A Contrarian Perspective
Written by Edward ChampionPosted on October 2, 2008
Filed Under 2008 Election
Comments
8 Responses to “A Contrarian Perspective”
Leave a Reply
Books To Jump Up and Down Over
Beyond Heaving Bosoms by Sarah Wendell and Candy Tan. The famed writers behind Smart Bitches, Trashy Books have written a very funny and thoughtful volume about romances, both Old Skool and New Skool. Here is a book that any smug and humorless literary manboy beating his flabby passive chest over Banville or Bolano should probably read pronto, if only for the distant possibility that he might get over himself. While the Choose Your Own Adventure segment at the end caused me to have a very disturbing dream involving Shelley Long (don't ask), Sarah and Candy did have me rethinking many of my own misperceptions when I wasn't busy laughing. They're not afraid to take on the New York Times Bok Review or even the groupthink within certain sectors of the romance community.
Alice Fantastic by Maggie Estep. This wild and highly enjoyable narrative involves two sisters (presumably, the third one was still being rented out by Chekhov), a hippie ex-junkie mother who lives with seventeen dogs, a murder, gambling, and libidinous Hollywood actresses who live in Woodstock. But this is the wonderful Maggie Estep we're talking here. And what seems at first like a quirky yarn becomes something unexpectedly moving about connectivity. What I love about Estep's work is the way that she'll juxtapose an extremely astute observation (now that you mention it, why do cab drivers always have somebody to talk with on the phone past midnight?) with an often outrageous story development.
Generosity by Richard Powers. It doesn't come out until September 29th, but Richard Powers's latest will have anyone committed to books reconsidering their literary fervor. I foresee some animosity from the vanilla critics hostile to idea-driven novels, but book bloggers, YouTube chroniclers, and MFAs would do well to plunge into this chance-taking narrative, which introduces vital questions about what the reader's relationship is with media, scientific dissection, and "creative nonfiction." Are we rats fleeing to happy cities? Or can we find the humanism within the purported plague?
Pieces for the Left Hand by J. Robert Lennon. Lennon is one of the most underrated fiction writers working today. Much as On the Night Plain proved that Lennon had a lot more in the toolbox than heartfelt (and often very funny) suburban satire, this slim but fascinating volume juxtaposes 100 small-town anecdotes -- arranged by category -- in a manner that reads, at times, like Nicholson Baker's passions for minutiae and, at other times, Stewart O'Nan's concern for psychological detail. The result is fiction that makes us wonder about whether one person's subjective view of particulars can entirely be trusted. This book never found a publisher in 2005. But thankfully, Graywolf has released it in the United States, along with Lennon's latest novel, The Castle.
Wonderful World by Javier Calvo. This wonderfully raucous volume has been completely ignored by the Washington Post, the New York Times, and the Los Angeles Times. But it's probably one of the most delightful reading experiences I've had this year. Calvo cavalierly mashes up multiple genres and manages to mix up familial subtext with larger-than-life, almost cartoonish characters. (Indeed, one might argue that one mobster's penis is a character of its own in this sprawling novel.). This is not an easy thing to pull off, but Calvo makes it work. And it's helped immeasurably by Mara Faye Lethem's idiom-specific translation. (See longer post.)
The Means of Reproduction, Michelle Goldberg This thoughtful book tackles the complicated (and little discussed) subject of reproductive rights from numerous angles, which includes a number of unpleasant but necessary ones. The upshot is that there isn't a quick fix solution for declining birth rates and fundamentalist abuses. Just about every political faction has contributed to the friction. But you'll want to read this book anyway to refamiliarize yourself with the topic, but also to understand just what's occurred during the past several decades to get us where we are today. (See also podcast interview with Goldberg.)
Contact Ed by email.
Or send materials to:
315 Flatbush Avenue, #231
Brooklyn, NY 11217
Or send materials to:
315 Flatbush Avenue, #231
Brooklyn, NY 11217
- The Possibilities of Small
- Ben Macintyre: The Latest Sourpuss to Run Away From Possibilities
- Untapped Currency
- Reminder: Live Conversation with Sarah Hall on Tuesday!
- Five Three Oh
- The Bat Segundo Show: Marjorie Rosen
- When Parody Replaces Opportunity
- The Benefits of Notebooks
- Hate Mail Dramatic Reading Project #8
- Slowdown
Wow. He was really, really wrong about that, huh?
But to a certain degree, he was also really, really right.
But he’s not. He’s buying into this myth that politicians are all the same evil, lying fucks. And we learned in 2000 that that really wasn’t the case. Some of them really are much better than others.
And frankly I honestly think a lot of politicians really do have their hearts in the right place, even the ones with their heads up their asses. I’ve gotten a lot less cynical as I’ve gotten older.
Anyway, politicians are not all the same, and voting really does matter.
On October 24, 2007, Obama spokesman Bill Burton declared that “Barack will support a filibuster of any bill that includes retroactive immunity for telecommunications companies.” He then voted for the FISA bill earlier this year. That would put Obama quite squarely into Carlin’s categorization of politicians as a liar. I’d be happy to offer more, but I don’t think that questioning Obama’s motives makes one a cynic. A healthy skepticism SHOULD be the cornerstone of any political thinker. Alas, with the Obama acolytes, the mania has taken away their ability to see the man’s opportunism. (And he voted for the bailout bill too, by the way.)
Obama is a liar, less so than other politicians. But he is a politician.
“He’s buying into this myth…”
Carlin saw things with utter, soul-blackening clarity: you could see that the toxic material he was handling virtually ate him up over the years.
When you write, “I’ve gotten a lot less cynical as I’ve gotten older,” you’re describing some sort of self-defense mechanism (the soul’s endorphins?) as they kick in. You certainly can’t be basing your mellowing optimism on a clear-eyed reading of the era. Things are as bad as they’ve ever been. This is the awful truth.
The American political choice presented is between Right and Ultra Right: what kind of “choice” is that? If anyone would’ve told me, back in the late 1980s, that Al “Tipper’s Husband” Gore would one day embody American *Liberalism*, I’d have considered that person an idiot, a lunatic or a comedian with George Carlin’s wicked sense of the hideous.
It’s fairly naive to believe that a system installed and refined by The Machine can be used to defy or alter The Machine: if voting could bring about fundamental change, it would be forbidden; and please don’t bring up the noble principles under which the system was first put into place by the Founding Fathers. Things have changed immensely since even Jimmy Carter’s run. The Founding Fathers would shit a collective brick.
Not that they didn’t see it coming… but the safeguards they tried to put into place turn out to be useless when the electorate has been turned into a big fat docile dairy farm.
Anyone I’d have the slightest inclination to befriend or even admire wouldn’t stand a chance in modern politics. However: vote Obama, because the alternative is unthinkably evil. But raise smarter, more ethical children, who will in turn raise even smarter, even more ethical children… if you want to see real change.
The man was uncompromising, and God do I miss him. He said this in ‘96. Pace Eric Rosenfield above, I’d like to know if he revisited the subject after 2000.
Obama is a politician and plays the game, and I admit that bothers me. However, to equate him or lump him in with Bush/Chaney/McCain/Palin/Rove is a disastrous overstatement of the case. All politicians are NOT the same. Anyone who thinks they are isn’t paying attention.
Again, it was very easy in 1996 to say it doesn’t matter who you vote for. Dole would have been a different president than Clinton, but not that different. In 1996 I took for granted that all politicians were the same, and voted Libertarian. In 2000 I voted for Nader.
Bush was the wake up required to tell us that these people are not all the same, that the wrong man in a place of power can have direct and terrible consequences for our country and our world. I should hardly need to list all the reasons, from Iraq to Guantanamo to Katrina to the deregulation that’s lead to the current economic turmoil.
Seriously, you need to vote in this election, and you need to vote for Obama. Any other decision, any other conclusion about the state of affairs in America today, is either stupidity or lunacy.
Actually, in 1996 I meant to vote Libertarian and then forgot to actually go to the polls, which should tell you something about how disinterested I was.