I hit a lull with the American Mind series but finally bore down and finished the thing. Really glad I did.
Once WWII was over the series took a leap for me, when it started getting into mass culture criticism and theory. One perspective living in Korea has given me is that the identification of culture as being something high or low, and any criticism thereof becomes muddled when one lives in a radically different culture. Koreans sometimes think Americans are dirty because they don’t scrape an outer layer of skin from their bodies as Koreans to in public baths. Americans think the idea of eating a dog or a live octopus is barbarian.
Aside from moral grounds it becomes difficult to criticize one or another. I don’t spend so much time thinking about Korean culture vs. American or Western culture. I accept most aspects of Korean culture for what it is; a several thousand year old culture, which has many admirable features and several that I don’t like.
But one thing I do think a lot about is American culture. My culture. And how so much of America’s ideas about itself have been acquired and developed via Europe. I think many Americans, including myself for some time; have looked at Europe as being somewhat culturally superior to America. Even though America, since its existence, has always remained democratically superior (although, it’s getting more debatable recently), Europe and its culture have often been held in higher esteem, certainly by Europeans, and by many Americans.
American Mind gets to the heart of where this game from, citing the examples of people like Erich Fromm and Herbert Marcuse, who both fled to New York City from Germany during Hitler’s rise to power. Both raised issues of conformity vs. freedom in capitalist America. Fromm was specifically interested in the use of mass culture and its effect on the American populous. How America’s culture became so barren, so devoid of….I suppose all the things that European culture theoretically was…to Fromm.
Surely someone like Fromm would be disgusted at the conformity in Korean society, but, then again who’s to argue that it’s wrong? I’m also sure someone like Fromm had little to no experience living in an Asian culture, cultures that have survived much longer than either German or French culture. Koreans watch more television than everyone in the world, except the Japanese. Who is to argue that’s a waste of time? In any event the European style of life is disappearing, so I suppose it won’t matter much for long. It was unstable 75 years ago, and will be highly unstabe within the next 100 or so years.
American mind goes on discuss the Harlem Renaissance, Nation of Islam, up through the neo-Conservatives, which start with Reagan and continue through today.
I can’t recommend these series highly enough.
August 23, 2007
American Mind, finished
August 5, 2007
American Mind
My Dad is fond of telling a story about me getting in trouble in my 8th grade U.S. History class taught by Mr. Callahan. How he’d sit up at the front of the class and spend the entire time reading straight from the book. Me, being a pretty active kid, getting bored and doing whatever I could to disrupt the class.
He was, I think I can say now in fairness some 20 years later, an awful teacher. I can remember our text book, a giant tomb, filled with historical paintings of the civil war and words like “emancipation” in highlighted in bold text and defined in the back. Surely we had to memorize the definitions word for word and write them on some sort of quiz.
I think of things like this; evidence of a relatively poor middle and high school education, when I download lecture series by The Teaching Company.
I’m perpetually trying to compensate for guys like Mr. Callahan–and Mrs. Goddard, my 9th grade World History teacher, who now that I’m older and know about such things, must have been just a year or so away from retirement.
I’m being a bit negative here. What I’m trying to say is that I have a soft spot for history, and especially living over here in Korea, I spend some time thinking about my home country and what makes up its psyche.
The American Mind is a series by Allen C. Guelzo, an esteemed professor at Gettysburg College in Pennsylvania. In it he details some of the ideas, some of which are philosophical (many of which are of course theological), that have shaped American history. He gets into the The Transcendentalists, Pragmatism, Conservatism, the influence of the Enlightenment…and perhaps Mr. Callahan’s favorite; emancipation.
It’s good stuff. Guelzo is an expert, even if his lecturing style is a hammy for my tastes. But the info itself is fun to absorb and doesn’t drag, even when discussing people like Jonathan Edwards or the Puritans. One of the better Teach Company series I’ve listened to.
June 25, 2007
Brothers Karamazov
Brothers Karamazov. This is a book I’ve wanted to read for a long time, but quite honestly have been afraid to start. While doing some research about Blood Meridian I came across several comparisons between BM’s Judge Holden and Dostoevsky’s Grand Inquisitor as being amongst the great literary villains in history.
So I knew then I had to finally read it. I’m ripe for this sort of faith vs. reason contemplation and so I’m eating up the book.
Of course, as pictured above, The Grand Inquisitor stands on it’s own as a novel, but functions in the novel as a book within a book.
I’m not going to go on with my usual brief musings about Dostoevsky or The Brothers Karamazov. I’ll just leave it as I love it.
Although I will mention one thing running through my mind. A novel like B.K., will people still be reading it thousands of years from now? As we read the Bible or the Odyssey? Can this sort of book withstand a change of civilization? One would think so.
June 12, 2007
One of the problems in finishing one of the best books you’ve ever read is that it’s hard to read others. I can’t finish and bascially don’t like The Jungle, and I started Devil in the White City, a fairly interesting piece of historical fiction about the Chicago World’s Fair in the late 1800s. But after reading Blood Meridian I just expect to be fully engaged at all times and it just doesn’t happen.
But I’ve at The Walmart Effect by Charles Fishman hanging around on MP3 for a while and have been more or less denying myself from listening to it until I finish The Jungle. But I couldn’t wait anymore.
What’s interesting about Wal-mart is the way it turns the tables on it’s suppliers; it’s such an empire with so many stores it can force companies to conform to it’s needs, often destroying companies in the process. Vlasic and Huffy are two examples that went bankrupt after increasing sales after hooking up with Wal-mart.
I’m almost done, and it’s not like Fishman is offering solutions, but he does mention, and I fully agree, is that people view capitialism as this untouchable entity, that it in order to be it cannot be touched. But the effect of Wal-mart proves otherwise. Products are getting shittier, less competition, not to mention the effect on actual people forced into poverty and so forth.
June 4, 2007
Blood Meridian, Cormac McCarthy and Oprah
I finished Blood Meridian. It’s one of the best books I’ve ever read. I haven’t read many books where a such a feeling is built and sustained from beginning to end and on such a large scale.
It’s a shame McCarthy is so publicity shy, because it would be interesting to hear some of his intentions of the book spilled out on the table. I took it to be mostly about man’s desire for war, and the Judge character to be something like Satan or the grim reaper.
Oddly enough, McCarthy is going to be on Oprah later this week. She’s apparently a big fan. I have nothing against Oprah, meaning I have no opinion. I think it’s good that she encourages people to read.
I have to say I’m skeptical when someone who avoids publicity his entire life suddenly yields and goes on the biggest daytime television show of all time. I think it’s safe to say he was offered an amount of money he simply couldn’t possibly refuse.
Not sure if I’ll watch. Somehow I doubt he’ll be discussing about the philosophical ideas that went into a book he wrote over 20 years ago. I prefer to keep him in my mind as a reclusive wierdo who lives in the middle of nowhere on the Texas/Mexico border.
May 28, 2007
More about Blood Meridian and The Jungle
About a week ago I posted about reading these two books. I’m still rolling through them, but my opinion has totally changed. I’m a flip-flopper.
I downloaded the audio to the unabridged version of Blood Meridian and it’s made a big difference for me. Part of this is due to the fact that the McCarthy doesn’t always make it clear who’s talking, and uses very little diction. The reader sounds a little like Charton Heston, which for a Western noir style fits quite well.
One of my favorite passages from the book so far takes place at a banquet honoring some of the mercenaries (the main characters, mostly Americans, who are essentially trolling the Texas/Mexico border for scalps).
Patriotic toasts were drunk, the govenor’s aides raising thier glasses to Washington and Franklin and the Americans responding with yet more of their own country’s heroes, ignorant alike of diplomacy and any name at all from the pantheon of their sister repulbic.
One of the major themes in the book is the way that countries, bands, and armies run across land, take it from others, build their civilizations, but in the end the land is the only thing that stays the same. Dust is dust and so on. The land is the only thing that will remain long after the next thing comes along.
McCarthy is definately making this point throughout the book, which is a little jarring considering it’s a western.
Still like The Jungle, but a little less than initially. I find the tone a tad condescending in parts. I still love a good class struggle story, but a few times Sinclair refers to the protagonists as “our friends,” and that puts me off a bit. It reminds mea little of Lars Von Trier’s Dogville. I liked that movie, as I’m liking The Jungle. My friend, who also recently read The Jungle totally disagrees with my idea.
May 22, 2007
Back in the Jungle
I’m listening to Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle, which I’ve always wanted to read, but, as a meat eater, have always hesitated to read.
What a heartbreaking and mesmerizing book this is. Firstly, it makes me consider my own ancestors who came to America from Germany, Italy and Ireland around the turn of the 20th century.
I wonder about the conditions they lived and worked in…and ultimately I wonder why they came to America in the first place. I don’t mean that as a slag on America. I honestly wonder what truly brought them there. Greed? Pride? Hope? Bad luck? Good fortune? Sure the standard line would be “they came to make a better life.” But I wonder why they really came.
Oddly the location of The Jungle, the old Stockyards of Chicago, is an area I’m relatively familiar with. The yards are gone, though the gate apparently still stands.
I’m sure I’ll have more to say about the book as I read on.
May 6, 2007
Rick Roderick
Over here in Korea I spend a lot of time walking around aimlessly. For most of my life I’ve been doing this, but it wasn’t until recently that I realized I was actually practicing a form of meditation. So I like it even more.
The difference in Korea is an MP3 player. I walk around the back alleys of Korea listening to various lectures, audio books and podcasts. It is this sort of thing that makes me realize I am quite content and somewhat lucky in life.
One of my favorites for three years running is The Teaching Company. These guys advertise in magazines like Harper’s. They offer lecture series on all sorts of topics, most of which are historical or philisophical in nature.
I just finished “Nietzsche and the Post-Modern Condition” by Rick Roderick. After three years of listening to these things I can say Roderick is the most captivating lecturer I’ve heard. He was from West Texas and raised a Baptist, which helps cast Nietzsche in a totally different light.
One point he makes is that Nietzsche is totally misunderstood by general public as a fascist philosopher. This was mostly due British scholars depicting him as such immediately following WWII. But Roderick argues this bias prevents the greatness of Nietzsche’s ideas from reaching the general public, especially in America.
Apparently Roderick died in 2002, which isn’t terribly surprising in hearing his cigarette ravaged voice during lectures. But he did two other series for The Teaching Company, one of which (“Philosophy and Human Values”) I’ve already put on my player.
I like the idea of someone like Roderick being preserved and finding an audience following his death. I suppose once upon a time this would have been more common-had the Greeks had MP3 players. Of course today this concept is almost fetishized in music.
I found this Website dedicated to him. You can download his lectures directly from the site.