Nick Tosches, 1949-2019

Nick Tosches died yesterday. I hadn't seen or been in communication with Nick for years, but there was a time, from the late 1970s to the early nineties, when I counted him as a close friend, and I believe he would have said the same of me. There was no rupture because of a disagreement. Marriage and fatherhood pulled me away - though not so quickly as my wife would have liked - from long hours in the Greenwich Village demimonde where Nick and I spent time together. Meanwhile, Nick was entering an especially prolific time in his writing career. Martha, my wife, says she still has somewhere a letter Nick wrote celebrating the birth of our daughter. As I recall, he wrote that it was an occasion "making November 4 a holiday."

Nick and I got to know each other at the Bells of Hell. What got our friendship going was a common love of country music. My fondness for it began in mid-childhood, when every summer my parents and I took a triangular trip from Florida to central Pennsylvania to visit my mother's relatives, then across Ohio to southern Indiana to see my father's family, then back to Florida. On these trips the car radio was always on, and in the territory we traversed country was the music you got. I came to associate it with these trips, which I enjoyed very much, partly for the visits with my grandparents, including a great grandmother who lived to be 103 and could remember the Civil War, but also because I loved seeing the country. My maternal grandmother lived near the then four track main line of the Pennsylvania Railroad, and I became a railfan early in life. In those pre-Interstate days of two lane blacktop, highways often paralleled railways, and I got to see trains on many different lines, including the sleek green, white, and gold diesels of the Southern, and the hulking steam articulated locos of the Norfolk & Western.

Nick's interest in country music stemmed from his love of rock and roll, a love I shared. Nick's first book, titled Country, was published shortly before I met him. Its original subtitle (see image of cover above) was The Biggest Music in America, but the third edition had a new one: The twisted roots of rock 'n' roll. Another thing we had in common was a love of history; I once loaned him my copy of William Appleman Williams's The Roots of the Modern American Empire, which I never got back. As a writer about rock, Nick became interested in its origins, which took him back to several sources. Three of these were in Black music: Delta blues, jump blues and rhythm and blues. Another was a style called "rockabilly," which took elements from the Black styles and combined them with the Appalachian ballad tradition.

One chapter of Country that I especially enjoyed was titled "Orpheus, Gypsies, and Redneck Rock 'n' Roll," in which Nick interviewed rockabilly artist Warren Smith, who years before had recorded a song called "Black Jack Davy."  Nick asked Smith where he got the song; Smith said, "I wrote it." Nick's next paragraph begins, "Cut to Athens, fourth century B.C." He then tells of the origin of the Orpheus legend, and over several pages gives a detailed history of its inclusion in Ovid's Metamorphoses, its retelling in Latin by Boethius, King Alfred's translation of Boethius into Old English, and the Orpheus legend's subsequent metastasization into English, Irish, and Scottish folklore. Here it became the story of a Gypsy, eventually known as Black Jack Davy, who steals a nobleman's wife. In later versions, she chooses to stay with the Gypsy.

Another short chapter, "The Girl Singer," that Nick later described, in the preface to the Da Capo edition of Country, as "truth masquerading as fiction masquerading as truth," tells of his apparent encounter with a transgender person.

Nick's second book was Hellfire: The Jerry Lee Lewis Story. The British newspaper The Guardian rated it first in its list of the fifty greatest music books ever. Nick told me that, when he was interviewing Jerry Lee. he asked about an incident in which Jerry Lee shot his bassist. This had been ruled an accident. Nick asked if it really was an accident. Jerry Lee said, "A sanctified preacher don't make no mistakes."

Nick had many more books, some but not all of which I've read. I gave a copy of Dino: Living High in the Dirty Business of Dreams, Nick's biography of Dean Martin, to my father, who liked it very much. It's referred to in Neil Genzlinger's NYT obituary, which is linked at the top of the post but linked here again for your convenience.

While I earlier wrote that there was no disagreement between Nick and me, I think that, on a fundamental level, one that nevertheless didn't affect our friendship, we were very different. The NYT obituary includes this observation, given in response to a Times interviewer in 1992 concerning the Dean Martin book: “Life is a racket,” he [Nick] added. “Writing is a racket. Sincerity is a racket. Everything’s a racket."

Nick's cynical view may reflect his background, growing up on the streets of Jersey City, while mine, which holds that things may improve despite human imperfectability, could reflect my having been the cosseted only son of parents of middle class means. This is a topic I mean to explore further in future posts.

Bertrand Russell on growing old.

Bertrand Russell was one of the pre-eminent philosophers of the past century. Although much of his work was devoted to analytical philosophy, particularly to exploring the logical foundations of mathematics, he also wrote and spoke eloquently and with wit about ethical and political matters, and about concerns of everyday life.

As I progress further into my eighth decade of life I, like, I'm sure, many of my contemporaries, spend time reminiscing and sometimes regretting roads not taken. Russell, in his Portraits from Memory and Other Essays, offered this observation:

"Make your interests gradually wider and more impersonal, until bit by bit the walls of the ego recede, and your life becomes increasingly merged in the universal life. An individual human existence should be like a river — small at first, narrowly contained within its banks, and rushing passionately past rocks and over waterfalls. Gradually the river grows wider, the banks recede, the waters flow more quietly, and in the end, without any visible break, they become merged in the sea, and painlessly lose their individual being."

To my fellow Christians, this may seem perplexing. Loss of individual being doesn't jibe with traditional notions of immortality. It seems, if anything, more like Buddhism. To me, though, the crucial words are "the walls of the ego recede".  I believe this to be central to the message of the Gospels; perhaps best summed up in Luke 17:33. Russell was not a Christian, nor a Buddhist, but to me it seems that in this respect his thinking was in concurrence with both traditions (which, I think, have more in common than many believers in either would care to admit.)

I'm indebted for the Russell quotation to Maria Popova's blog Brain Pickings, which I find a reliable source of thought provoking insights. If you follow the link and scroll down, you can subscribe for free. Maria relies on donations to keep up her very valuable work and, if you would like to help, please follow the link provided on her blog.

The photo (public domain; photographer unknown) is of Russell with his children John (born 1921) and Kate (1923). Judging by the children's appearances, the photo was made in the late 1920s when Russell (born 1872) would have been in his mid-fifties.

Tyler Kepner rains on the Mets' parade (and just about everyone else's).

Pitchers and catchers report this week! The Mets, contrary to all expectations, not only made it to the post-season, but also won the National League championship last year. Their starting rotation is regarded as the most fearsome in the Majors. Again against expectations, they were able to re-sign heavy hitter Yoenis Cespedes. Even though closer Jennry Mejia somehow managed to fail a third PED test and drew a lifetime suspension, the Mets have Jeurys Familia, who in Mejia's absence last season proved to be one of the most effective closers in the game.

So, what's there for a Mets fan to worry about? As The Baseball Project (see clip below) remind us, the beginning of spring training is when fans of all teams, even those with the most discouraging recent records, can be optimistic; when it's "All Future and No Past":

Having been a Mets fan since 1985, I early enjoyed the thrill of 1986. Since then, over a 29 season course, I've seen them advance to the postseason only five times, although they made it to the World Series twice, losing both times in five games. In 2000 they lost to the Yankees in a Series that featured the Mike Piazza/Roger Clemens thrown broken bat incident. Other years I've seen them come tantalizingly close but succumb to end-of-season swoons. Some ballyhooed free agent acquisitions have failed to live up to their billing. Injuries seem to be a persistent problem. To be a Mets fan is to come to believe in Murphy's Law.

Consequently, each year at this time I try to follow Larry David's advice and curb my enthusiasm. For my take pre-spring training last year, see here. But this year the New York Times baseball writer Tyler Kepner has done that work for me. In his "Extra Bases" column, "Ah, Spring! What Could Go Wrong?", Kepner answers the question in the title for all thirty Major League teams. His prognosis for the Mets:

The starters try hard to keep the ball out of play -- to minimize the impact of the team's shaky defense -- but their 2015 workload wears them down. David Wright's spinal stenosis limits him again [Note: G.M. Sandy Alderson has just announced that Wright will be limited to 130 games], and while Yoenis Cespedes struggles in center field, he hits well enough to exercise his opt-out clause and repeat his protracted free-agent dance.

For what it's worth, I think Kepner is right about Cespedes, though I hold some hope that his fielding will improve. In any event, I think we're likely to see him testing free agency again this year.

If you're not a Mets fan and want to see what Kepner thinks may be in store for your team, go here. If you're a Cubs fan, you may take heart. After mentioning several downside possibilities, e.g. "the left side of the infield collapses under the weight of strikeouts" and "Joe Maddon switches to contact lenses and bans zoo animals from the clubhouse", Kepner concludes, "Nah, who are we kidding? These are the Cubs. A championship is inevitable." In the immortal words of the late Sidney Morgenbesser, responding to the assertion that an interesting aspect of the English language is that, while a double negative is always properly construed as a positive, there is no instance in which a double positive is a negative, "Yeah, yeah."

Hillel Livingston Seagull

That which is hateful to you, do not do to another....The rest is commentary. Go study.

Henri 2, Paw de Deux, winner of the Golden Kitty

This was the winner of "the first ever cat video film festival". Unlike the star of this show, my cats don't seem to suffer existential angst. It's more like, "Hey! It's ten minutes since you last fed me, and the food in the dish is stale."

Congratulations to Will Braden, who made the video, and thanks to Geoff Abrams for bringing it to my attention.

Goodbye, Joe Paterno

Miamiherald.com

I don't think Joe Paterno, who died today at 85, will have the fate Shakespeare's Antony described in Juluis Caesar, Act 3, scene ii: "The evil that men do lives after them; The good is oft interred with their bones". The evil of which Paterno was accused so near the end of his life was a sin of omission, but one that may have had very bad consequences. Fellow blogger Mark Koltko-Rivera, writing at the time the scandal had just broken and before Paterno was fired as Penn State's football coach, made a case, on both consequentialist and deontological (if, indeed, there is a real difference between the two) grounds, for firing Paterno immediately, thereby denying him a "last hurrah" at the Nittany Lions' then forthcoming end-of-season game.

Joe Paterno was a native of my now beloved adopted home, Brooklyn. He coached at a university near where my mother was born and raised and where I was born, whose teams I rooted for whenever they weren't playing against Florida or Florida State. I believed, and still believe, in his reputation as a good coach, not only in the sense of being a winning coach, but one who inspired respect and love from his players while instilling or reinforcing in them ideals of good conduct and devotion to learning, as well as to football. I don't think this reputation will "be interred with [his] bones", nor should it. The "evil" will also be remembered, and should serve to caution others who find themselves in a situation similar to that in which Paterno found himself when confronted with the information he was given.

Meat in vats: first step toward celebrity cannibalism?

This item on MSNBC cites a "yuck factor" as the principal impediment to getting people to eat meat cultured in vitro from cells taken from food animals, rather than grown "on the hoof" or claw, as the case may be. While I doubt I'd yet go to Key Food for a couple pounds of "charlem" (Charleston engineered meat) made from

myoblasts — embryonic cells that develop into muscle tissue — from turkey...bathed...in a nutrient bath of bovine serum on a scaffold made of chitosan (a common polymer found in nature)[,]

I wouldn't be averse to trying it. I could be more favorably inclined once Dr. Vladimir Mironov, the scientist at the Medical University of South Carolina who is working on this project (with funding from PETA) finds out how to add fat for "marbling" and "a vascular system so that interior cells can receive oxygen [that] will enable the growth of steak, say, instead of just thin strips of muscle tissue."

www.themodernword.com

It's not the notion that this is a product of technology rather than traditional agriculture that gives me pause. Instead, it's a "slippery slope" argument. Usually, I'm not fond of these; so long as reasonable people like me are around to draw the appropriate lines, they'll get drawn. Still, I remember an idea from the fertile mind of Samuel R. Delany (photo at left). In his novel Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand, he posits a future galactic civilization that, of course, has technology far beyond ours in all respects, including the ability to grow meat in vats. It's a minor point in this very complex novel, which concerns Rat Korga, the sole survivor of a disaster that destroys a planet. After his rescue, Korga is taken to the planet Morgre, in the company of an "industrial diplomat", Marq Dyeth. As Dyeth and Korga are walking together, they are approached by a member of the Butchers' Union, Si'id.

Excuse me, Marq...I have hungered all day for this honor... . But then, it's clear, the whole of Morgre has developed an appetite for our fine friend. ...We are all famished for a taste of that survival.

Si'id then takes a "sampling knife" from her pocket and, before Dyeth or Korga can object, secures a flesh sample from Korga's arm, leaving only a small cut.

"Oh, thank you!" Si'id exclaimed. "Yes, a beautiful sample. We will savor the complexities of your flesh for years to come, and it will lend its subtleties to many complex meals."

Delany saw that the ability to grow meat in vats meant the ability to grow any meat in vitro. Combine this with the old observation that, when you're a celebrity, everyone wants a piece of you, and it's easy to see a future in which "What's for dinner?" can come down to a choice between beefsteak and a slice of Sandra Bullock.

Egypt: what kind of democracy?

Yesterday's New York Times op-ed page includes a piece by Essam El-Errian, a member of the Guidance Council of Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood, with the title "What the Muslim Brothers Want". It includes many reassuring (to those of us who want to see Egypt emerge from its crisis as a robust democracy) declarations: "we have persistently demanded liberation and democracy"; "the Muslim Brotherhood is committed to...reform and progress"; and, most significantly, "We aim to achieve reform and rights for all: not just for the Muslim Brotherhood, not just for Muslims, but for all Egyptians."

I don't question the sincerity of these declarations. I do pause, nevertheless, at this paragraph, which I think may reflect a misunderstanding:

As our nation heads toward liberty, however, we disagree with the claims that the only options in Egypt are a purely secular, liberal democracy or an authoritarian theocracy. Secular liberal democracy of the American and European variety, with its firm rejection of religion in public life, is not the exclusive model for a legitimate democracy.

I'm heartened by Mr. El-Errian's evident rejection of "authoritarian theocracy" (which I take to mean no imposition of Sharia as civil law); but I claim a misunderstanding because he characterizes American and European democracies as having strictly excluded religion from the public sphere. In America, religious references abound both in our governmental ceremonies (yes, nonbelievers and religious objectors--there are those--are given the opportunity to omit references to God or "affirm" rather than to "swear"), and, more importantly, in our political discourse. Our First Amendment prohibits the establishment of a particular religion, but in its succeeding clause guarantees the right to "free exercise" of religious beliefs. This point is also made in a letter, published in today's Times, by Regan McCarthy in response to Mr. El-Errian's column (see here).

European democracies offer even stronger counterexamples. Britain, for instance, still has an established church, and the Archbishop of Canterbury, who is formally appointed by the monarch, takes part in ceremonies of state. Nevertheless, adherents to faiths other than that of the Church of England are allowed to practice their religion, and no one, including nonbelievers, is excluded from public life, including the holding of office.

Also troubling to me is Mr. El-Errian's apparent rejection of "liberal" democracy. I'm sure what he means by "liberal" is not what that has come to mean in American political discourse, i.e. the belief that government should intervene in the economy to prevent abuses of private power and to maintain a strong social safety net, but rather the classic meaning, which is that the establishment and preservation of individual liberty should be the fundamental principle (for more discussion of this, see "Genghis Khan: the first liberal?").

In conclusion, despite Mr. El-Errian's encouraging words, I'm perplexed as to what role he proposes for religion in public life, and what scope he is willing to allow for individual freedom.

Update: Aljazeera English has just reported Mubarak's resignation.

Martin Luther King, Jr. on hatred and love.

Wikimedia Commons

From a sermon delivered at the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, Montgomery, Alabama, on November 17, 1957:

There’s another reason why you should love your enemies, and that is because hate distorts the personality of the hater. We usually think of what hate does for the individual hated or the individuals hated or the groups hated. But it is even more tragic, it is even more ruinous and injurious to the individual who hates. You just begin hating somebody, and you will begin to do irrational things. You can’t see straight when you hate. You can’t walk straight when you hate. You can’t stand upright. Your vision is distorted. There is nothing more tragic than to see an individual whose heart is filled with hate. He comes to the point that he becomes a pathological case. For the person who hates, you can stand up and see a person and that person can be beautiful, and you will call them ugly. For the person who hates, the beautiful becomes ugly and the ugly becomes beautiful. For the person who hates, the good becomes bad and the bad becomes good. For the person who hates, the true becomes false and the false becomes true. That’s what hate does. You can’t see right. The symbol of objectivity is lost. Hate destroys the very structure of the personality of the hater.
…
So this morning, as I look into your eyes, and into the eyes of all of my brothers in Alabama and all over America and over the world, I say to you, "I love you. I would rather die than hate you." And I’m foolish enough to believe that through the power of this love somewhere, men of the most recalcitrant bent will be transformed.

See the complete sermon at Martin Luther King Online. Thanks to the Rev. Steven Paulikas, Assistant to the Rector, Grace Church, Brooklyn, for citing this in his sermon this morning.

Cross-currents on the Brooklyn Bridge

This morning, on the return leg of my Brooklyn Bridge walk, I encountered this group heading from Brooklyn towards Manhattan. As I passed them, a man handed me a leaflet explaining that they are members of the Nipponzan Myohoji Buddhist Order, walking from Leverett, Massachusetts to Washington, D.C. to advocate "Abolition of Nuclear Weapons; Renunciation of War; Conversion from War to Peace Economy." Admirable goals, all.

Also on the Bridge this morning, going in the opposite direction, were groups of people, many decked out in colorful Tibetan dress, some waving Tibetan flags, and some wearing headbands that said "Free Tibet". When I got back to the Brooklyn side, I found them massing in Cadman Plaza Park for a demonstration.


I wondered if the Tibetans and their fellow Buddhists from Leverett had greeted each other as they passed on the Bridge. I'm sure the Tibetans want to get their freedom by peaceful means. Given the stark parameters of their situation, their only non-suicidal option may be moral suasion. But, in some circumstances, might it be necessary to choose between the ideals of peace and freedom? In the back of my mind, I was hearing the words of Patrick Henry.

Self-absorption to the max.

Yesterday, I was tagged twice on Facebook to perform a task that is being passed around virally on that site, which is to make a list of twenty five "random" facts about yourself, then to pass it on to twenty five friends with the request that they do the same. I usually won't participate in these on-line pyramid schemes, but, indiscreet attention whore that I am, I couldn't resist this one, just as I can't now resist re-posting it here for the benefit of all non-Facebookers. Here 'tis:

1. I was born in Altoona, Pennsylvania, a city renowned in vaudeville humor.

2. My nickname among the nurses when I was a newborn was “The Thin Man”.

3. I have ancestral roots that I know of in the following states: Indiana, Pennsylvania, California, Illinois, and Missouri.

4. Despite my having two great grandfathers who fought for the Union (and none for the South), my high school faculty awarded me the Jefferson Davis Citizenship Medal of the United Daughters of the Confederacy.

5. I began my formal education in a three room schoolhouse in rural Hertfordshire, England. Among the teachers’ comments on my report cards there were: “Writing: has difficulty grasping pencil properly”, “Reading [aloud]: good but monotonous”, “P[hysical] T[raining]: somewhat timid on apparatus”.

6. My sixth grade teacher at Eglin AFB [Florida] Elementary School told my parents I was so physically maladroit that I might never be able to drive a car.

7. Between my junior and senior years of high school, I took flying lessons, culminating in my piloting a Cessna solo.

8. My parents, other relatives and their friends have always called me “Kim”.

9. On two occasions, I tried to learn to play music. In third grade I joined a school band program and tried to play flute; during my senior year of high school I took guitar lessons. Both times I found that I lacked both the dexterity and the discipline to succeed.

10. I wish I could sing better. Sometimes my voice is “on”, and I get compliments. Most of the time, it’s not.

11. I still fantasize about being a rock star.

12. I’m often accused of wanting to have my cake and eat it, too. I usually answer, “Who wouldn’t?”

13. I’ve been in every state of the U.S. except Oregon, South Dakota, and Wisconsin.

14. I’ve visited the following foreign countries in the following chronological order of first visit: United Kingdom (I lived there as a child for almost three years, and have since returned several times, visiting Scotland and Wales as well as England), France, Belgium, Holland (for a few minutes, riding across the narrow part near Maastricht), Germany, Switzerland, Canada, Spain, Bermuda, Ireland, Sweden, Denmark (an hour in a transit lounge at the Copenhagen airport), and Mexico.

15. I have a crush on Sigourney Weaver. (My wife knows this, and isn’t worried. Neither is Jim Simpson.)

16. I exhibit some symptoms of obsessive-compulsive disorder (Isn’t calling it a “disorder” almost a contradiction in terms?), such as arranging all the bills in my wallet face forward, right side up, and in ascending order of denomination from front to back. This sometimes annoys people behind me in line at Key Food.

17. Guilty pleasures: Kraft American cheese, Popeye’s chicken and dirty rice, “Believe Me” by the Royal Teens, Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture.

18. Like Mr. Leopold Bloom, I devour with relish the inner organs of beasts and fowls (or, as my Massachusetts-born wife calls them, “speah pahts”).

19. In my estimation, any pizza can be improved by adding anchovies. Update: this may not apply to the hot dog and French fry pizza.

20. I dread being asked directions, because I often find myself saying “north” when I mean “south”, “up” for “down”, “right” for “left”, and so on (I call this “directional dyslexia”).

21. I think the most salient fact about me is the tension I feel between conflicting ideals, for example: fealty to tradition versus attraction to novelty, and reverence before mystery versus desire for knowledge.

22. I like some odd painters, such as Ivan Albright and Giorgio de Chirico.

23. I usually dislike being asked what is my favorite anyone or anything, as I seldom have a clear, overriding preference valid for all times and circumstances.

24. Before I die, I would like to tour around the Mediterranean, especially Italy, Greece, Turkey, Israel, Egypt, and Morocco. I would also like to follow the route of the Silk Road from Asia Minor to China, and see the cities of Manaus and Salvador in Brazil.

25. I hate the designated hitter rule.

Update: Slate has an interesting analysis of the spread and decay of the "25 things" phenomenon, with an interesting conclusion for anyone planning an attempt at viral online marketing.

Atonement

Yom Kippur ended at sundown yesterday. I'm not Jewish, but I like the idea of a "day of atonement" in which, among other things, you're supposed to make amends to anyone you've wronged in the previous twelve or thirteen (such are the vagaries of the Jewish calendar) months. So I'm trying some atonement here for things I've posted on this blog.

First, Ben Stein. I really came down hard on you. It's largely because I was so disposed to like you. I enjoyed your show, Win Ben Stein's Money. More to the point, we had a friend in common; someone whose judgment I respected and who once did one of the nicest things anyone has ever done for me. To see you trashing evolution came, to say the least, as an unexpected blow below the belt. Your falling for the canard that Darwin's theory gives support to Nazi racism and the Holocaust had me shaking my head in despair. Nevertheless, I'm willing to allow that, in this matter, you were acting the fool not the knave.

Next, Leon Kass. I made sport of your fuddy-duddy-uncle-ish objections to outdoor eating in general, and ice cream cones in particular. I disagree with you about embryonic stem cell research (I've never cottoned to slippery-slope arguments, so long as reasonable people like me get to decide where the lines get drawn) and some other issues for similar reasons. Nevertheless, I'll confess, I find you fascinating, because you seem to have something I don't (which, my having lived over sixty two years, may be evidence of naivete or even imbecility): what Miguel de Unamuno called the "tragic sense of life". It's something you seem to share with the British philosopher John Gray and my former Fray colleague and fellow blogger IOZ, not that either of them would necessarily want to be put in the same category with you, or with each other, or with Unamuno, for that matter.

Last (and certainly least), Sarah Palin. I was a bit snarky, but I'll give you credit for a couple of things you said during your Katie Couric interview: "Well, I am all for contraception", and "Oh, I think it [evolution] should be taught as an accepted principle." Good for you, though you still don't get my vote.

So, just what is art, anyway?

In Little Murders (1971), directed by Alan Arkin, with screenplay by Jules Feiffer, Elliott Gould (seen at left, in stained white suit) played Alfred Chamberlain, a successful but disillusioned commercial photographer who took to wandering the sidewalks of New York shooting photos of what, in those pre-pooper-scooper law days, could all too easily be found there. He explained this unusual avocation by saying that he'd received several awards for work he'd done--photographs of consumer products that were used in advertising--that he considered artistically without merit, and that this made him conclude that he might as well be taking pictures of shit. Eventually, his excremental photos won plaudits as well. When Patsy, later to be his bride, first visited his apartment and saw his photos on the wall said she thought they were lovely, and added, "and they're all ...?" He nodded affirmatively.

Feiffer may have been inspired to create this scene, and indeed the whole episode of Alfred's scatomania, by an actual show presented at the Gallery Gertrude Stein in 1964. The artists Sam Goodman and Boris Lurie, who, along with Stanley Fisher, led the NO!art movement of the early 1960s, conceived a "NO! Sculpture" exhibition in which the sculptures were simulated feces, produced by extruding wet plaster from plastic "guts". The critic Thomas Neumann, writing for Art News, characterized this as "the direct, unsublimated expression of instinct".* Brian O'Doherty, a New York Times art critic, had this reaction:

These aggregations of colonic calligraphy contain many formal excellences for anyone whose purist education forces him to perceive them.

But the subject matter puts the joke on those who do find formal values in it. Those who do not are forced to deny the legitimacy of values that by now have been inculcated into several college generations--thus pointing up the current effeteness of the formal idea.**

Update: For a contemporary version, by Paul McCarthy, of the Goodman/Lurie project, see here.

So, is shit art? Here I will venture a bold statement: shit, per se, is not art. Why not? Again, I'll be bold. Art must be intentional. It must be the product of a conscious decision to make something of artistic value. Shelley and his Skylark to the contrary notwithstanding, I don't believe in "unpremeditated art". I'll leave aside for now the question, "What is artistic value?", thereby sidestepping the formalism versus whatever (postmodernism, emotionalism, "meaning") brouhaha, in which O'Doherty took the anti-formalist side. The point I want to stress is that a thing that was not created with a conscious intention to make art, be it dogshit or an orchid, is not art.

By including the qualifier per se, though, I've left open the possibility that both Alfred's photographs and Goodman and Lurie's fecal simulacrae may be considered art. Does the act of photographing or making a replica of something that is not in itself art, and displaying it, make it art? Does tagging it with spray paint (see my colleague Miss Heather's blog, newyorkshitty.com) do the trick? To take the question further, is it art simply to abstract an object from its usual environment, perhaps adding a bit of graffiti, and to show it in a gallery, as in the instance of Marcel Duchamp's urinal? In each of these, there is an element of intentionality.

Is intentionality a sufficient, as well as a necessary, condition? It's tempting to say so. Intentionality provides what we lawyers like to call a "bright line" test. Nevertheless, if we say that anything meeting the criterion "created intentionally as a work of art" must be considered art, we're letting in some hard cases. I'm thinking here of the controversy, as reported by my Brooklyn Heights Blog colleague Homer Fink with his post about the sculptor Tom Otterness, prompted by the installation of his "Large Covered Wagon" on a patch of greensward in DUMBO, just north of the eastern approach to the Brooklyn Bridge.

It isn't Otterness's whimsical sculpture that makes this a hard case, but something he did some 31 years ago, when he was a 25 year old trying to make it as an artist in the East Village. Homer quoted Gary Indiana, reviewing a retrospective of East Village art from the 1970s in New York Magazine, as follows:

I’m repulsed by this show’s inclusion of Tom Otterness, a sculptor of limitless nonentity despite his demonstrated skill at conning public-art commissions and taste-impaired collectors into making him rich. Mr. Otterness, once upon a time, adopted a dog and then shot it to death for the fun of recording his infantile, sadistic depravity on film. I’d like the New Museum’s visitors to keep that in mind while looking at this creep’s work. Mr. Otterness isn’t one of those special exceptions deserving the adage “Lousy person, terrific artist.” Lousy both.***

Otterness has since apologized for this cruel act several times, one of which was to neighbor blog McBrooklyn.

If shooting dogshit can be art, is shooting a dog, and committing its demise to film for the purpose of showing it as an artwork, art? It meets the intentionality test. Still, there's something in me that rebels against applying the word "art" to the result of an act of cruelty. "Art" is a word of approval. "That's a work of art!" is another way of saying "That's great!" Of course, not all art is great. Still, even less worthy art can be "nice"; I call it kitsch and consider it a guilty pleasure. For what it's worth, I put Otterness's sculpture in this category.

Here, though, I run smack-dab into what I sidestepped earlier: the vexed issue of what art is supposed to be. The various positions that art critics and academics take on this issue, I believe, fall into three general categories. For some, the answer might be: art should evoke a purely aesthetic response; it should challenge or expand our ability to appreciate form, color or texture. Others might argue that art should be a means for the artist to communicate her or his inner emotional state to the viewer. Still others might say that art should awaken the viewer to contradictions within the prevailing social-economic-political order.

While it is hard to see how "Shot Dog Film" could be considered art on a formal or aesthetic basis (I haven't seen the film, but I can't imagine how watching a dog be shot and die could expand my aesthetic awareness), it could be said to communicate Otterness's emotional state at the time it was done; indeed, Otterness indicates as much in his apology. It could also be argued that it serves as a critique of consumerist society and the attitude of disposability that it engenders. So, to deny "Shot Dog Film" the status of art, I must adopt a purely formalist position.

This I decline to do. My view is that all three of the positions described above concerning what art should be--formalist, emotive and critical, if you will--are valid. There may be other criteria, as well, that deserve consideration. Consequently, I am thrown back onto the intentionality test, which means I must renounce any attempt to ascribe a normative dimension to the word "art". There is good art, there is bad art, there is even evil art. In deciding what is good, bad or indifferent, we may resort to the categories of decision previously described, or to others that also relate to art-as-art. In deciding what is evil, however, we must be guided by something that transcends considerations of what is or isn't, or what's better or worse (from a purely artistic perspective), art; that is, our consciences.

Though I've given my answer to the question posed in the caption, I want to finish with a look at what goes into the making of art, in which we see that even trash can be a source of inspiration. This we can do by taking a hike with Thomas Nozkowski:

___________
*Neumann is quoted in Simon Taylor, "The NO!art Movement in New York, 1960-1964 (Final Draft, 7/21/95)", pp.15-16. (This text was available on line when I wrote this post; unfortunately, it is not now.)

**Brian O'Doherty, "Season's End: Groups at Castelli and Auslander--Plus a Shock at Stein's", The New York Times, May 31, 1964. This review also mentions a presumably then little-known artist, Christo, of whom O'Doherty noted that his "pet trick is a good, if quickly expendable, one--wrapped packages prompting curiosity." This was, recall, 1964. The "quickly expendable" trick proved to have considerable staying power.

***Gary Indiana, "One Brief, Scuzzy Moment: Memories of the East Village Art Scene", New York Magazine, December 6, 2004 (see text here).

Whither Spitzer?

Louise Crawford put the wood to me, at the delightful Brooklyn Blogade hosted yesterday by Joyce Hanson, AKA Bad Girl (we're talking "bad" in the probably now hopelessly archaic hip-hop sense). Anyway, amid all the bonhomie, Louise let me know in no uncertain terms that the volume of my production of late has been a bit less than up to snuff. All I could do was hang my head and nod "Yes."

So, I should certainly find something blogworthy in our (I'm referring to my fellow Empire Staters here) Governor's admission that he's shelled out major coin for some choice nooky. At first, I thought of trying to do something about how this provokes an intra-cerebral civil war between my classic liberal (what consenting men and women do in private, whether out of purely erotic or commercial motivation, is no one else's business, even if one of them happens to be a politician, televangelist or whatever) and Burkean conservative (prostitution is bad because it gives rise to conditions in which persons can be exploited without meaningful consent) sides. But that was going to demand a long essay, and I didn't have the energy or desire.

What I kept hearing was, "How could he be so stupid?" Stupid, I'll agree, but perhaps not in the sense of just failing to realize the risk. The phrase that kept repeating in my mind this afternoon was spoken by Maggie Smith playing the title role in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie: "Beyond the ordinary moral code." In the movie (and novel by Muriel Spark from which it was derived), Brodie is a teacher in a fancy girls' school in Scotland during the period just before World War Two, and a vulgar Nietzschean with fascist sympathies. One of her students is so beautiful, intelligent and talented that Brodie is convinced she is a true uberfraulein. In order to nudge this girl towards her rightful (as Brodie sees it) destiny, she connives for her to have an affair with the art teacher, a man in his thirties, married with six children. This all ends, inevitably, in disaster for both the art teacher and the girl. Brodie's excuse, of course, is that the girl was "beyond the ordinary moral code."

There are people who believe this about themselves. Some turn to overt crime: murder, rape, theft. We call them sociopaths. Others hew to more conventional career paths, and are often quite successful. Because this belief is strongly correlated with narcissism, some of them go into show business (of which televangelism is a part) or politics. Spitzer may exemplify the latter.

Alternatively, if we take seriously Spitzer's statement that his actions violate his, and anyone's, sense of right and wrong, we could conclude that there was, in his psyche, some desire for self-destruction.

How to answer the question in my caption for this post? That's a matter of practical politics, not philosophy. I suspect that the pressure from the Democratic Party in a presidential election year will prove irresistible: Spitzer will be out, and soon.

Update: There's an AP story that quotes several psychologists on the question, "Why do smart people do dumb things?" As you might expect, opinions vary, with some of the experts supporting a theory of hubris that is close to what I expressed above.

On the question whether Spitzer should resign, the lead Times editorial harrumphs mightily about it not being, as Spitzer asserted, primarily a "family" matter, but just calls for a more complete and public act of contrition, and does not demand his resignation. Comments on Instaputz (click on the word "Comments" to see them in Haloscan), including some by Brooklyn Heights Blog regulars, are generally taking the perfect-act-of-contrition no-resignation tack.

Second update: Newsweek's Howard Fineman has another theory about what motivated Spitzer. He thinks it may have been an inner conflict over his career as a politician. This brings to my mind a New Yorker cartoon by William Hamilton that depicted a sixtyish, besuited man sitting with several similar gents, all with drinks, in a club lounge, and saying, "Steel, of course, has been my life. But sometimes I wish my life had been a sunny cafe in Provence, with a pretty girl and a bottle of beaujolais."

Get to know Andrew Olmsted.

I recently did, if only by reading his words, and that's as much, unfortunately, as I ever will. He's dead. He was a blogger, like me, until a sniper's bullet found him a few days ago. A major in the U.S. Army, serving in Iraq, he had prepared a final message, which he entrusted to a friend to post to his blog in the event of his death. It's here, and I offer it without further comment on my part, which would be superfluous.

Well, OK, I will add this to the many good things being said about him: he was a Yankee fan who converted to the Red Sox. And, as he noted concerning the brevity of his life: "few of us are destined to make more than a tiny dent in history's Green Monster."

He suggested that the reader of his final post "put on a little 80s music (preferably vintage 1980-1984)"; so, for you, Andy, here's Joan Jett:



Kudos to Hilzoy of Obsidian Wings for being the caretaker and publisher of Andy's final post.

Update: Hilzoy has posted this on Obsidian Wings:

A member of Andy Olmsted's family has just written me to say that if people want to do something in honor of him, they can send donations to a fund that has been set up for the four children of CPT Thomas Casey, who served under Andy and was killed while trying to help him. The address is here:

Capt. Thomas Casey Children's fund
P.O. Box 1306
Chester, CA 96020

Thanks so much.

Postscript to my screed on consequentialism.

I posted earlier on this topic here. Aaron tells why, if you're shot down over enemy-occupied territory, it's much better to take shelter among consequentialists than among deontologists here.

Aaron might similarly appreciate my post here.

On quantification, and keeping score (not a sports post).

The week before last, the New York City Board of Education released "A" through "F" letter grades for almost all (some were deferred for more evaluation) of the City's public schools. While something like 60% of schools received an "A" or "B", some of what are thought of as very successful or greatly improved schools received lower grades. I've already weighed in on this subject in Brooklyn Heights Blog (see comment thread under this post); however, I felt the need to say something more considered and philosophical about this issue.

Unsurprisingly, Louise Crawford beat me to the punch in OTBKB , with these astute words:

Report cards are reductive things. As [is] ... reliance on quantitative ways of assessing things. Numbers, numbers, numbers.

How high did you score? How much did you sell? How much do you make? How much? How much?

It's the American way.

But why is it the American way? Brighter people than me, like Alexis de Tocqueville, David Reisman and Philip Slater, have addressed this question. I'll recount three commonplace observations that, like most conventional wisdom, are useful if not complete explanations. Perhaps most familiar is the notion that Americans are obsessed with scorekeeping because we don't have a rigid class or caste system that simply assigns social status at birth (though anyone who thinks class is unimportant here should consult Paul Fussell). The fact that we can be both economically and socially mobile makes us keen to measure where we are with respect to our fellows.

The second notion is that Americans are attracted to quantification because we distrust subjectivity. To most Americans, subjectivity means favoritism, whether that be the favoritism in-groups employ to perpetuate their power, or the favoritism out-groups get by using the political process to obtain what in-groups see as unfair advantages. Somehow, reducing things to numbers, or to letter grades supposedly based on quantitative measurements, dispels these suspicions.

The third is that life is just too damned complicated for us to deal with all the complexity of evaluating the choices available to us in any meaningful way, so we look for shortcuts. "Experts" are happy to provide directions that will shorten our decision-making journey. Despite our inclination to distrust others' subjective judgment, we can trust these experts because they dress their conclusions in supposedly "objective", quantitative garb.

Paul Tibbets and consequentialism.

A while back, I was planning a post on the topic of consequentialism; essentially, the belief that the ethical measure of an action or inaction is its consequences, at least as reasonably foreseen by the actor. My take on this was that we are all consequentialists in the last analysis. Those who claim to be deontologists; that is, those who believe that the ethical nature of an action depends upon whether it is in accordance with a duty incumbent upon the actor, whether that duty is believed to be ordained by divine command or, as with Kant, arising from our status as free and rational beings, are really saying that we are too shortsighted to evaluate fully the consequences of actions, and that, therefore, we must yield our judgment to hard and fast rules. In other words, deontology could be said to be consequentialism with a strong gloss of epistemological modesty.

For example, while a consequentialist may argue that destroying human embryos to harvest stem cells is ethically OK because it provides the means to alleviate great human suffering, while causing no pain to the pre-conscious embryos (this is a utilitarian argument, utilitarianism being perhaps the best-known form of consequentialism), a deontologist might argue that such an action violates an overarching duty to respect human life from the moment of conception. If pressed to give a reason for such a rule, however, the deontologist might invoke a "slippery slope" argument, that is, if we allow this, we are taking the first step on a downhill path that may lead to the cloning of malformed embryos with minimal brain function, to be raised in vitro simply to grow organs to be harvested for transplant, and, beyond that, to the use of viable humans with substandard mental function for the same purpose. Or, she might give a more far-reaching, "Burkean" answer: by calling into question a time-honored notion of what's good and proper, we are disturbing a complex system of societal mores, and this may have consequences well beyond what we have anticipated. Note, however, that both of these arguments appeal to consequences, and therefore are consequentialist. (I now know that John Stuart Mill anticipated this argument in his preface to Utilitarianism almost a century and a half ago.)

What inspired me to write this was the death of Paul Tibbets, and, in particular, this piece by Bob Greene about him. What struck me was the sheer consequentialism that sustained him after that fateful day over Hiroshima. His bio shows him to be a consummate warrior. Warriors seem to be archetypal deontologists. (I need only recall my last year of college, when my roommate and I had a deal: every time I made him suffer through a Dylan album, he could make me sit through his recording of the greatest speeches of General Douglas MacArthur. I can still hear in my mind the peroration of his farewell address to the Corps of Cadets at West Point: "Duty, honor, country, and the Corps, and the Corps, and the Corps.") Yet Greene's piece quotes Tibbets as explaining why he never lost sleep over the bombing as being, not "It was my duty", but

because "we stopped the killing." He was at peace, he said, because "I know how many people got to live full lives because of what we did."

Here, indeed, is Jeremy Bentham's felicitous calculus at its most stark. Dostoyevsky challenged this kind of reasoning by asking something to the effect: If a world of eternal happiness could be purchased by the suffering and death of one innocent child, would you buy the ticket?

Perhaps the thing about war is, it makes us all buy the ticket.

Paul Tibbets photo - U.S. Air Force, public domain.

11/18 update: Dawn Coyote posted this comment on WikiFray, where I cross-posted the text above:

I don't know if war makes us buy the ticket, or if it just makes us starkly aware that we've bought the ticket. In the increasingly connected world, it takes a determined averting of the gaze to remain unaware of how many of the surpluses we enjoy come to us as a result of deficits elsewhere. Maybe we're all Paul Tibbets these days—if we're lucky, or powerfully motivated to quell our cognitive dissonance.

I'll confess to feeling a bit sheepish about my last sentence. When I wrote it, it was past midnight, I'd had my second snifter of Cognac (a third would have been disastrous, as I've learned through hard experience), and I was just looking for a way to wrap the thing up. It was almost as bad as following the advice Michael O'Donoghue gave to aspiring novelists in "How to Write Good", which was published in National Lampoon sometime in the 1970s. If your plot gets too complicated and you can't figure out how to bring it to a satisfactory conclusion, he wrote, simply type the words: "Suddenly, everyone was run over by a truck."

Anyway, I had great plans to extend the argument to include the contemporary debate over the use of torture. At least I can direct you to a lively discussion here, with thanks to friend and neighbor "ts" of Instaputz for the link.

While I'm giving thanks (we're getting into that week), a great big hat tip to John McG for my first-ever (at least that I know of) "digg." John, I'm trying to figure out the Episcopalian analogue to making a Novena.

All for now, as I am suddenly run over by a truck.

Foresight is everything.

A colleague sent me this gem of a "supposed quote" from former Orioles manager Earl Weaver:

If you are going to hit into a double play, you should have the good sense to strike out.

Highly recommended reading.

In my immediately previous post, I touched on a particular hobby-horse of mine, which is how the terms "liberal" and "conservative" have become unmoored from their earlier definitions and have come to encompass differing and sometimes contradictory meanings. It turns out that El Cabrero, at The Goat Rope, has been thinking along the same lines, especially as regards conservatism. His reflections on Burke, here, are especially good, but it's well worth going back to the beginning of his series of posts on this subject (they start on February 26) and reading them through.