Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant, and some Devo albums
I spent a week trying to read this, and I’m putting it away now. I really wanted to like it, and parts of it were cool, but the place names in Mexico started running together, the anecdotes weren’t really grabbing me, and the ironic bits, while appreciated, didn’t really get my motor running, either. I’m gonna give this a try another day, maybe after a re-review of the Civil War.
Was recently listening to Devo’s Are We Not Men? and Freedom of Choice–now those are some invigorating works of art! I found myself humming “Girl U Want” and “It’s Not Right” as I washed dishes this week. And of course “Jocko Homo” is a masterwork. New wave music is so manic and angular and fun. God, I wish I could have been rocking around in the late ’70s and early ’80s.
Dubliners, James Joyce
This is the first James Joyce I’ve read in full (I was assigned “Araby” in high school, or maybe it was earlier, and managed to skip the reading without any serious consequences). Joyce really likes to use subtext in these stories. There is a good deal of symbolism, and the stories are laden with references to Catholicism and Irish nationalism and literature that often flew way over my head.
The “point” of these stories is to portray slices of Dublin life for the reader. I felt that they accomplished this goal, yet I felt unmoved most of the time. Maybe it was trying to place myself in early-1900s Dublin, and failing to situate myself, that caused the lack of connection. I enjoyed what I was reading, but I felt that my connection was usually academic, rather than emotional.
The two stories I enjoyed the most, “A Little Cloud” and “A Painful Case,” did spur in me a heavier emotional reaction. “A Little Cloud” is about professional envy, dreams which were pursued with a lackluster spirit and thus doomed, and the realization that one is not where one intended oneself to be. “A Painful Case” is about self-imposed loneliness, the understanding of which settles upon a soul like a heavy fog. For whatever reason, I found these stories to be punchier than the rest, and it was much easier for me to empathize with the protagonists.
One other thing I liked about these stories is Joyce’s way with words. He really had an ear for an interesting turn-of-phrase, one which I wish had been more ever-present. I also connected with individual moments of flailing that Joyce depicts. There’s a guy who can hardly hear his companions speaking in a loud automobile, so he has to guess what they’re saying and formulate an appropriate response—I’ve done that a million times. I found myself caught reflecting by a particular line in the story “Grace”: “His line of life had not been the shortest distance between two points…”
The Black Jacobins, CLR James
This was the first book I’ve read recently where I tried to save passages of interest. To be honest I find the idea of keeping a “commonplace book” pretty bothersome, but I do wonder if manually copying these passages into a hard copy wouldn’t help them to stick further.
In any case, I learned so much about the Haitian Revolution from this book. The Black Jacobins is supposed to be the main entry point for anyone wishing to learn about the slave regime in Haiti and how its inhabitants won their freedom. This conflict was incredibly complicated. In fact, I probably would have been better served by having read a book about the French Revolution before tackling this one, because a lot of what happened in the metropole influenced the course of events in Haiti, and not always in intuitive ways. And it wasn’t just the overseas influence that was hard to grasp. Beyond the enslaved blacks, who acted in ways that were largely understandable, the divisions between the mulattoes, free blacks, and whites (who were themselves divided into plantation owners, petit bourgeoisie, and tradesmen) were free-flowing, even within what I would have thought were clearly demarcated periods of conflict. There were a ton of backstabs, betrayals, shifts of allegiance, and counter-intuitive actions taken by all parties in the conflict.
I came into this book expecting a hagiography of Toussaint L’Ouverture, and James does laud Toussaint for his vision of what Haiti could become. But Toussaint also made a ton of mistakes, especially in the latter half of the revolution. He was too much of an idealist in regard to France and how it might accept or integrate Haiti, which caused him too often to reward or grant mercy to his enemies and punish his erstwhile allies. (James: “His desire to avoid destruction was the very thing that caused it. It is the recurring error of moderates when face to face with a revolutionary struggle.”) James also considers him something of a ditherer. Nevertheless, his cause was righteous, and one wonders what might have happened if he had let the scales fall from his eyes regarding the true character of the French colonial regime.
James draws much attention to how white colonialists, from France to Spain and the United Kingdom, ravaged the enslaved people of San Domingo. The Black Jacobins is a story of rape, torture, and murder, with the ultimate goal being the degradation and unpersoning of every black person on the island. As James says at the end of The Black Jacobins speaking about the contemporary ravages of white governments, “Imperialism vaunts its exploitation of the wealth of Africa for the benefit of civilization. In reality, from the very nature of its system of production for profit it strangles the real wealth of the continent — the creative capacity of the African people.” (This reminded me of the Stephen Jay Gould quote about geniuses who live and die working in cotton fields and sweatshops. It’s the theft of this potential that may be most galling about our capitalist global order.)
The Black Jacobins is ultimately a sad tale, because Haiti was destroyed during and after the revolution, and has never really recovered. I can’t help but think this ravaging was another deliberate act by capitalist nations, one intended to show, essentially, that the house always wins. But the slaves who threw themselves at French artillery, Toussaint dying in a cold and lonely French prison cell, the mulattoes who finally saw the light and helped to expel the French for a final time, would probably have thought their rebellion worth it in the end–because what kind of life is the life of a slave? A slave sees every day their potential wasted for the use of others. It’s hard from my vantage point to really feel that experience subjectively, but intellectually and empathetically I can praise the struggle of the slaves to rise above their circumstances and lay waste to those who put them there.
P.S. Also, I did not realize how much of a racist Napoleon was. Really makes Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure hit different.
The Autobiography of Malcolm X
I don’t know exactly how I feel about this book, except to say that it really shows the complexity of Malcolm X. He had a lot of valid, interesting points to share. Sometimes (like when he is being toured around Mecca by Saudi royalty) he seems a bit naive. At various times in his life, Malcolm did act in ways that were morally wrong… which he would be the first to admit. He also had some terrible opinions about topics both central to life (the place of women in the family and society) and far-flung (I cringed reading about the absurd pseudoscience put forth by Elijah Muhammad). But Malcolm was someone who was open to change, as co-author Alex Haley describes in the final chapters of the book, and it seems like he would have been open to revising his take on women.
I found it most interesting when Malcolm discusses (white) society’s reaction to his advocacy. Nowadays, whether on Twitter or in the wider world, it feels like the main way to dispense with an opposing argument is by ignoring it. This seems like a brazen thing to do, but it’s really not hard; just respond to a different question than the one that has been put forth. You see this most often with the cancel culture debate. A person says something offensive. Side A says, “The person in question said something offensive. There should be a sanction–or at least an understanding that what was said was racist/sexist/classist/transphobic.” A responsive way to answer that would be along the lines of, “Here are some reasons that particular person should not be sanctioned for that particular action.” But generally the responses are along the lines of:
- “It’s too easy to punish people for perceived offenses.”
- “You should not be forbidden from saying offensive things.”
- “By tarring this person with the brush of racism/sexism/etc, you are making other people want to be racist/sexist/etc.”
- Etc.
None of these responses actually deal with the core issue at hand–they pull back to a debate about the meta-issue. In lieu of defending the behavior (because it usually is not defensible), the original thesis is ignored.
Malcolm faced these kinds of responses all the time. Glib defenders of white supremacy would have nothing to say about the conditions of Black schools, the daily violence inherent in being a Black person living in the United States, but when Malcolm or other advocates for civil rights would point out injustice or its consequences, they would be attacked for having caused riots or domestic insurgency. The inequality which Black and other minority citizens face is not justifiable except by obviously racist thought, so the issue is moved to the side so that those who benefit can benefit from what they see as being on the rhetorical high ground.
Another point I liked: all white people, even if they are not racist or even anti-racist, benefit from racism. Even if racism’s benefits are declaimed, they are nonetheless garnered. White people can choose to be aware of that, or they can willfully ignore it and pretend that their successes are entirely self-made. Viewing oneself as a self-made success sometimes seems to me to be at the core of what is wrong with those of us in American society who seek to pull back the safety net and dismantle government–though the possibility that it’s all posturing in order to maintain their material advantages can’t be ignored.
Whatever one thinks of Malcolm’s politics, it cannot be denied that he is a legendary autodidact. To go from a ninth-grade education to debating–and defeating–the luminaries of the white establishment in defense of his right, and the right of all Black people, to be fully-realized American citizens and human beings, is inspiring. I really wonder what things look like in the alternate universe where he somehow goes to law school.
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
In an attempt to fill another lacuna (one of oh so many) in my education, I thought I’d check this book out. I actually found this book contained in a Library of America edition that contains all of Douglass’ autobiographies. But it seems like each one contains the same core material, only expanded on in the subsequent volumes, so maybe I’ll hold off on reading those. Would be nice to get some more variety, plus the MPK library doesn’t have late fees or a limit on how long one can check out a book, so I can hold onto this for a while.
Narrative was a brisk read, and I really got a lot out of it. My favorite parts were when Douglass talks about the hypocritical way in which Christianity is practiced in the slave states. It truly pisses one off to hear about these slaveholding fucks who spend their time alternately brutalizing, raping, and murdering those they have enslaved, and then go to church on Sunday and pose as stalwarts of their community. Though I suppose the lived contradiction between their words and practices made their stalwartness not so much a pose as exemplary of the debased society they had created.
I also read Angela Davis’s Lectures on Liberation, a pamphlet collecting the first two lectures from a class she taught about, among other topics, Frederick Douglass and his autobiographies. I really got a lot out of this–it makes a great companion to any of the books. Found myself grinding my teeth when she discusses how the slavers would teach enslaved Blacks a bowdlerized version of Christianity, where being disobedient would send you straight to Hell; it really makes clear the totalitarian aspect of the slave system, even going so far as to brainwash the slaves.
In conclusion, fuck slavery, and fuck those who justify or glorify it unto this day.
Moby-Dick; or, The Whale
Recently I found myself thinking of the books I’ve read, and the books I have yet to read. Looking at the former, I realized that there are many “classic” works that I never got around to reading. I found myself thinking that I might someday regret not making these more of a priority in my reading journey. After all, there’s a reason that these books have become such a critical part of our literary tradition, in many cases for a hundred years or more–so I’m deliberately trying to devote more attention to them. Hence, reading Moby Dick.
I was expecting this book to be a bit of a slog–and it kinda was. I don’t think I’ve spent this long reading a book (probably 3 weeks) since I was in my early teens. Maybe ever.
But. I was shocked by how entertaining it is. Even as I found myself forced to put down my Kindle, found myself almost exhausted from the volume of words I was reading, I drew back to it over and over again, throwing myself into the task because of how enjoyable it was.
There are some absolutely beautiful passages in Moby Dick: lyrical descriptions of Ahab’s madness and Starbuck’s doomed loyalty to him; incredibly evocative naturalistic writing of the oceans and their denizens.
There are incredibly lengthy (but surprisingly interesting) digressions on the anatomy and habits of whales and other sea creatures. Almost like Ishmael was trying to marry the lens of a Jacques Cousteau documentary with a Wikipedia entry, or perhaps an overly enthusiastic Reddit post.
There are comedy bits which left me flabbergasted at how they mirror common tropes you can still see nowadays. People who are douchebags about how much vermouth is in their martinis will see themselves mirrored in one particular chapter (but replace gin with whale steaks). Puns, wordplay, foreign language interpretation gags: you’ll find them all here.
The way Moby Dick is assembled is just so modern. The language really isn’t difficult; picture Cormac McCarthy, but somehow more easily readable. Every word is just so perfectly chosen and placed. Melville seems to know exactly what notion he is driving at, and he never picks a word that is even 10% less descriptive than it could be.
What can I say? I am so glad I read this. Moby Dick is just comprehensively awesome. I gotta check out “Bartleby the Scrivener” at some point. But more books to come, first.