I knew that he wasn't as radical as many people wanted him to be. He is a good politician, and we've seen that. Just when the right started painting him Red, I think some people on the left started to believe it too. The fact that he has accomplished a lot is true, but there are many groups that supported his candidacy who feel left behind and not supported over the course of the last year.
E.G. Gays hate that DOMA and Don't ask - don't tell are missing; unions hate that the employee free choice act is out of mind; economic liberals think the stimulus was too small; healthcare advocates are angry that single-payer was abandoned without a fight; anti-corporatist balk at the handouts to finance, healthcare, insurance, and pharmaceutical industries; many deep-blue democrats hate that the republicans are dictating what is going on. And these are people who voted for him.
Obama sold himself to the American people I feel as more of an image than a specific set of policies. A vote for Obama was a vote against Bush (Makes me think of the escalation in the wars; pacifists hate that he has extended foreign conflicts) more so than a vote for anything particular. In that setting, the real Obama and his actions will be a disappointment from whatever your ideal Obama was. ... See More
People are coming to terms with this. I for one, who didn't vote for him, am much happier that he is in there and not his closest challenger. That being said, I understand the panic from the left as they lose their nominal supermajority needed to pass anything it seems. My two biggest villains right now aren't amongst the Democrats in Mass, but the two-party system that keeps centering the economic and moral problems somewhere to the right of center, and the antidemocratic parliamentary rules in the Senate. And this is not just a stance from expedience, wanting to see my own personal agenda to pass, but I spoke out against the filibuster in 2004 when the democratic minority was using it to block judges. Also holds placed on nominees and seniority rules erase the myth of egalitarianism in our republican chambers (small 'r'). It makes me think of that old chestnut: "If pro is the opposite of con, what's the opposite of progress?"
And now we are left with no good options on passing a watered-down healthcare bill. It looks like the public interest will lose out again, in the face of the possible.
January 20, 2010
November 19, 2009
My Poem
A building under
construction, which
will never be built.
Each brick is laid
side by side with his
brothers. Each one
just off square or
the wrong shade of red.
The roof awaits le
mot juste.
construction, which
will never be built.
Each brick is laid
side by side with his
brothers. Each one
just off square or
the wrong shade of red.
The roof awaits le
mot juste.
November 5, 2009
Nocking Down the Canon
How does one make it into the canon? I've been thinking about this recently. It was set at some point and now there must be a petition to get your works in, like some sort of penitent in Kafka's Castle. I think there is some sort of bias teachers and professors carry over into their own teaching. While some are open to letting in new works, it helps if you represent some sort of politics of difference. I hate to rail against inclusion, but if it is inclusion at the exclusion of others, it doesn't make sense.
Case in point: I've been assigned _Things Fall Apart _ twice for classes. The only other book that I have been assigned more than once is _A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man_. I like Joyce. The other book just isn't that good. As a historical document it is interesting, but as a novel, not so much.
My favorite writers are almost all excluded from the canon, or at least in 6 years of literature study they were not taught or were touched on only ephemerally in classes. These writers include: Calvino, G. Greene, Orwell, Dostoevsky, Camus, Nabokov, and Vonnegut. For whatever reason; subject matter, gender, lack of writing in English originally, working through and creating books after the second world war, they were ignore in my schooling. I avoided being forced to read 1984 in high school. I picked it up off an ex-girlfriend and it became one of my favorite books, that I have read and re-read over time.
And this is a discipline where you can get a doctorate writing about comic books. I have no problem with comic books. I also have no problem with studying foundational texts. It important to give everyone a common ground to start a cultural conversation from. I know the plays of Shakespeare, or at least I have his complete works on a shelf. Most 'educated' people have some reference point from his plays. You know: Hamlet was indecisive; Jews are evil; Black guys fall in love with statues; and so on. Who cares if most of his material existed somewhere else? Whole scenes are lifted in what would be called today plagiarism if he didn't obtain the rights. Cross reference Richard III with Bacon's prose history of the same man.
Somehow though, this has lead into contemporary works. The latest author I had the chance to study was Delillo. The cutoff point for male authors must be around 1990. I had to 'discover' David Foster Wallace on my own. The sad thing is that you get a much richer, fuller experience if you read a book communally. For me, having to prepare for a class as your reading a text makes me engage with it much more fully and on a deeper level. I've missed that with much contemporary anglophone fiction.
I only bought the book because of a blurb about it in the back of another book. I though the plot sounded interesting, so I bought it on a whim. I'm glad I did, for I found another writer I need to read everything written by the writer in a short span of time. This is also what I'm doing with two other contemporary British novelist. They've been publishing for twenty or so years, and somehow I failed to ever hear about these Booker-Prize nominated writers. And they're good storytellers, not like Coteze where he's a shit storyteller but can write elegant and beautiful sentences. These three writers are Julian Barnes, William Boyd, and Martin Amis. All three clever elegant writers addressing issues that are relevant today. If I think hard, I can remember one reference to Barnes's _Flaubert's Parrot_ by a creative writing professor. Thank you Gail Galloway Adams. I'm just going to say it. They're screwed because they're all three white males.
Case in point: I've been assigned _Things Fall Apart _ twice for classes. The only other book that I have been assigned more than once is _A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man_. I like Joyce. The other book just isn't that good. As a historical document it is interesting, but as a novel, not so much.
My favorite writers are almost all excluded from the canon, or at least in 6 years of literature study they were not taught or were touched on only ephemerally in classes. These writers include: Calvino, G. Greene, Orwell, Dostoevsky, Camus, Nabokov, and Vonnegut. For whatever reason; subject matter, gender, lack of writing in English originally, working through and creating books after the second world war, they were ignore in my schooling. I avoided being forced to read 1984 in high school. I picked it up off an ex-girlfriend and it became one of my favorite books, that I have read and re-read over time.
And this is a discipline where you can get a doctorate writing about comic books. I have no problem with comic books. I also have no problem with studying foundational texts. It important to give everyone a common ground to start a cultural conversation from. I know the plays of Shakespeare, or at least I have his complete works on a shelf. Most 'educated' people have some reference point from his plays. You know: Hamlet was indecisive; Jews are evil; Black guys fall in love with statues; and so on. Who cares if most of his material existed somewhere else? Whole scenes are lifted in what would be called today plagiarism if he didn't obtain the rights. Cross reference Richard III with Bacon's prose history of the same man.
Somehow though, this has lead into contemporary works. The latest author I had the chance to study was Delillo. The cutoff point for male authors must be around 1990. I had to 'discover' David Foster Wallace on my own. The sad thing is that you get a much richer, fuller experience if you read a book communally. For me, having to prepare for a class as your reading a text makes me engage with it much more fully and on a deeper level. I've missed that with much contemporary anglophone fiction.
I only bought the book because of a blurb about it in the back of another book. I though the plot sounded interesting, so I bought it on a whim. I'm glad I did, for I found another writer I need to read everything written by the writer in a short span of time. This is also what I'm doing with two other contemporary British novelist. They've been publishing for twenty or so years, and somehow I failed to ever hear about these Booker-Prize nominated writers. And they're good storytellers, not like Coteze where he's a shit storyteller but can write elegant and beautiful sentences. These three writers are Julian Barnes, William Boyd, and Martin Amis. All three clever elegant writers addressing issues that are relevant today. If I think hard, I can remember one reference to Barnes's _Flaubert's Parrot_ by a creative writing professor. Thank you Gail Galloway Adams. I'm just going to say it. They're screwed because they're all three white males.
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