http://www.thevalve.org/go/valve/index/ en administrator@thevalve.org 2010-03-12T16:26:00-05:00 http://www.thevalve.org/go/valve/article/louis_menand_the_marketplace_of_ideas/#27765 How can they look for leadership to someone who doesn’t sound as if he thinks their work is important, whose suggestions for reform effectively trivialize it? To quote from a recent post of mine, “These aren’t complaints seeking answers, these are just complaints seeking justification for misery.” Who would expect anything original and challenging from someone on staff at Harvard English? In that last sentiment I’m just echoing the line from SUNY Buffalo back in the 70s, that Harvard English was just a high-class intellectual backwater. Maybe things have gotten better since then, but . . . And then we have Stanley Fish’s blithe assertion that the humanities are useless and that’s a good thing. One can’t help but think that the current humanities mandarinate is mostly concerned about minimizing their guilt as they ease into retirement, and anything they write about the disciplines is written toward that end, not toward changing things in a positive way. As for time to degree, my colleague and mentor, the late David Hays, believed that the long time to degree was psychologically debilitating, that no adult should be an an adolescent role for so long. But maybe that’s the point of the long time to degree, to engender, if not joyful, at least thoroughly resigned, subservience. Hays also believed that anyone who had the brains for a PhD should be able to complete the degree in their early 20s. Unfortunately we never discussed that issue so I don’t know what he had in mind. What does it take to create an adult capable of autonomous and responsible teaching and scholarship in the humanities? {categories backspace="1"}{category_name}, {/categories} Bill Benzon 2010-03-12T16:26:00-05:00 http://www.thevalve.org/go/valve/article/times_arrow_in_literary_space/#27764 Though no examples come immediately to mind, Luther, if you read enough jazz criticism you’ll find critics asserting that this or that artist’s late style is more economical than their early work, with each note counting and nothing wasted. {categories backspace="1"}{category_name}, {/categories} Bill Benzon 2010-03-12T16:26:00-05:00 http://www.thevalve.org/go/valve/article/times_arrow_in_literary_space/#27763 The titles themselves suggest such a progression: Lost World, Metropolis, Next World. It’s a nice metaphor for rebirth… {categories backspace="1"}{category_name}, {/categories} Timothy Perper 2010-03-12T16:26:00-05:00 http://www.thevalve.org/go/valve/article/times_arrow_in_literary_space/#27762 No, Bill, but whenever I see the term “late style,” it’s synonymous with the turns in the careers of James, Joyce, and writers of that ilk.  I don’t know where the term originates—Adorno’s Beethoven essays make the late-style case for *Missa Solemnis* as fractures, complex, experimental late-style development—but I rarely see anyone saying, “Wow, this writer’s late style is clearer, simpler, more natural, more humane than her early style.” {categories backspace="1"}{category_name}, {/categories} Luther Blissett 2010-03-12T16:26:00-05:00 http://www.thevalve.org/go/valve/article/the_hurt_lockers_addiction_to_detachment_and_ours1/#27761 An aside on the sniper scene ajay objects to and why it seems out of place - it was specifically written for financial reasons (scroll to the bottom) - which says interesting things about the relationship between filmmaking and commerce but anyway. I didn’t find it significantly more implausible than the ‘countdown’ framing device or the character of the counselling officer. Those narrative artifices were much easier to accept than the movie’s very deliberate narrowing of the Iraq war to these soldiers’ lived experience. Is this really the best that Hollywood can do? {categories backspace="1"}{category_name}, {/categories} cel 2010-03-12T16:26:00-05:00 http://www.thevalve.org/go/valve/article/times_arrow_in_literary_space/#27760 When I woke up this morning, Tim, I had a thought: The “space” in which Tezuka created Mamango, with the new Adam and Eve, in Lost World is the same space in which he created the Japan of Next World. What do I mean by that? Keeping in mind that the three texts are in fact separate from one another, think of them in a crude biological metaphor as the acorn, the seedling, and the sapling oak (with the Astro Boy stories as the mature oak). Well, the Japan of Next World develops from the mamango of Lost World. Something like that. {categories backspace="1"}{category_name}, {/categories} Bill Benzon 2010-03-12T16:26:00-05:00 http://www.thevalve.org/go/valve/article/times_arrow_in_literary_space/#27759 I want to resist the idea that the transitions of early, middle, and late styles can be mapped onto some idea of natural or cognitive development.  To a large degree, they are a product of a modernist understanding of artistic growth: increasing complexity, subtlety, ambiguity. Um, er, Luther, I didn’t say ANYTHING about complexity, subtlety, or ambiguity. And my Shakespeare paper certainly doesn’t discuss his development in those terms. {categories backspace="1"}{category_name}, {/categories} Bill Benzon 2010-03-12T16:26:00-05:00 http://www.thevalve.org/go/valve/article/times_arrow_in_literary_space/#27758 I want to resist the idea that the transitions of early, middle, and late styles can be mapped onto some idea of natural or cognitive development.  To a large degree, they are a product of a modernist understanding of artistic growth: increasing complexity, subtlety, ambiguity.  And what they neglect are artists who go in a different direction, toward simplicity, say, or to the master visual artist’s ability to hint, in a few quick lines and shadings, what he once painstakingly worked out in intense detail and complexity.  Thomas Pynchon’s work would be a great example here.  Notice how reviewers have attacked the work since *Gravity’s Rainbow*, each time arguing that Pynchon is weaker as a writer insofar as he resists the mannered complexity of his first works.  They neglect his own statements, in *Slow Learner*, that he views *V.* and *Gravity’s Rainbow* as immature, as inhuman.  And works like *Vineland* and *Mason & Dixon* are far more driven by character, by light touches, by an almost sentimental concern for the individual and family, for friendship and congregation.  My main problem with *Against the Day* was that, to me, it seemed like a falling off, a return to the easy complexity of the earlier work, a neglect of the simple human issues he treated so effectively in *Mason & Dixon*.  Which is why *Inherent Vice* seemed so strong to me, a lovely sketch that suggests so much more than all the earlier work’s ramblings on serialism and German cinema.  But critics align Pynchon against their stadial view of natural artistic growth and denigrate the late style. James and Joyce are too often held up as natural models and not aberrations.  Shakespeare and Pynchon are counter-examples, as each moved with a lighter touch as they developed (’tho Shakespeare seems to go light-baroque-natural in style).  The popularity of late Roth seems to be precisely due to the way he’s mimicking what Harold Bloom tells him a master-writer should do.  And the critics eat it up. {categories backspace="1"}{category_name}, {/categories} Luther Blissett 2010-03-12T16:26:00-05:00 http://www.thevalve.org/go/valve/article/wellsian_swearword_question/#27755 It could be Wellsian cynicism or humor too—for example, if that “other” word was “truth.” In which case, Wells meant for us to imagine a variety of fill-ins for this most awful of bad words… {categories backspace="1"}{category_name}, {/categories} Timothy Perper 2010-03-12T16:26:00-05:00 http://www.thevalve.org/go/valve/article/times_arrow_in_literary_space/#27754 The material about Tezuka sounds very intriguing. I’ll be interested to read more. It certainly seems plausible, and I think an overt case can be made for “rebirthing” Japan through manga and anime, meaning not only mourning but also reshaping and revisioning the history and folklore of Japan in media that became immensely popular from the late 1940s to today. Surely a case like that can be made for Hideaki Anno’s very-well known anime “Neon Genesis Evangelion.” {categories backspace="1"}{category_name}, {/categories} Timothy Perper 2010-03-12T16:26:00-05:00 http://www.thevalve.org/go/valve/article/the_hurt_lockers_addiction_to_detachment_and_ours1/#27752 And for heaven’s sake, exactly one bomb in the film has a countdown. Yep, and I’d be willing to bet that that’s one more than in the entire Iraq War. My “it’s Hollywood!” criticism wasn’t entirely serious, but the film does suffer from this Hollywoodisation from time to time, notably in the terrible (and terribly unrealistic) sniper sequence. So, they were driving along way out in the desert (why? going where?) on their own, in a single vehicle (WTF?) and they just happen to stumble across a team of bounty hunters (we don’t need these scum!) who are on their own in a single vehicle too (of course) with a couple of HVTs that they’ve picked up in Najaf (NAJAF?? FFS, it would have been more realistic if they’d been found in Petah Tiqva!) and then they start getting sniped by some insurgent super-sniper who can get kills at 800m with an AK (good grief) and who, instead of running away before the inevitable airstrike gets called in, decides to stick around for hours sniping at them (sensible) which is OK because it turns out that for some reason none of the EOD guys have any radios or even a satphone, and neither do any of the bounty hunters (riiight) but it’s OK because the EOD guys all turn out to be supersnipers themselves! and get first-shot kills with a Barrett Light 50 (okaaay)... I mean, really. It’s like that whole sequence wandered into the script from “GI JOE”. It’s almost best to think of it as some bizarre dream that James was having or something. {categories backspace="1"}{category_name}, {/categories} ajay 2010-03-12T16:26:00-05:00 http://www.thevalve.org/go/valve/article/the_hurt_lockers_addiction_to_detachment_and_ours1/#27751 but the fact that soldiers have no opportunity to talk politics is not a reason we shouldn’t. We are not soldiers; the way movies like this one convince us to think a soldier’s perspective on war is the only real one, in fact, is the most pernicious thing about them. I think you hit the nail on the head here, but with the critics and fans of The Hurt Locker and not the movie itself. I thought it was decent, but the movie had no greater ambitions but to show people at work, as Ray Davis says upthread. The fact that it has have had heaps of praise (Best Picture! Best Director!) for its lack of didacticism and filmmaking mastery says more insidious things about the audience than the crew. I don’t think the filmmakers had any greater ambition than to make a thrilling action movie without offending anyone but couldn’t escape controversy since they were setting it in the Iraq War anyhow. Imagine if this movie took place in Los Angeles with a SWAT bomb disposal crew or some such, how much steam would the movie generate then? {categories backspace="1"}{category_name}, {/categories} Jake 2010-03-12T16:26:00-05:00 http://www.thevalve.org/go/valve/article/martin_amiss_pregnant_widow/#27750 The intro, in which Amis is doing what late-stage-Amis does best (the steely rue/ grim glee in the bodily disintegration of a late-stage-Amis type), got at least three big, hopeful chuckles out of me. Before chapter one ended, however… the grinding lovelessness of the task at hand became all too… etc. Hard enough to spin fine fiction from autobiog’s stone; on top of that, in The Pregnant Widow, we’re reading a salvage job of at least half-a-decade’s work. He did it to himself, eh? Mart’s becoming the kid whom everyone started calling a fuckup: gets harder and harder not to fuckup. Until you move. Mart should move (just for a few years). Capetown? {categories backspace="1"}{category_name}, {/categories} StevenAugustine 2010-03-12T16:26:00-05:00 http://www.thevalve.org/go/valve/article/the_hurt_lockers_addiction_to_detachment_and_ours1/#27746 Adam’s “I could be wrong...” is the result of the “unexpectedly mocking update” I mentioned earlier. Some other war movies have pointed out that the murderous sentimentality inspired by a particular cute kid blinds soldiers (and movie audiences) to the plight of kids more generally. The Hurt Locker is the first war movie I’ve seen which goes on to point out that it also blinds them (and us) to the particularities of the kid himself. It’s rare that I think a movie actually does have any chance of “implicating its audience,” but I thought this one pulled it off—I was confused just long enough for the revelation to have a punch to it. (Admittedly, one could also say that any confusion was due to incompetent filmmaking, and that’s certainly how I’ve reacted to talk about the “formal innovations” of Inglourious Basterds and Public Enemies. For whatever it’s worth, my interpretation matches the views of the screenwriter and director.) {categories backspace="1"}{category_name}, {/categories} Ray Davis 2010-03-12T16:26:00-05:00 http://www.thevalve.org/go/valve/article/martin_amiss_pregnant_widow/#27745 If you follow the link in the first line, up there, you’ll see what I think is so bad about Yellow Dog. The Rachel Papers seems to me a not-bad book: a young man’s novel of the sort that gets a softer ride than it might because it is ‘promising’ rather than spectacularly good.  But a writer can’t ride on ‘promise’ for ever. {categories backspace="1"}{category_name}, {/categories} Adam Roberts 2010-03-12T16:26:00-05:00 http://www.thevalve.org/go/valve/article/martin_amiss_pregnant_widow/#27744 Don’t hold back! Seriously, what is so bad about Yellow Dog? And how did you feel about The Rachel Papers? {categories backspace="1"}{category_name}, {/categories} Colleen 2010-03-12T16:26:00-05:00 http://www.thevalve.org/go/valve/article/the_hurt_lockers_addiction_to_detachment_and_ours1/#27743 I agree with Ajay that Beckham turns out to be alive, but I certainly don’t agree (if he was serious about this) that that indicates some kind of happy Hollywood moment.  I didn’t feel any relief upon seeing him there; I felt shock at realizing that James was cracking up, and that his confident cowboy persona was not only reckless but actually based on false perceptions.  Nor does James feel relief, or even any kind of outward surprise, upon seeing Beckham alive, which indicates that the search for Beckham’s killers was not really about Beckham for him.  Besides which, even if Beckham’s alive, some kid has been killed and stuffed with a bomb; even if it’s not the kid who swears delightfully, how could that be redemptive? And for heaven’s sake, exactly one bomb in the film has a countdown. {categories backspace="1"}{category_name}, {/categories} tomemos 2010-03-12T16:26:00-05:00 http://www.thevalve.org/go/valve/article/the_hurt_lockers_addiction_to_detachment_and_ours1/#27741 Nope, that’s Beckham who reappears towards the end, selling DVDs again. The corpse is some other kid; James just thinks it’s Beckham. It confused me on first watching too. {categories backspace="1"}{category_name}, {/categories} ajay 2010-03-12T16:26:00-05:00 http://www.thevalve.org/go/valve/article/the_hurt_lockers_addiction_to_detachment_and_ours1/#27739 I thought Beckham’s was the corpse with the bomb in its guts? And his place in the camp economy is taken over by some other interchangeable Iraqi boy?  I could be wrong ... {categories backspace="1"}{category_name}, {/categories} Adam Roberts 2010-03-12T16:26:00-05:00 http://www.thevalve.org/go/valve/article/the_hurt_lockers_addiction_to_detachment_and_ours1/#27738 And what redeems that from crassness is the way the film denies success to this project.  The man in the torso-cage near the end explodes; Beckham dies; No, he doesn’t. Beckham survives the film. Come on, it’s Hollywood! The bombs have big red countdown displays and the cute kid never gets killed! I’m just amazed the EOD team didn’t have a puppy. {categories backspace="1"}{category_name}, {/categories} ajay 2010-03-12T16:26:00-05:00