Post-Postmodernism: Technocratic Cultures?

I don’t think we’ll ever completely separate ourselves from postmodernist notions. After all, some postmodernist ideas have been percolating around in discourses of consciousness and meaning-making processes at least since Dante’s 13^th-century Letter to Cangrande della Scalla in which the author (presumably Dante) discusses the fact that his work is polysemous. He expounds upon that notion and discusses four types of meanings which result in multiple strategies for interpreting texts.

Further, if postmodernist expanded the notion of “text” to include signs, natural phenomena, and more, well, we’ve had that in our consciousness ever since early Babylonian astrologers. In terms of creating patterns and developing codes / numerical strategies for text interpretations, we’ve certainly had that since Jewish gematria, and then also Kabbalistic practices.

This is not the place to develop a genealogy of postmodernist thoughts. I would love to do so, but I don’t want to deviate from the central idea, which is to say that for the last 10 or 20 years, theorists of all sorts have been attempting to declare postmodernism has declared officially “over” – and have proposed a wide array of alternative theories, many of which have to do with culture, technology, gender, and ethics.

There are aspects of postmodernist thought that I find very useful and I would not want to give them up. For example, I don’t want to give up some of the more interesting notions of reality and reality construction.

Perhaps it’s not productive to say that the world is completely an illusion, but it’s fun to think so. I also like the social constructivist ideas, especially when connected with power. For example, I have to say that I agree when Foucault and Baudrillard suggests prisons exist not only to enforce behavioral norms, but also to delude us into thinking that there is a “free” world and that “freedom” is an absolute, when in reality, there are all kinds of constraints to our freedom, beginning with language itself, and ending in behaviors, beliefs, and values that may be, in essence, coercive.

I think it is interesting that many of the new ideas of post-postmodernism have much to do with new technologies and the impact on identity (digital communities), selfhood (genetic engineering), privacy (Internet, surveillance, UAVs), communication (communications technologies), understanding the world (computing, Big Data), and more.

In fact, once one uses technology as the primum mobile of consciousness and global epistemological constructs, it’s easy to see how a next logical step would be a preferential shift to technocratic social organization, from individual communication to bodies politic. The implications could pretty scary. Technocracies are notoriously dehumanizing, especially when combined with command economies or oligopoly-tending capitalistic economies.

Here are a few recent ideas:

Pseudo-modernism / digimodernism: Digital technology can dismantle persistent postmodern issues such as “existential uncertainty” and “artistic anti-essentialism.” Kirby argues that the post-postmodern generation reverts to modernism, at least in the sense that there is a renewed belief in agency and in individual ability to influence others (by means of technology).  See Kirby (2009) Digimodernism: How New Technologies Dismantle the Postmodern and Reconfigure our Culture.

Automodernism:  Robert Samuels argues that new technology allow a new level of neutrality to emerge. At the same time, postmodernist identity “flux” is supplanted by new, hardened identity politics.

Complexism:  Philip Galanter has created a fusion of technology and the arts; it has been suggested that he echoes and updates the Russian and Italian Futurists (who were certainly pro-technology, with the idea that technology helps establish a coherent New World Order. Some of the enthusiasm died in WWI and in the early Soviet Union.

Hypermodernism:  Hypermodernism, coined in the 1990s, is a chaotic, high-intensity, fast-paced world of rapid and always evolving identity and social relationships. The hypermodern is not characterized by indeterminacy (as would the postmodernist world), but in quick moments of stasis, followed by discrete, lenticular “pods” of culture / socioeconomic / socio-political ontology.

Altermodernism: Nicolas Bourriaud embraces alterity and takes it further, suggesting that the creolization of our cultures in the global context will create a universal aesthetic. Multiculturism is worn out. The next stage is the “creole” (which will probably change, given the colonialist overtones implicit in the word itself.)

***

References

Alighieri, Dante. Letter to Can Grande della Scala. Accessed November 13, 2013 http://www9.georgetown.edu/faculty/jod/cangrande.english.html

Awet (2013). Other Post-Postmodernisms: A Glossary. Heterodoxia. April 2013. Accessed Nov 15, 2013. http://www.hyperboreans.com/heterodoxia/?p=896#more-896

Kirby, A.  (2009) Digimodernism: How New Technologies Dismantle the Postmodern and Reconfigure our Culture. London, NY: Continuum Publishers.

May Oil Rain Down on You!

LinkedIn.com is the business world’s Facebook. As social media goes, it’s pretty useful, but it has a few attributes that I find utterly creepy. One of the little “features” is the fact it automatically generates a notice to all the members in one’s “network” when you achieve a 5 or 10-year work anniversary.

LinkedIn.com asks your contacts to  “Congratulate So-and-So on their Work Anniversary!!” I suppose some people like this, but I most assuredly do NOT. I have looked for a way to keep it from sending out notices to people in my network, but I have failed.

So, consequently, when I reached the five-year mark at my current job, I received a number of congratulatory emails and “likes,” including one from a poet friend I have known for many years, and through that time have been condemned by for being associated with the oil industry: “Congratulations! May oil rain down on you.”

It does not seem like much of a congratulatory message to me – seems more like the old Chinese curse, “May you have an interesting life.”

The mental image his “congratulations” invoked is that of big vats of boiling oil being poured down from the turrets of a medieval castle as I attempt to scale the walls. Attacking the fortified castle is, in my own mind, a gesture that is partly heroic, as I seek to connect with whatever is inside the castle, and partly a “conversation” with all the fantasies and narratives of adventure and romance that involve risk and a grand vision. 

If I’m storming a castle, I’m in the service of a grand vision of “the new.” Officially, my vision involves trying to determine how to use new technologies to improve petroleum exploration and production efforts. In reality, it’s a quest for the “new” – and it’s probably, at least on one level, a deliberately Pollyanna-esque quest.

My vision is my ostensible subject. In literary critical terms, we can say I’m manifesting an example of the Bakhtinian dialogical imagination.  Mikhail Bakhtin, if you may recall, was a Russian philosopher, literary critic, and linguist who wrote The Dialogic Imagination in which he points out all utterances and conversations have intertextuality embedded within them, and it’s impossible to extract them.  The intertextuality has to do with references, allusions, and concepts that come in from texts that are either in the general zeitgeist are in a specific context.

Bakhtin’s view of embedded intertextuality extending far beyond the text itself was evoked as well in The Anxiety of Influence (1973) in which literary critic Harold Bloom seeks to show how deep intertextuality in poetry not only invokes previous ideas and authors, but also seeks to subvert or re-envision them.

“May oil rain down on you” invokes voices: his, mine, and all the works of literature, philosophy and art that intrude with their fragments, phantasmic energies, ghosts, and the “trace” of ideas and intellectual histories. These are intellectual repositories I interact with even if I’m not completely aware of them.

I respect the fact that my poet friend actively protested the construction of a pipeline near the south New Jersey shore where he lives. He rode out Superstorm Sandy from his high-rise apartment on the beach that had, as I understand it, inadequate electricity, water, and worse for weeks and weeks.

“May oil rain down on you.”

The same oil he wishes on me will rain on him as well. There is no way to avoid it.

I see his note as a desperate, last feverish hope for a restoration of a world that is essentially dualistic, rather than the place it really is, where everything is interpenetrating and interdependent.

There’s no real differentiation in our roles; we’re just in different places on a continuum. No really goes without consuming petroleum products, and the “moral high road” is largely an illusion.

In fact, in Baudrillardian terms, there is no moral high road in terms of one’s choices. Further, a unique, differentiable “footprint” is a fiction created to inspire the creation of a “virtue yardstick” and the possibility that one might be saved by means of his or her actions.

The reality is the socially agreed upon construct, the “virtue yardstick” which one uses to measure one’s environmental footprint.

So, although no one really avoids consuming the world’s resources, people are social animals and they like to organize themselves into groups, and they like to rank them. There will always people willing to set themselves apart as the priest class (closely related to the madman class, where madness & divine visions are potentially interchangeable … the old “vates” or prophets of Plato’s days).

But even if you manage to place yourself in the priest class, it’s not as comforting as a dualistic vision of reality, which gives you neat, easy moral clarity and “either/or” decisions.

Yet another intrusive thought distracts me with images of large vats of boiling oil being poured down on the heads of hapless warriors. I wonder where the high road is in this scenario.

If you’re the one pouring the oil, are you guilty of murder? You can argue that you were simply defending the castle, but what did your castle represent?  You’re trying to keep your own ideas intact.

Or, perhaps you’re protecting your own intertextuality and trying to keep it free of outside invaders. You don’t want the ideas of the general zeitgeist to intrude your own, or at least you’d like to control them.

Well, all I can say is, “good luck with that.”

Controlling what influences your own message is about as easy to accomplish is controlling the automatically generated messages, the “Congratulate so and so on their work anniversary!” messages your social networking site sends out.

College Football: The Hermit Crabs of Universities?

After hearing, for the thousandth time or so, complaints that college football dwarfs the colleges it purports to represent, it occurred to me that it might be possible to characterize the large NCAA football teams as hermit crabs that have lodged themselves in shell of just the right size, shape, and location. Then, once firmly inside, the football team’s locomotion is what moves the school along its track.

The new underlying school vision has been changed, and it puts football front and center, instead of the “old school” notion of college courses, exams, dorms, sororities, fraternities, late nights in the “old stacks” in the library, and the adrenaline charged exploration of old knowledge, new ideas, canonical thinkers, and new, fresh people and their energy for the future.

In an ideal world, the football program would help make the traditional college experience a viable part of today’s world. Critics scoff and say they’ve turned some colleges into pro football farm teams. And, who are the people who park their RVs for days in the largest college parking lots? Why has the university paid to install RV hookups?

The majority of tailgate campers are not and never will be alumni, and yet, they have driven a hundred or so miles to spend a few days relaxing with their friends and families, charcoaling, and streaming video from the internet connections supplied by the university. Why is the college team so important to them? And, given that the team is a gateway to an appreciation of the university as a whole, what are the implications?

It’s all in the hermit crab.

What’s a hermit crab?

Before we begin, let’s refresh our knowledge of hermit crabs. As you may recall, a hermit crab is born without protection for its soft, vulnerable belly, and it grows very quickly in warm, nutrient-rich waters. So, it finds a shell of just the right size and moves in. Once it’s in that shell, it’s in its own little paradise – it can move about at will and can go wherever it needs to go to find the best conditions and the best food for it to thrive. It may be a bit creepy to the spectator.  After all, those huge, spiny ungainly hermit crab legs drag the weird, unmatching shell under shipwrecks, into reefs, over tricky, rocky terrain, and into other places where the original inhabitant of the shell would never, ever go. But, at the same time, there is something sublime about it (and I’m using the word as Edmund Burke would use it, to mean awe-inducing as well as horror-inducing), and the spectacle is strangely riveting. It is a grotesque perversion of the original shell owner’s métier and way of being, but that’s neither here nor there. The shell belongs to the hermit crab now.

Now, let’s look at Hermit Crab Football. The football team is the hermit crab. The college is the shell. But is that the end of the story?

No. It’s more complicated than that. But, it’s worth examining, because there are many new revelations and insights about our world and our society that come to the surface as we look at the metaphorical model.

It’s not simple. In fact, the situation has become fairly vexed  (and complicated by the emotional nature of the topic), and there are many areas of contention in the new Hermit Crab Football of the nationally ranked NCAA football teams. I think I could extend this to basketball, too, but that’s another story. 

Win at any cost.

First, there’s the issue of “win at any cost.” I would say that this is a consequence of the importance that college football has, not just to the local economy or college enrollments and endowments, but to an entire swath of the populace that may have never had even the most ephemeral or tangential contact with the university in question, except for their football team.

In a society that is more and more fluid and faceless, where jobs are  uncertain and technologies are both door-opening and disruptive, there is very little to cling to that offers a constant, unchanging feeling of security and belonging. There is very little to cheer for – in the past, we could cheer for our employer, but that’s hard to do when you’re working three or four jobs, all part-time and without benefits. In the past, we could cheer for our hometown, but how many of us live in the “exurbs” – an affordable place to acquire a home where we can sleep, but requiring a 2-hour commute?

Or, if we’ve chosen to live near our downtown jobs, how many “warm fuzzies” do we feel about our one-bedroom, one-bathroom apartments with gated parking and security to make us feel better about the gunshots at night, noisy 3 am altercations at street level, and the people who roam the streets, perhaps homeless, perhaps simply drawn to the classic Craftsman home that has now lent its shell to meth entrepreneurs? It’s hard to get behind a community like that, and to find like-minded, like-spirited folk we can wear face-paint with and cheer heartily at the arrival of familiar mascots and colors.

The college football team provides all this. It’s provides a sense of home, of community, and belonging, and above all, it does not change, disappear, or make you feel physically threatened. The college football team creates a uniting presence, and games are a way for people to come together to share their time, energy, ideas, hopes, and dreams. The game is the cocooning moment – the time when you and your group can comfort retreat to a safe, pre-birth existence where all is possibility, and all is safe.

In the past, the “game cocoon” (at the field, at buddies’ homes with snacks and big screen, or in sports bars), usually involved alumni.  Now, it’s not the case at all. Loyalty to the team (and by extension, the college) extends far beyond alumni. Now, the team’s fans consist of people who feel passionately about the team, the team concept, and their fellow fans.

But, the team has to win.

No one likes to back a loser, and if you’re affiliating yourself with a team that makes you feel good, then, it’s clear that you’re going for that winning “winner” feeling – something that will help you feel good about yourself, your life, and the world, just by watching a game. Losing – especially losing to teams you do not respect – corrodes that good feeling.  So, when a team starts to lose, fans stop attending games. They stop flying banners and wearing branded, logoed outfits. They move to their “second choice” school’s football events. All the positive publicity that the college once received suddenly turns bitter, unpalatable.

If a college football team turns a blind eye to ethical and moral infractions being committed in the interest of “winning,” then no one has won at all, and the college team runs the risk of hurting not only its program and the university, but also the hearts and spirits of the fans, who look to the team for spiritual as well as emotional release.

So, there is no doubt that the burden to win brings with it a lot of baggage.

However, I think it’s too facile a solution to simply advise the university to get out of the football business. The world is what it is, and a university with a mission to develop the community and create an anchor in the world has to acknowledge the very real drivers (even if there is quite a bit of pressure, and the potential of an unanticipated ethical morasse) of what constitutes community and what constitutes an important intellectual wellspring.  So, like it or not, the university must do all it can (within reason and legal strictures), to help its team win.

Coaching staff salaries.

There is the issue of coaches’ salaries. The day before the local college football team’s first game of the season, I happened to overhear the familiar grumbling about the fact that the head coach was now earning a salary of $9 million per year (I did not confirm this). The tone of the person’s voice suggested shock and outrage, but there was also a bit of perverse pride in her tone.  It mattered that the university’s football team performed well – which meant winning a championships, going to bowl games, achieving high national rankings, and, above all, whipping arch rivals in games held in sometimes decrepit "neutral" stadiums equidistant between campuses.

I think you could make the argument that head coaches, in fact, could be paid more and the additional pay would be justified. In the past, the captains of industry – the industrialists who managed to corner the market on commodities (Carnegie and steel production, Rockefeller and oil), or to promote effectively (Jay Gould and railroads, J. P. Morgan and finance) – reaped the benefits.

I know there are fallacies in the analogy and that coaches are not robber barons, but we have to admit that in our post-industrial times, entertainment (which includes sports), has come to dominate a large sector of our economy. Yes, there are inequities – shouldn’t players be paid? And, as in the past, the media helps make empires, as in the role that ESPN, Sports Illustrated, etc. play in college football.  It echoes the role that Hearst and Pulitzer played on public opinion.

The head coach, along with the coaching staff, must find a way to create a team that inspires the enthusiastic devotion of the fans. Not only does that require winning, it also involves a positive public image that must take the raw material of new recruits and skillfully craft a narrative that aligns with the university’s vision and mission. It’s not easy.

Further, there are the technological considerations – intelligence gathering to prepare for upcoming games; disinformation and dissembling moves to upset the competition’s intelligence-gathering moves, and also strength and conditioning training to assure healthy players who perform at peak physical and psychological levels at all times. Again, it’s not easy.

Exploited players.

It has always bothered me that college football players are not paid salaries. Yes, I do understand that it would not be fair for the smaller, poorer universities because they would not be able to compete for the best players.

However, I would argue the small, unranked teams can’t compete anyway. The best players are hoping for a berth with a pro team (at least that’s the conventional wisdom), and only the top-rated teams have lucrative (and frequent) television appearances. Scouts have to work hard to find good players in the small teams, and even if they see them, they have no idea how those players might fare against the big boys.

It bothers me to think that a college star might have a career-ending injury and never have a chance at a place with a pro team. It also bothers me that the player has helped the college achieve its rank, standing, and has been a fundamental part of the gargantuan hermit crab, but is never really compensated.

I realize it’s complicated, but there must be a better way.

The hermit crab represents the soul of our people.

Educational purists (and some faculty and staff members) maintain that the state’s premier research university should stick to academics. Colleges and universities should educate the populace and promote the creation and dissemination of knowledge. 

That’s all well and good, but it disregards the trajectory that college football programs have been on for the last 30 to 40 years, and which has accelerated in the last 10 – 15 to achieve a fever pitch, thanks to technology, social media, social change, and economic structural changes. Football programs create fans. Fans come from all walks and stages of life, and the football team becomes a part of their identity, sometimes to a remarkable (even shocking) degree.

Identity questions.

What have we become? How has social change altered us? What are we as a people? The need for community has not gone away; people still have a need for affiliation. However, the old methods of obtaining that sense of togetherness, belonging – even enfranchisement in a society – have disappeared. We do have many, many online communities, and social media gives us a way to connect.

The connectedness of social media may ultimately fail to satisfy, and the void is filled with concepts and events that unite people by means of their emotions, connected at times (but not always) with shared beliefs and values.

The college football program that can be a successful hermit crab and move the shell of the university to being aligned with the hearts, minds, and spirits of a changing social milieu can be an important bellwether for times to come.

That said, clear, calm hearts should prevail.

(c) 2013 by Susan Smith Nash / Texture Press

Uncle Christmas

I was at my dad’s house when the call came in.

Uncle Harold had passed away in northern New Hampshire, a mere two weeks after being moved to a hospice care facility a few blocks from his home.

It was just around Thanksgiving, and while many would say that his death was something to be thankful for because it meant he could stop suffering, it was hard to feel anything except sadness.  

It was my understanding that Harold was the baby of the family, and that he was protected by his older siblings during the cold, hard days of the Great Depression in northern Vermont.  

For me, Uncle Harold symbolized the coming of Christmas. The weekend after Thanksgiving the doorbell would ring, and we would receive a huge box with neatly wrapped presents from Uncle Harold. Each magical package would be placed under the Christmas tree, later to be squeezed and shaken and sniffed until finally the sheer impossibility of guessing what he might have sent made us leave them in peace.

Still, I liked to creep out of bed in the middle of the night, turn on the Christmas tree lights, and gaze upon the shiny bows, wrapping paper, and ornaments that festooned both tree and presents.

When I was growing up, it seemed to me that Uncle Harold had the most exciting life of anyone I knew. He was constantly sending letters posted from exotic parts of the world – from ports in hot, heady climes where people wore long draping robes through which air hot, dry air could flow, and where they might sit quietly and reflect upon one’s life while large ceiling fans slowly whirred overhead.

Uncle Harold was in the Merchant Marines, and he traveled by merchant ship to all the important ports of the world.

Technically, Uncle Harold was a Vermont resident. But, that is not how I envisioned him. He traveled all around the world, and I imagined him face-to-face with elephants, rhesus monkeys in the employ of dockside organ grinders, fortune-tellers, and mysterious strangers.

I wasn’t quite sure what his job was in the Merchant Marines, but I think I remember my dad saying was that he was a cook. Being a cook in the Merchant Marines seemed very interesting to me as well, and I wondered if they ever incorporated local specialties – mainly sweets and breads – into the dinner. Envisioned empanadas filled with chicken or spicy ground beef, or sweet, nutty baklava, prepared with honey, pistachio nuts, and saffron, the Azerbaijani way and not the Turkish way.

In the days before the Internet, but fully within a time of global communication (albeit slow and expensive), each country and even each city had its own culture, with unique language, religion, dress, cuisine, holiday celebrations, work and family customs, cuisine, were overtly unique, unlike today, where cities are, at least superficially, similar.

I could imagine Uncle Harold in Casablanca, inhabiting the same “noir” space as Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall.  I could easily see him in Alexandria, Egypt, wearing a fez, and eating a breakfast of dates, flatbread, and feta cheese.

What I remember most about Uncle Harold of those years, besides the exotic persona, was his generosity. He never failed to send birthday cards, which always delighted and surprised me. Why me? What did I do to deserve a card? The truth was, nothing. But, Uncle Harold felt a bond and a serious commitment to family, which I think was quite remarkable, given the times we lived in. These were, after all, a time when all the eternal verities were questioned.

Each year, sometime after Thanksgiving, the magic would happen, and mysterious packages would start to arrive. They were elaborately wrapped, each with cards, intended to be deposited under the Christmas tree, with absolutely no opportunity for opening until Christmas Day.  Uncle Harold always sent me a gift, as well as a gift for my brother, sister, and parents. Sometimes he sent food packages for the entire family. They were invariably from the high-end gourmet catalogues that fascinated me with their glossy pages and descriptions of petit-fours.  He would also send a wreath of spruce branches, tiny pine cones, and wild cranberries which we would hang on the front door where it would cast an aromatic spell on those who entered. 

My sense of Uncle Harold as a world traveler, raconteur, and lover of nature and delicious food was reinforced every Christmas. Vermont has charming architecture and an interesting history, with surprising residents. They were world travelers among the catamounts and white-tail deer.

When I learned that Uncle Harold had passed away, I felt a sharp pang of sadness. I felt sad for his loss, but perhaps a sharper pang because I realized that he suffered in his his last decade of life. It was antithetical to the life he lived when he was always on the high seas, moving from port to port, alive, alert, and eager to share his encounters and experiences with his young niece, and later, when he shared his love of nature with his daughter.

As I consider Uncle Harold, his life, and his impact on me, I realize that the letters from faraway lands and the presents arriving at the door were pure magic for a lively-minded grade schoolgirl who dreamed of some day going on missions, traveling, learning languages, and living in exotic lands.

Did that actually happen?  Yes, in its way, I suppose. But that’s another story for another day.

Today, though, I’d like to think of Uncle Harold beholding those amazing lands and seas.

Lost in Paradise (Still Manages to Be Walt Disney World)

It was around 9 pm at the Beach and Boardwalk World; or I suppose that's where I was, given that I took the wrong turn, after having been intrigued  by a shop with the same Dooney &Burke retro-Disney designed messenger bag I had purchase a few weeks earlier at disneystore.com.

Was the amount I paid online the same as in the store? I was gratified to see that the pricing was consistent.  I contemplated purchasing a few bags of the same design, but then thought better of it. I’m not necessarily a hoarder, but I do seem to have a difficult time letting go of vintage bags and designer items. In theory, I could sell them on eBay, but it’s tedious and frustrating to do so. Perhaps if I had an assistant who would deal with all the mechanics of it, I’d feel comfortable, but as it is, I just feel a sense of dread.

Walt Disney World opened in 1971. The retro views and art evoke the late 60s and early 70s fascination with the Space Age, and an affirmation of values that differentiated us from our Cold War obverses. Instead of Mao suits and a “Great Leap Forward” we embraced fairy tales and frontier homilies that suggested that if you ground yourself in early American values, your fate would be a certitude of prosperity, joyous family relations, and above all, a validation of imagination and creative reach.

These were some of the thoughts I contemplated, so it was not too surprising that I took the wrong turn. With a start, I realized I missed the bus back to the Contemporary Resort, where I was staying, and the Boardwalk was many worlds away.

But, perhaps I had willed it this way. Walt Disney World offered me various options; I chose a combination of boat and bus.

The weather was glorious and cool, and standing at the back of the boat, breathing the humid air, the smell of swamp, I looked at the American flag flapping at the back. My uncle in Lake Placid has a boathouse filled with vintage mahogany Chris-Craft “cigar boats” he restored by hand.

A surgeon by profession, he also had a talent for surgicating wood, and so had, in addition to his meticulously restored wooden boats, an entire Adirondack “Camp” (a 14-bedroom lake house), outfitted in faux-Stickley and other Craftsman-vintage furniture. He told me the key was in the fittings. They needed to be authentic. I had questions, but he did not like to listen to or answer my questions. He preferred the role of seed-sower and scatterer of wisdom. It was my job to harrow my heart and mind so that these seeds would sprout and not be carried off by an adventitious bird.

He took me for a spin in one of his boats. He mentioned that it was leaking, but not to worry, he had a good bilge pump (although it was on the fritz at the moment). As we slowly settled deeper in the water, and the shoreline receded, he regaled me with “fun facts” about Lake Placid. It was the deepest lake in the Adirondacks, and the coldest. Did it have a creature as did Lake Champlain?  A lake monster of sorts? The sound of the engine drowned out my words, which were not projected with any sort of confidence, so it was less than surprising that they sank somewhere in the depths.

As we tooled, lower and lower in the water, across Lake Placid, he pointed out the Gilded Age “Camps” – some no longer extant having been burned to the ground by reluctant heirs who found, to their dismay, that the Township of Lake Placid relied exclusively on property tax for the maintenance of their schools, fire department, police, water and sewage, road salt – in short, everything.

I would have preferred to see someone turn a “Camp” into a church of sorts, and use it for a renewal of the utopian experiments that so characterized upstate New York during the 19^th century. A “New Oneida” anyone?

But, no one was listening to me, and, the grand utopian experiment that was Walt Disney World, was, at least in terms of physical security, much more benign, although there are those who would argue that ideologically, it was not so. I like utopias, and don’t much care for dystopias, so it probably is more likely that a “better world” is more feasible in central Florida, the 1980 Lake Place Olympic Games notwithstanding.

I had no idea of the name of the central Florida lake, and wondered how many alligators the park might hold, and if / when any escaped Burmese Pythons made their way here, and if they found it to be the pristine Edenic habitat that they found the Everglades to be. I would think that unless they could subsist on dreams and air, there would not be much to forage for. There was precious little trash, and it was hard to find stray pets or unattended toddlers.

We docked at Hollywood Studios, and so I made my way to the bus destined for the Contemporary Resort. I was impressed to be surrounded by impeccably groomed and comported young children, who either slept noiselessly or quietly conversed with siblings, discussing math facts and maps. One 6-year-old girl waxed eloquent about addition to her younger brother, who clutched a box containing Star Wars action figures. They seemed so beatifically calm that I wondered if they piped in some sort of happy gas, or did they put it in the water? I would consider living here if this is truly how people behave.

Social engineering on a large scale is not easy; change is never easy to manage, at least when it comes to the hearts, minds, and attitudes.

P. G. Wodehouse: Why Not the Canon? A Contemplation of His Early Works

P. G. Wodehouse did not make the canon, at least as far as I can tell. I’m not surprised, really, when considering how so many of his themes and characters repeat themselves. Also, one might view his work as a bit sentimental and lacking introspection. I don’t agree with those views.

My sense is that Wodehouse became considered a “popular” writer (as did Anthony Trollope and Booth Tarkington), and they fell out of the canon in the late 1980s, during the celebrated “canon wars” –

I remember the 1980s on the Norman campus quite clearly. I would wander through Gittinger Hall as I was taking other course, just because I found the territory so fascinating. I took my first English course after graduating with my B.S. in Geology. It was taught by Larry Frank and covered gothic fiction. I loved it. I had a relaxed summer – I was selling oil and gas prospects after having returned from Amarillo, and I had a very flexible schedule. I could easily take courses, so I did – English courses, Music theory courses, and even an Astronomy course (which I dropped because I found it tedious). It was during the oil boom, and we were buying and selling leases, and even participating in drilling wells. I thought (hoped) it would go on forever. I had gotten back into swimming and tried out aerobics (popularized by Jane Fonda) and sometimes would even go to back-to-back lessons. I did not run too much, but sometimes mixed that in, along with long, long walks.

I took more English courses starting in 1985, eventually taking many undergraduate as well as graduate courses. It was a time of awakening, and I was fascinated by the ideas surging forth. Yes, it was ideological and political, but also there was an “undiscovered treasure” feeling in it all. Women and minorities whose writing had been more or less ignored became career-builders for those who dedicated themselves to them and who successfully introduced them into the canon. Kate Chopin was one writer who made it into the canon in the 1980s. She had been well-known for writing short stories or serialized novellas that appeared in popular ladies’ magazines. Zora Neale Hurston was rediscovered (thanks to the efforts of Alice Walker), Djuna Barnes, Mina Loy, and Russian futurists were almost mainstreamed. Modernists ruled. Heaven help you if you were a realist or humorist. Even the women fell out of favor. I’m thinking of Pearl Buck. Of course, some of the issue was political correctness. It’s hard to read Tarkington, Wodehouse, and Buck without cringing at times.

Nevertheless, they’re really quite wonderful – they describe the readings, writing, cultural institutions, new technologies (they were, after all, in the midst of another Industrial Revolution). For example, a Baedeker is a short name for a guidebook to foreign countries. So, for the first time I understood Mina Loy’s title, “Lunar Baedeker” – it’s a guidebook to the moon (or being moonstruck) – and that’s precisely how those magical years of discovery hit me. It was amazing to find entire new territories of writing – In the 90s, I had the amazing privilege of working in the collections of the Huntington Museum rare books collection and reading letters of H.D. discussing her psychotherapy sessions, and I was even more aware of the general times, the general zeitgeist.

Ironically, men who gained fame in the same way (for writing serial novels for the magazines), fell out of favor. In addition to Wodehouse, Trollope, and Tarkington, others also fell out of favor. John Dos Passos was deeply admired, but is more or less invisible today. O. Henry, Saki, and Jack London were also admired then, but not so much now. Occasionally, you’ll see “The Gift of the Magi” in a composition anthology, and perhaps “Call of the Wild” – but they are not the standards they once were.

I’m not even going to touch British literature from Restoration through the Victorian age. Women were incorporated into the canon, even the ones whose work was fragmentary and written pseudonyously (Ephelia in Charles II’s court), and the solid establishment pillars were pulled down as conservative critics got a short, sharp haircut and lost their strength.

But to return to the point at hand, I’m enjoying discovering for the first time the highly popular works of the past. They are engaging and entertaining, and they even contain elements that make them intriguing to me, a person who tended to favor the cryptic and inaccessible (while harboring a guilty appetite for Victorian and Edwardian detective novels).

Here is a brief overview of what I liked most in Wodehouse’s Uneasy Money (1916).  It’s in essence, a meditation on what the prospect of “easy money” does to people, either in the form of inheritance or by marrying into it. There are also a number of reflections on morality and ethics; namely, what it means to be “straight” vs “crooked.”

There are many stock elements:

Plucky women making their way in the world, supporting themselves:  Elizabeth Boyd and her bee farm, Claire Summers and the chorus, Polly, now Lady Weatherby, dancing barefoot in dance halls, a sensational hit as “The Barefoot Countess.”

Good-natured, decent, with internalized code of honor (which also slows them a bit): Bill Chalmers, Lord Dowlrish

Dissipated artists: Nuttham Bloomingdale Boyd, Elizabeth’s brother

Captain of Industry: Dudley Pickering, worth $30 million due to his cars

Lord Weatherby: aspiring painter (but sadly lacking in skill)

Quirky, mischievous animal: Eustace, the monkey

People who should not be carrying guns, carrying them: Dudley Pickering

Legal advisor whose error sets everything in motion: The youngest Nichols, who was Bill’s school chum, alerts Bill that he will inherit $5 million dollars from the man he cured of his golf slice. A later will was made just before the man died, but this does not come to light until later. In the meantime, Bill sets off to New York to find the woman he has supplanted, in order to do what he considers to be the right thing and to give her half.

Golf: Important here because Elizabeth’s uncle left everything to Bill after he cured him of his vicious slice

Pastoral ambitions:  Elizabeth and Bill both have desired to have a bee farm in the country

My favorite scenes:
Eustace, the monkey, wreaks havoc, throws eggs at people, while the publicist is energized by the possibility that the plan to garner publicity for Polly, Lady Weatherby, the Barefoot Dancing Countess, by having an unruly (or even marauding) exotic pet, will work. Obviously, I like physical humor (!) and irony.

At any rate, after reading at least 20 Wodehouse novels at this point, and continuing to study them, my thoughts are continuing to develop.  I do think that Wodehouse is definitely in a category by himself -- there are some subtleties that make the works different than, say, the work of prolific romance writer.

So -- I'll share those thoughts later, as they gel. 

Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell’s Political / Social / Industrial Novels

Industrial novels that deal with the impact of technology and technological change on society. The focus on the elements of the Industrial Revolution that are extremely transformative and disruptive, namely, steam-powered factories of “Milton” (in North and South) along with the coming of the railroad in Cranford.

North and South:
Factories have transformed the town of Milton, provided work, but have also resulted in labor problems as global pricing pressure drive wages downward, and the workers protest conditions, low wages, and the idea that workers are squeezed in order to assure huge profits of the industrialists.

The airborne cotton fibers (“fluff”) results in chronic and ultimately fatal medical conditions (seems like emphysema brought on by breathing the particulate matter); Mary dies young as a result.

Waterways are polluted with dye, which creates a ghastly impression when one of the striking workers – the one with nine starving children, who hurled a rock, hitting Margaret Hale – drowns himself, and then is dyed himself purple with the dyed factory effluent.

The great “masters” of the factories develop a political philosophy that resists interference by the government and regulation. The idea is that good practices will prevail naturally (and do not need to be legislated) because safety, fair wages, and good working conditions make sense, and in the end will lead to increased productivity. John Thornton espouses this philosophy, and delivers an extended explanation and apology to Margaret.

Mrs. Thornton, as John’s mother, suggests a new social order will emerge, which is a blend of meritocracy and capitalist.  She looks at the role of an industrialist as a very responsible one, because society itself rests on the prudent, responsible, and just administration of the business, which extends along the entire supply chain, from raw materials to transformation.

The suggestion is that labor relations will improve once the various parties sit down with each other and get to know each other, and treat each other with mutual respect.

Gaskell’s descriptions are very realistic, and the insights into the psychological conditions and the inner thoughts are insightful, compassionate, complete, and realistic. There is little melodrama – if so, it’s only in Cousin Phillis, where Phillis goes into a deep and dramatic physical decline that parallels her emotional state.

Gaskell describes the impact of the factories on the city, and does not shirk from describing the air pollution, water pollution, and the dangerous conditions within the factory. She also discusses the noise, and the oppressive, gray, depressing appearance. Margaret Hale, who has come to view Halston as a kind of idyll of England (until she returns after the death of her mother and father, and sees just how dreary and unenlightened life can be there, and comes to realize she has romanticized it), and London as a place that establishes the norm of polite living (until she returns and finds it stiff and stultifying), first encounters Milton in a state of shock. Her father has renounced his comfortable position in a crisis of faith, goes to Milton because his old friend from Oxford can help him find students to tutor.

Cousin Phillis:
Phillis is a victim of changing times; her cousin comes to visit, and they develop a brother-sister relationship. He desires to be a good engineer; his father, an inventor, has achieved significant social mobility through his ingenuity, and owns the patents on several very valuable (and profitable inventions).

Her cousin comes into her life because he is working on the construction of the railroad, ostensibly in design and engineering.

Phillis meets her cousin’s boss, who has just returned from Italy, where he was involved in railroad construction. He helps her with Dante, acknowledges and appreciates her intellectual curiosity, and gives her the impression that he will return to marry her. He leaves for Canada, where he will work on the railroad there. He meets someone and marries her; Phillis’s cousin receives a letter with the terrible news.

When he does not return, she becomes very ill after the shock – almost dies of heartache.

Phillis: educated in an eclectic, questioning way, in an inclusive, all-encompassing method of inquiry, guided by her father, a rector.

In this way, she reminds one of Frances Trollope, whose father was a rector, and who has a quick wit, a sharp, observing eye, and a solid facility with various languages, literatures, and cultures.

Phillis also echoes the protagonist, the doctor’s daughter in Wives and Daughters, who is also a self-taught, self-guided reader, who dedicates herself to the pursuit of entymology, yet also remains a dutiful, diligent daughter.

Phillis’s father, a rector and also a farmer who participates in the responsible husbandry of his working farm, is an avid reader, scholar, and thinker, but resolutely Classical. He is a perceptive judge of character, and finds Phillis’s beloved to be rather disrespectful, and his mannered way of jesting to be ultimately corrosive, and undermining of authority and the eternal verities.

Is the narrator reliable? He may be, but not entirely, as he displays resentment that Phillis did not find him attractive, and his initial puppy love is rewarded with a rather blunt denial of any possibility – ever – of their being more than friends.

Industrialization collides with traditional agrarian worlds (as it does in North and South, and also in My Lady Ludlow). The summer storms, the depictions of the flowers, birds, bees, cattle, are made in a very nostalgic way, and yet, the limited scope of life, the potentially grinding monotony, are also honestly depicted.

Harvest time is a time of dramatic change; and the scene in which Phillis, her cousin, and his boss are caught in the rain, is a turning point. The rain, a kind of baptism, brings all together, or a kind of primordial bath which strips away the skin of external difference.

Gaskell’s nostalgic view of agrarian life brings to mind some classic English landscapes, specifically The Haywain and some of Turner’s paintings. In this case, realism alternates with Romanticism.

My Lady Ludlow

Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell’s My Lady Ludlow is a strangely affecting novella, which, once finished, makes the reader feel as though they really knew Lady Ludlow, and the dramatic changes which occurred during her lifetime.

The novel opens with the arrival of a poor relation whose mother has tried to place because she is unable to afford to care for her eight or nine children upon the death of her husband.

Lady Ludlow, whose nine natural children have all perished, save one, often allows the daughters of poor relations to live with her and to be educated, and to work as assistants.

The novel is essentially the chronicle of radically shifting times, and it contains a story within a story, which makes the reader aware of the dramatic changes in France (during the Revolution) as well as in England. One of Lady Ludlow’s aristocratic distant relatives flees France to stay with them, but ultimately, the son returns to France to rescue his cousin for whom he has formed an abiding tendre but whose object of love has no respect or regard for him whatsoever. Ironically, his love, Virginie, is a progressive who has a great deal of sympathy for the publicans’ desire for liberty, equality, fraternity, but they turn on her as they do all the aristocracy. Her cousin comes to rescue her, and they do find love at the end, but with a tragic outcome. They are both guillotined. I’m not doing the story justice, because there are a number of subtle narrative elements that heighten the drama and introduce a truly Romantic element in the story. What it does within the framework of the larger narrative is to reinforce the differences between the values of the ancien regime and the revolutionary, republican upstarts.

The differences in viewpoints between the pre-revolutionary world and the post-revolutionary world are telling:

--the modern person speaks of “rights” whereas before, the thought was of “duty”
--education has uplifting, transformative potential; whereas before, breeding is all; one cannot transcend one’s origins
--the Church of England is the true church (although there are fond feelings for the Catholic church), and dissenters and dissenting is not acceptable
--the aristocrat has an obligation to his or her title and place; it is important to notice and to serve, and to protect and preserve one’s grounds, position, people, property
--there are irresponsible nobles; titled men may gamble, be profligate, and ignore their responsibilities. It is important to compensate for that if possible.

Lady Ludlow changes and comes to accept changing times:

--she accepts the daughter of man who jilted Miss Golindo (and broke her heart), who subsequently died, leaving a “love” child and orphan, whom Miss Golindo took in as her own daughter
--she recognizes the efforts of a rector who has radical, seeming dissenting ideas, such as teaching the children of the poor (including poachers) to read and to do math
--she invites the local gentry ladies to tea, and when their manners are not up to the standard of 18th century aristocracy, instead of ostracizing or scorning, she accepts and embraces the practice

The description of the manners and the materials of daily life within the manor house is minute and absolutely fascinating. We learn about the daily work in the manor: preparation of medicinal potions, the putting up of preserves, jams, and special fruits; the fashioning of lace and fine needlework.

Lady Ludlow powders her hair, wears an elaborate wig, and lovely lace cap; her dress is of the 18th century, and not in the “classical” or “republican” lines of the early 19th century. She maintains her wardrobe as a matter of class. Each article of clothing has significance, and is of very high quality.

The household is run very strictly, with a certain regularity, with the goal of making sure she is a responsible mistress of the property that passed into her hands and which is her responsibility.

Industrialization intrudes in certain ways: the railroad allows quick delivery of mail; it leads to more mobility of the labor force, and a change in desirable education. It makes it necessary for individuals at all levels of society to be able to read, write, and to do math.

My Lady Ludlow is filled with illustrative vignettes and insights into the worldview and mindset of an incredibly kind-hearted, generous, and intelligent woman. She is truly a leader, and a woman born into dramatically changing times. Her story is essentially tragic and heroic; when she passes away, she has outlived her son (who was irresponsible and profligate). The stately home will most likely be destroyed; her times have irretrievably changed. Nevertheless, the acts of kindness and generosity she has been able to effect will live on.

There is keen nostalgia, and yet a recognition that the world has changed, and universal education is necessary. But, to what degree, and to what purpose?  Lady Ludlow desires above all stability, balance, dignity, and hierarchy. That said, she does show compassion and does accept those who would ordinarily not fit within her structure (Miss Golindo’s adopted daughter, and the son of the poacher).

What makes My Lady Ludlow fascinating to the 21st century reader is the resonance with extreme social changes, and the impact of industrialization on society.

Tourism of the Mind: The Place From Which You Cannot Return

Are there place you can go in which you really can NOT return unaltered?

I’m thinking that it’s harder and harder to find them. Most places you travel to do their best to help you feel happy, and to reinforce your pre-existing beliefs and values.

Chain hotels, conference centers, and resorts are like that. They’re like artificial flavoring and preservatives to one’s consciousness.

Who wants that?

 It sounds like a comfort zone experience until you start to realize it’s more like the MacDonald’s hamburger a guy kept for 13 years to see what would happen to it over time.

In a word, nothing.

The hamburger mummified rather than decaying. It’s also like the loaf of Mrs. Baird’s white bread that accompanied a big order of barbecue for an office group lunch. The plastic-wrapped loaf sat out on the countertop in the office  2nd-floor kitchenette and turned into a lab experiment. One, two, three… then five, six weeks passed, without any discernible alteration in the “bread.” It even stayed bolster-pillow soft for at least three of those weeks.

I think that if you go to a tourist resort destination in a country that lives, breathes, and eats tourism, you’re likely to become that loaf of Mrs. Baird’s white bread.

Not even the most dramatic “tourist spectacles” (juggling flaming hoops, jumping over fire, banging on steel musical instruments, and energetically choreographed gestures that mimic Dionysian abandon) are likely to change you. You might overeat, drink too much, and get sunburned, and if you suffer a bit, you can then feel temporarily miserable and less sorry to go back to your predictable routine.

However, that said, if the resort is beautiful enough, I think that transcendence is possible.

You can find yourself transformed, simply your eyes are opened and you see magic.

Magic is all around you, and you, yourself become magical. The exaltedness takes over, and all feel are waves and waves of exultation and “lifted-upness” that is, without putting to fine a point on it, worthy of Sir Philip Sidney’s “Astrophil and Stella” and the power of poetics, as the language takes you from the “dungeon of the body” to the high reaches of joyous union with a higher plane of awareness. It takes you out of your daily cares, and scrubs you clean of all the dark, toxic residue of negative thoughts.

Granted, it takes quite the resort to achieve what amounts to a mystical, transcendent experience, but it is absolutely possible. Think volcanoes in the Big Island of Hawaii, the arches at San Luis El Cabo, the long serpentine trail on a ridge just north of Beijing on a feeder edge of the Great Wall.

And, think of your own back yard.

It’s all in how you see, breathe, and approach life.

Noodling for Channel Cat

If you've never noodled, you've missed out one of those great lost sports -- like going javelina hunting in arroyos, dry washes, and blind canyons with only a .22 pistol. You might live, and even have something you can taxidermy onto your wall, but it's unlikely.

Noodling is a kind of "body-fishing" that you do when you want a fish to eat, but it turns out you don't have anything to fish with but your fist and a mind full of reckless delusions.

You find a muddy, zero-visibility body of water - preferably a pond or a lake, but it could be a slow-moving bend in a river -- then you stick your hand and arm along the bottom of the stream. I guess the fish think you're good eating because they take your arm as though it's bait.

Which fish? Those fish. Those olive-toned, slimy, big-mouthed, spiny-finned catfish. They're "channel cat" and they can be neolithically large.

Yuk.

But, you're hungry. You want a fish to roast over the fire you've managed to get started in a little alcove under the 23rd-street bridge. You're burning boxes you fished out of the dumpster behind the QuikTrip a few blocks away.

Okay. So you use your body as a fishing lure. What's so wrong with that?  Nothing, if you are depressed and hating life. You see, the cats that lurk around in these waters are no kittens. They're "channel cat" -- catfish that can reach 50 - 75 pounds of pure fish muscle, and if you don't think they can't take you to the bottom and keep you down there until you stop flailing about like a fish caught on a hook, then you're just wrong -- dead wrong.

Random question to you: Would you swim in a river that is filled with discharge from a reservoir contaminated with toxic algae and chicken farm run-off? Would you eat fish that had been living in that slimy, turbid, miasmic fluid?

I can tell you in a word what my answer would be. It's a simple NO.

The Arkansas River is not exactly a noodler's paradise. It does, I believe, have channel cat, although I'm not sure how or why, when you consider that most of the fish in the river are only there because they've been swept away with the water released from reservoirs upstream. For a fish, I suppose it's the ichthyologic equivalent of the end of days - but with a rather depressing twist. You assume you've been raptured up, carried up to the heavens, and not "left behind" with those who failed to find salvation in time, but to your dismay, your fishy confreres you thought were squealing "rapture" were actually saying "rupture" -- and then you found yourself in dark, thick straits, churning through a slim "swim-space" under a dam.

Suffice it to say, you, as a fish, *hated* it, and you would warn every other fish against this horrid dark night of the soul, but you have no way to communicate back to your buddies, lazing about, bloated on algae and chicken offal, back at the reservoir "ranch" upstream.

***

The Arkansas River is what I consider an industrial, utilitarian river. As it exists now, it’s used for flood control, the source of cooling water, and an urban beautification project with bike trails, walking trails, informal arboretum, shoreline benches, picnic tables, and the loveliest array of flowering shrubs and trees I’ve seen outside upstate New York (specifically, Voorheesville).

The fauna of the river's edge is also interesting – I’ve seen turtles sunning on logs, groundhogs scampering on dry winter grasses, lots of hideous fish, Canada geese, ducks, egrets, seagulls, and lots of frogs. And, there are the people: fishing from the pedestrian bridge, biking, skateboarding, running, rollerblading, walking, eating lunch, walking their dogs (or being walked by their dogs).

I know I've shared that my favorite thing to do is to walk, but I have run a few times. I prefer walking. It gives me a chance to think and to listen to recordings of classic literature that I download from Librivox. I have walked as long as 2 hours while listening and thinking, and, when the weather’s right and the foliage is blooming, it’s absolutely utopia.

****

That said, there is no way that I’d want to swim in the river. It’s inutterably foul when it’s low, and it smells like pond scum.

When the river is high, it runs fast and deep because the civil engineers have released water from Lake Keystone.

That scene, too, fills me with horror. Last year, there was a surge of red-green-blue-variegated algae that sickened swimmers, water skiers, and anyone who had contact with the water. Someone said it was due effluent from poultry farms, or perhaps a hog farm.

That does not stop the channel cat.

And, it does not stop the anglers. People fish from the bridge and presumably eat the fish they caught. Some even stand in the shallows in waders and fish as water flows over the dam.

They may noodle, too, and it would not surprise me. I've seen police cars near the places where the best fish seem to be, and I have always wondered if they're fishing the drowned out with grappling hooks and ropes mounted on the back of pickup trucks.

Of course, there may be the occasional doomed lover -- Millais's Ophelia, face up amongst the lily pads -- but that would be near the Ampitheatre in an oxbow lake, and not in the rapids on the downriver side of the dam.

Somehow, though, Ophelia's drowning persists as a fascinatingly romantic self-sacrifice to love.

Being noodled to death by a huge catfish possessing a gigantic slimy mouth, big lips, what appears to be a long drooping moustache does not.

In fact, the spectacle of it leaves me gaping in horror. There are just too many parallels in the dating world, but that's another story altogether.

Anyway, I read somewhere that in a noodling contest somewhere in southeast Oklahoma (near Antlers, Idabell, or Broken Bow), the winner dragged up a 90-pounder. One time I watched a documentary on "low tech" fishing for Hemisynodontis membranaceus ("Moustache Catfish) in the lakes of equatorial Africa, and I thought that what they did was child's play in comparison with noodling for catfish in Oklahoma.