we’re not prohibited from using JHP ammunition by the Hague convention…and to paraphrase an exceptionally astute comment from a forum discussion on the topic, it’s patently absurd to issue hand grenades and shoulder-launched missiles and then wring our hands and fret over whether hollowpoints for handguns are “humane”. It’s ridiculous that in our society a police officer can shoot another American citizen with JHP ammo without any human rights concerns but somehow there’s a big problem if a Marine shoots some foreign dirtbag with the exact same ammo. You know, shooting him with a handgun rather than calling in an airstrike or blowing the whole structure the dude is hiding in to kingdom come with an Abrams tank.

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Tim may be right that drawing an ethical line at shooting foreign enemies with expanding bullets is silly when our own police get to shoot civilians domestically with hollowpoint bullets, but he’s mistaken about US obligations.

The Hague Convention of 1899 says:

The Contracting Parties agree to abstain from the use of bullets which expand or flatten easily in the human body, such as bullets with a hard envelope which does not entirely cover the core, or is pierced with incisions.

This Declaration was not ratified by the United States, but… “After World War II, the judges of the military tribunal of the Trial of German Major War Criminals at Nuremberg Trials found that by 1939, the rules laid down in the 1907 Hague Convention were recognised by all civilised nations and were regarded as declaratory of the laws and customs of war. Under this post-war decision, a country did not have to have ratified the 1907 Hague Convention in order to be bound by them.”

So, by the ruling of an international war crimes tribunal in which the US participated, everyone, including the US, is considered to recognize that abstention from the use of expanding bullets is one of the laws and customs of war.

Gear Patrol:

The R7 shows how deep art deco influence ran. A pure prototype, the R7 stands as one of the most stunning bikes ever created. The opulent mudguards, the fluid sculpture of the body and the ornate steel and chrome all lend to an unparalleled design for motorcycles. Its telescopic front forks also happen to be the first ever on a two-wheeler. Every aspect of the bike contributed to its elegant design, including the enclosed gas tank, the smooth rocker covers and the uniquely shaped exhaust. The bike was stored away in the 1940s and brought back to life by BMW Classics in 2005. Thank the motorcycle gods the R7 survived, since nothing else on two wheels looks anything like it, nor ever will.

Via Ratak Monodosico.

The Onion: Environmental Study Finds Air In Chicago Now 75% Bullets

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Chicago and the Don Zaluchi Policy:

Don Zaluchi runs Chicago, although it’s actually grey-black powder.

If they had any sense or American identity left in them, they’d realize that they are every one his sacrificial pawns. The Don wants this, every child gunned down makes the case for firearms confiscation, and the reversion to slavery complete. But this, in this country, will never happen without risking civil war. And the Don knows, the rest of the country doesn’t care either and believes as he does. Who cares if soulless animals off each other? There’s no downside to letting this continue, or so he and his associates think.

The Don could stop this. But it would mean a severe squeeze on the rackets to make the streets safe. The Capo’s would get themselves a new Don. That the Don only calls ineffectively for firearms confiscation, while doing nothing to actually make the city safe for all People, “evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism”