Mauve Moments with Orlando Plumbe

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Link: WSJ.com - Why Hedge Funds Are Feeling the Need To Burst Into Poetry.

Struggling to find just the right words to explain a run of bad luck to investors, money manager Michael Roth looked to literature for inspiration

Hmmm

Link: Literary Warrior. Quoting novelist Mark Helprin.

“The avant-garde are frauds,” he bluntly declares. “Modern literature is all cool and detached, even though a lot of modern writers are passionate about their politics. To me, passion should be for literature, and reason and detachment for politics.

Profile of Linguist Who Is Framing Issues for the Democrats

Link: 'NY Times' Sunday Preview: Profile of Linguist Who Is Framing Issues for the Democrats.

But Luntz tells Bai that the problem with Lakoff's ideology is that if an idea is bad, no language can make it sellable. “He's one of the very few guys who understands the limits of liberal language,” Luntz says . “What he doesn't understand is that there are also limits on liberal philosophy. They think that if they change all the words, it'll make a difference. Won't happen.” Other Republicans simply see Lakoff as a deeply desired messiah for the left. Some liberals ridicule Lakoff as what Bai called a "new progressive icon." In the April issue of The Atlantic, contributing editor Marc Cooper wrote that Lakoff sees the American people as, “Red-neck, chain-smoking, baby-slapping Christers desperately in need of some gender-free nurturing and political counseling by organic-gardening enthusiasts from Berkeley.”

OpinionJournal - John Fund on the Trail

Link: OpinionJournal - John Fund on the Trail.

We are risking something very basic by failing to communicate the basic ideals of America and instead, as historian David McCullough told me, "raising a generation of students who are historically illiterate." But many of those students will eventually become curious, and without a solid grounding in the past, they could easily fall prey to revisionist history, whether it be of the Confederate or Oliver Stone variety. Yale professor David Gelernter says that "ignorance of history is destroying our judgment." He points to Sen. Dick Durbin's ignorant comment comparing the actions of U.S. personnel at Guantanamo Bay to those of Nazis and Soviets. His remarks went largely unremarked upon by fellow senators until talk radio made them an issue. Future leaders may make even more horrific missteps: a 2003 survey of seniors at the top 55 liberal arts colleges found that over half thought Germany, Italy or Japan had been a U.S. ally in World War II.

Weak knowledge of History and Devalued Rhetoric

Link: We Are Our History -- Don't Forget It.

"Gulag" must not go the way of "Nazi" and become virtually meaningless. Europeans love calling Israelis "Nazis" — a transparent attempt to slough off their guilt like rattlesnakes shedding skin. ("See, the Jews are as bad as we were!") I'd like to ban the word "Nazi" except when applied to … Nazis. Lawbreakers would be ordered to learn what Nazi actually means.

Phony Argument Drowning Out Real Argument.

Society needs real debate. Instead, most debate today is set up in the phony "point/counter-point" or "crossfire" mode of having two extreme positions advances in a take no prisoners way, and then calling the tournament "balance." Not only is style unhelpful, it is also drowning out real discussion consider this from Martha Bayles. Link: ArtsJournal: Serious Popcorn.

Columbia University reported Monday that it is closing its well known National Arts Journalism Program.

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The overriding problem is what linguist Deborah Tannen calls "the argument culture": the media’s habit of framing every topic as a highly polarized debate between two extremes, even when this is not appropriate. This has a distorting effect on many issues, including the arts. Just think about the quality of discussion, even among reputable critics, on issues like government funding of the arts; violence in entertainment; censorship and the Internet; and the "canon" in the humanities.

C. Hitchens on Opacity of Literary Criticism

From Chris Hitchens in Today's NYT , Book Review, Transgressing the Boundaries - New York Times.

The French, as it happens, once evolved an expression for this sort of prose: la langue de bois, the wooden tongue, in which nothing useful or enlightening can be said, but in which various excuses for the arbitrary and the dishonest can be offered. ''The Johns Hopkins Guide to Literary Theory and Criticism'' is a pointer to the abysmal state of mind that prevails in so many of our universities. In another unconsciously funny entry, on the Kenyan Marxist Ngugi Wa Thiong'o, Nicholas Brown appears to praise his subject for a postcolonial essay entitled ''On the Abolition of the English Department.'' Like the other contributors to this shabby volume, Brown ought to be more careful of what he endorses. The prospect of such an abolition, at least in the United States, becomes more appetizing by the minute.

America Needs More Coarse Language!

From this week’s New Yorker,

Anthony Lane

has an often amusing review of the new StarWars film.  Although at times it seems like he is shooting fish in a barrel. The film is, after all, a sci-fi fantasy, so arguing its realism seems a bit pointless. But one supposes a critic for the New Yorker could not simply write an article about he likes StarWars, and Lane needs to show that he is higher up the IQ and sophistication scale than the average StarWars lover, which last time I looked was typified by a fourteen year old boy.  However, Lane seemed completely off-base when he suggests:

After all, the Lucasian universe is drained of all reference to bodily functions. Nobody ingests or excretes. Language remains unblue. Smoking and cursing are out of bounds, as is drunkenness, although personally I wouldn’t go near the place without a hip flask. Did Lucas learn nothing from “Alien” and “Blade Runner”—from the suggestion that other times and places might be no less rusted and septic than ours,

There is much about StarWars that is cloying, but I never occurred to me that JarJar Binks or the Ewoks could be improved by giving them potty mouths.  There is no shortage of outlets for vulgaraity in our culture if Lane wants to take in even more of it. And there should be a few movies you can take a ten year old too that are not animated. Vulgarity is a over used crutch in much video and music thse days, and in most instances does not add much in the way of depth or realism. I doubt that it would add much to StarWars.

Sinclair Lewis

A revival for Sinlcair Lewis.  WSJ.com - Readback.

If George F. Babbitt were alive today, he would be shocked to see how much America has changed since his era. But he would also be pleased to see how much it's the same.

As a lark this winter, I read Arrowsmith, Elmer Gantry and Dodsworth. Of the three, only Dodsworth seemed dated, and with a few small changes Arrowsmith and Gantry seemed as though they would probably feel contemporary.  I particulalrly recommend Elmer Gantry for those who find certain evangelicals trying at times.

What  I did not pick up when I read Main Street and Babbitt twenty five years ago in high school, is what a wry sense of humor Sinclair Lewis had, at least during the 1920’s. Young  readers are wrongly told to read his books as ponderous indictments of

America

in the 1920’s. But Lewis is far more forgiving of his characters'  foibles, and the books are far more fun than most have been lead to believe.

Question Time and the Adversary Tone

Link: .

American political junkies love to watch question time in the House of Commons, with all its insulting questions and responses, the cheers and groans going up from the party benches. But British voters, it seems, are heartily sick of the adversary tone of their politics.

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British political debate may be nasty, but politicians on the stump are, by American standards, reticent. Candidates do not ask for votes, they just present themselves as their party's candidate and ask for consideration. M.P.s do not identify themselves as such because, technically, they are not: When the Queen dismisses Parliament, there are no M.P.s until their election is announced late on election night. The voters in turn are reticent -- but not as reticent as they used to be. This year, I found Britons on the stump and at polling stations much more willing to say which party they're voting for and why than I have in past elections.