Bob Dylan and the Pope: Mystique and Politique

 

The French thinker Charles Péguy once remarked—I might not have the phrase quite right—that “everything begins in mystique and ends in politique.” In two recent films, both excellent, that remark is put to the test.

Conclave gives us a look inside the political machinations at the highest levels of an institution founded two millennia ago by an individual who enigmatically told a woman at the well, “whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst.”  I’m referring to the Roman Catholic Church, of course. In Conclave, a pope has died and cardinals have been summoned from around the world to Rome to choose a successor.

The challenge presented to the individuals involved, and to the actors playing the roles, is to corral the impulses of piety, faith, and devotion toward furthering the “cause” while suppressing the personal ambition that often simmers just below the surface. Without having seen the film, it might be difficult to imagine Stanley Tucci and John Lithgow as two of the main protagonists, but they acquit themselves well. Ralph Fiennes is even better playing the dean of the College of Cardinals, strapped with the responsibility of conducting the conclave while suffering doubts about his own faith all the while. The film is riddled with intrigue and suspense, but it also succeeds in sustaining the element of sanctity without which it might easily have descended into satire or farce.    

 The recent biopic about Bob Dylan’s early career, A Complete Unknown, is also a winner. The script is sharp, the acting is superb, the rendering of the folk music scene in the early 60s is rich (unlike the café scenes in Inside Lewin Davis, for example), and the music is emotionally affecting. And to top it all off, Timothy Chalamet succeeds in bringing an element of appropriately mumbling weirdness, mystery, shyness, and semi-naïve self-aggrandizement to the central character.

I remember those times, not in Greenwich Village but back here in good old Minnesota. I don’t think I ever bought a copy of Sing Out magazine, but I watched Hootenanny occasionally. (I preferred Shindig and Hullabaloo.) I spent my grade-school years listening to the Kingstone Trio, Ricky Nelson, and Peter, Paul, and Mary. When Pete Seeger came out with “Little Boxes,” my family was living in a tract home in Bartlesville, Oklahoma. I didn’t “get it.”

 In short, I tried to like folk music, but it didn’t take. Too predictable, too corny. At camp we sang “Blowin’ in the Wind” along with other tunes such as “500 Miles” and “Michael Row the Boat Ashore,” the playlist enlivened at intervals by “Kumbaya” and “The Lion Sleeps Tonight.” I preferred peppier numbers like “B-I-N-G-O” and “The Song of the Temperance Union,” which the camp director seemed to have a special fondness for.

In time, I bought a few Dylan LPs. The tunes I remember best are “Its All Over Now, Baby Blue” and “The Gates of Eden.” In the course of the film, Chalamet sings quite a few of the great ones, including “Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright,” “It Ain’t Me, Babe,” “A Hard Rain’s A-Gunna Fall,” “Subterranean Homesick Blues,” and “Like a Rolling Stone.” And we get to hear quite a few verses. In the context of the film these songs come across as expressions of genuine personal emotion rather than timeless classics heavily laden with Dylanology. I teared up more than once.

Many critics have noted the factual elisions, discrepancies, and fabrications in the film, but it’s easy to see how they carry the action forward and focus our attention on the essential elements of Dylan’s development. He is a true original, but his sources of inspiration—Woody Guthrie, Johnny Cash, Pete Seeger, and others—are also front and center, along with Al Cooper and Mike Bloomfield, who helped him move on from the quaint world of traditional folk.

One of the films recurring themes is the struggle Dylan faced presenting himself to the world. He wanted to be famous, but he also wanted to be left alone, and the course he charted to sustain that effect left a lot of broken relationships in its wake. Director James Mangold’s achievement is to have rivetted our attention on the power of the music while leaving the questions about who Bob Dylan “really” was, or is, a pleasant mystery.

A half-century later, the "mystique" endures. Dylan himself recently offered a typically Dylanesque appraisal when he commented, before having seen the film, “Timmy's a brilliant actor so I'm sure he's going to be completely believable as me. Or a younger me. Or some other me."

 

Gallery Hopping

The Cargill gallery, off the lobby at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, is just my size–that is to say, small. The items on display are usually new and invariably devoted to a single artist or theme. Last Friday Hilary spent an hour or two at the Institute with a friend, and when she got home she suggested we go back. She’d be happy to take a second look and thought I’d like some of the pieces. I did.

On exhibit were the pots of Santa Clara potter Jody Folwell, which have assumed many forms over her five decades of work at the wheel. I tended to like the early, naturalistic ones more than those that were covered with decorative representations of fish and mammals, but I also found it easy to admire her skills as a draftsman. 

I also liked the title of the exhibit,  “O’ Powa O’ Meng.” Translated from Folwell’s native tongue, it means “I came here, I got here, I’m still going.” Sort of like “Veni,vidi, vici” only a lot more humane.

We next visited a small exhibit on the third floor devoted to a few paintings and posters by Toulouse-Lautrec and his contemporaries. The man’s work is easy to pass over in the midst of any major impressionist exhibit; In this context it held up much better.

Back on the second floor, in one of the period rooms behind the theater, we finally found the newly assembled Tibetan temple. We sat on a bench against the back wall admiring the textiles, examined the gold votaries and icons, and soaking up the vibe while listening to an almost subliminal recording of chant-like vocal sounds. The room stands in dramatic contrast to the austere, nature-based elegance of the Japanese rooms just down the hall, and it occurred to me that its “tastefully” gaudy interior might have provided the kind of visual stimulation required to counterbalance a life spent largely on a barren, windswept, Tibetan plateau.

Out in the gallery a docent shared a few details about the sand painting hanging on the wall behind her, which a crew of Tibetan monks had been created 1991. She perked up when I mentioned that we’d been there at the time and had watched the monks doing the work.

"Oh, really? Which gallery were they in?” she asked. Alas, neither of us could remember. Warming to her topic, the woman went on to divulge numerous unusual details about how the collector had come upon the artifacts in the shrine and why the Institute had been chosen to house it. 

Making our way out of the labyrinthine building through the Asian collections we passed a gallery housing a few choice woodblock prints by Yoshida Hiroshi. A parting touch to a narrowly focused but memorable visit.  

With the weather warming, it might have been a good weekend for skiing, but the next morning, as we approached the Wirth Park Trailhead in the pre-dawn light, it was clear that something was afoot. We pulled into the parking lot alongside the striped wooden barrier and I rolled down the window.

“What’s going on?” I asked.

The man tending the entry leaned into the window. “The junior championships. But they’ll be over this afternoon at two. They’ve been grooming like mad so the skiing should still be excellent.”

 “Maybe we’ll just go out now and do a spin around the front nine,” I said.

“That’s a good idea,” the man agreed, as cordial as ever. “But you can’t park here. Just pull in and circle on around. This is the only way in or out.”

“Got it.”

So we retraced our route to the chalet, parked, walked across the road, and shuffled our way out across the snow and grass, watching the sky turn pink above the skyline. We had the place to ourselves.

Inspired by the previous day’s visit to MIA, we decided to visit the Cafesjian Museum on Highway 96, off amid the rolling hills of the northern suburb of Shoreview. It’s located in a low, one-story warehouse in a former industrial park. Founded by local connoisseur and collector Gerard Cafesjian, it’s best known for its collection of art glass, but the current exhibit is devoted mostly to an eclectic mix of representational paintings—landscapes, homey British interiors, cluttered still-lifes, city parks.

The gallery itself is modest in size, which is fine by me. Standing in silence in such an uncluttered space, proceeding slowly from one rendering to the next, instills a feeling of peace and reverence that often seems to be in short supply these days.

We had made our way almost around the second gallery when a docent passed by, and she shared a number of interesting details about Cafesjian himself. He may be best known to the general public for preserving the wooden-horse merry-go-round at the Como Zoo, but he’s also distinguished within the arts community by his long-standing interest in buying the work of local artists.

An oval-shaped room in the center of the warehouse, just beyond the lobby, serves as a small, airy  library of coffee-table books devoted to various artists and historical subjects. An elaborate arrangement of Chihuly’s famous marine art glass has been installed in the ceiling of a nearby side-gallery, a miniature replica of Tacoma’s Glass Bridge.

As we left the museum a question presented itself: Where were we going to eat lunch? Curious to explore the neighborhood further, we drove south on Lexington, crossed the freeway on an overpass, and grabbed a booth at a strip-mall Indian restaurant called Namaste India Grill and Brewhouse. Rich hot flavors for a chilly winter day, and the color palette bears a certain resemblance to blown glass.  

You might think we'd had enough, but we were just getting started. The next morning we paid a visit to the Minnesota Museum of Art, located in the Endecott Building in downtown St. Paul. They've recently expanded, and the two new galleries now exhibit a fine collection of painting, photos, and prints by artists well-known to locals, from Clement Hoppers to Wanda Gag, Mike Hazard to Dougie Padilla, George Morrison to Paul Manship, along with plenty of artists I've never heard of. I found the arrangement of portraits in the first gallery especially appealing. It encouraged us to admire the diversity of the styles and subjects first, then consult the labels identifying the artists and subjects that were grouped together over to one side.

Among the classic twentieth century works I took a liking to a painting by Cameron booth of a farmer, some horses, and some hills. Everything seemed just right spatially, while nothing was excessively stylized in the manner of Thomas Hart Benton or Grant Wood.

After enjoying our stroll through the galleries, we headed down to the train depot a few blocks to the east. I had remembered the lobby there as vast and drafty, but the restaurant that opened there recently was filling fast, and in the concourse leading to the railway platforms at least 200 people--children and adults--were engaged in a lively jigsaw puzzle competition. 

 

Considered in retrospect,  I was less impressed during our weekend of gallery-hopping by the genius of any individual artist or work than by the celebration of humanity exhibited throughout, and the desire of the artists involved, beyond matters of self-expression, to direct our attention in that direction. Bravo!  

I also remain confirmed in my opinion that the artwork being chosen for jigsaw puzzles has really gone downhill in recent decades. Ugh!

Ice Shanty Village

A cold, bright day. Easy enough to stay indoors, but we’d made a plan to run a few errands and then pay a visit to the Ice Shanty Village out on Lake Harriet. Our first stop was a warehouse across town in the Seward neighborhood called Free Geek, where we dropped off two old computer screens. One was so heavy that I began to wonder if it was an old television set.

Once we’d dropped off the screens in the lobby and paid our $10 disposal fee we continued on into the warehouse where the shelves were filled with used computers, DVD players, stereos, and speakers, many of them slightly scuffed and dusty, all of them reasonably priced. Another set of shelves held rows of small plastic laundry tubs full of VGA, HDMI, and other sundry cables and adapters at very low prices or free. It all reminded me of the much smaller but also much less well organized collection of cables, devices, speakers, and gadgets we have in the basement at home.

As we left the parking lot Hilary convinced me to cut across South Minneapolis on Lake Street by reminding me that we were only a few blocks from Ingebretson’s Scandinavian Gifts and Food. It’s been a long time since we stopped in, and I, for one, had a sudden hankering for a chunk of their chopped liver pate. 

We entered through the gift shop, which was amply stocked with textiles, pots and pans, gadgets, textiles, and a larger selection of books than I’d remembered. Maybe they’ve rearranged. I was drawn to one or two of the kitchy ceramic coffee mugs (made in China)--one with an aurora borealis theme and another that was covered with an array of small, colorful coffee pots in silhouette.

At Christmas times long lines form at Ingebretson’s, and the Star Tribune almost invariably carries a story about it, but today the butcher shop was deserted–not even a butcher or a bell to ring. We wandered back and forth for a few minutes, peering into the glass-fronted display cases, until Hilary noticed a small block of that caramel-colored Ski Queen goat cheese that we knew we had to buy. I wasn’t so sure about the pricey Swedish flatbread, but you have to figure in the old-country-nostalgia surcharge.

The drive west across town takes quite a while under any circumstances, but several stoplights were on the fritz, and the stop signs that had been put up to replace them hampered the flow. As we stutter-stepped along it occurred to me that there must be at least forty Mexican restaurants on Lake Street. How do they all stay in business?

Before heading south around the lakes we stopped briefly at Whole Foods to drop off a computer cable I was returning to Amazon. They’ve got that down to a science; a couple of Q-code scans and we were done. We ventured out on the floor and found ourselves in a bewildering world of off-brands with pastel labels and absurd prices. What happened to General Mills, Dole, Heintz, and Del Monte? The Whole Food chain prides itself on its selection of quality organic and New Age products, I’m sure, but they didn’t have the one thing we were looking for: Aunt Nelly’s Sweet and Sour Red Cabbage, the essential accompaniment to chopped liver. Yet the store was busy and no one seemed dismayed by the inventory. Yet another alternative universe.

By the time we reached Lake Harriet the temperature had risen to 11 degrees. We parked a few blocks from the lake next to Berry Woods, where Henry David Thoreau liked to stroll during his convalescent visit to Minnesota in 1861. From the rise a block away we could see lots of activity in the distance out past the bandstand. As we headed out from shore into the blinding sunlight we passed an odd but attractive pool of bright blue water that had collected on the ice. A small diamond-shaped sign on a three-foot pole said “Danger: Thin Ice.” It seemed inadequate. Then again, who in their right mind would walk over to examine a big pool of water on an otherwise snow-covered lake?

At the first shanty we passed, maybe eight or ten people were singing a song around a smoking campfire. I didn’t recognize the song, and there was no chance of getting close to the fire, so we moved on, passing one goofy or whimsical shanty after another, stopping to read the descriptive signs but entering inside only once or twice. Lines had formed in front of several of the structures. We crowded into one to find that it was already packed with people, many of them, I presume, trying to escape the wind for a minute or two, like us.

But half the fun is just wandering the ice on a brilliant day, mingling with other adventurous people inspired by the same spirit of creativity and good-natured irreverence. I almost wonder whether the appeal lies in connections to a long-forgotten ancestral past when life was nomadic and family connections were reinforced by ad hoc seasonal get-togethers?

Several people were flying kites in the distance, a bare-legged man wearing dreadlocks was setting a few mattes out on the ice for an upcoming yoga class, and a group of enthusiasts nearby were learning how to play ice lacrosse.

At the far end of the village a small stage had been set up on which visitors could lip-sync to their favorite songs. I asked the heavily bearded man running the sound system what was behind the shimmering curtain at the back of the stage. “Costumes,” he said with a grin. “Lots of costumes.”

I didn’t recognize the song the woman was singing, and I couldn’t see her lips, either, due to the glare of the sun, but I enjoyed watching four or five dancers on the ice just beyond the stage doing a highly choreographed routine consisting largely of jumping jacks.

As we made our way down the other side of the village we passed one structure sheathed in clear plastic with a large loom hanging from the ceiling. Another shanty consisted of a cozy open-air fireplace and a couch where visitors could read a selection of banned books. One shack had been designed so that you could make music by pounding on the wooden planks hanging from the walls.

The last structure we passed was a mirror/memory shack where, among other things, a blackboard had been installed so visitors could share an experience they’d like to relive, either because they’d screwed it up the first time, or more likely, because they loved it so much. One person had written, “This morning’s coffee.” Another had scrawled “Yesterday.” And a third: “My wedding, times three!”

Back on dry land, I stuck a bill into the plexiglas donation box and we wandered over to higher ground and the shelter of the food trucks. After one last look out toward the village, we made our way back to the car, well aware that we hadn’t explored the scene fully, but happy we’d made the effort. It was fun.

Our dinner that night was fabulous: Ingebretson's pate and red cabbage on flatbread, with a side of green beans cooked with lemon zest, ginger, and garlic.

Recipe to follow.  

Suburban Ramble

Perhaps it's just an urban myth, but it's an attractive one just the same: the neighborhood life characterized by the daily stroll down the street from your sunny walk-up apartment to the boulangerie, followed by the trip around the block to the charcuterie and the sidewalk farmers market, concluding with the kiosk where you pick up a copy of Le Monde, or the bookstore where the proprietor greets you with information about new releases she has a feeling you might like.

On some days my life is a little like that, American-style. That is to say, I do it in a car. My neighborhood auto mechanic on Stinson Boulevard tells me there's $3,000 worth of work to be done on our rusty 2006 Corolla—Bluebook value $1,200 at best. He makes mention of the clutch, exhaust, and oil pan. The last time we were in for an oil change I said, "Maybe you could just tighten up the heat shield by the gas tank so the vehicle will stop rattling so much."

But is still runs. I started it up one sunny morning recently while Hilary was at the pottery studio. I decided, with the empty and joyous vigor that often resurfaces on the first days of a new year, that it was time to get a few things done. Before leaving the house  I logged into the Great Clips at Turners Crossroads on my desktop and snagged a reservation. The next opening was 66 minutes away.

"Click here and we'll send you a text when you should head to the salon." No thanks. I have other plans.

My first stop during the interval was the credit union, where I deposited a few checks. There was no one in line, and a woman at the counter waved me over. Just then the woman doing the drive-through finished a transaction, turned around, and waved me over to her counter.

"She waved first," I said, pointing to the first woman.

"I'm hurt," the second woman said with a laugh.

My teller did the deposit, and at my request, she also laid ten tens out on the counter as a withdrawal. Severe, important-looking greenbacks. In the age of plastic,  that's enough cash to last 'til Fourth of July.

Continuing out of town on Highway 55, I took a left at 73 and negotiated the back roads through the Oak Knoll neighborhood, past the church where Hilary and I were married and out to a glorified strip mall north of I-394 called West Ridge Market. That's where my barber shop is located, along with a choice selection of other businesses. I still had a good 40 minutes to kill, and I knew just what to do with it. First stop, Michael's, where I purchased a pre-cut matte for a frame I'd measured that morning. (This is the kind of task I often think of doing, but rarely get around to doing.)

What am I going to put in it? I have no idea. But we've got so many old art books sitting around the house it won't be difficult to find something interesting.

Where am I going to hang it? Come on! One step at a time.

My next stop was Trader Joe's, a hundred yards east. I needed one thing—some split peas for a soup that would also include a generous heap of the ham chunks we bought in Two Harbors a few days ago.

I have a fondness for Trader Joe's, not only because of the reasonable prices and conveniently limited selection, but also the staff, who are cut from a different piece of cloth from your typical supermarket employee. They're older, they rotate tasks, and you get the feeling they've got other things going on in their lives besides merchandising carrots and bananas. Having worked for several decades in a warehouse with the same kind of people, I occasionally get a twinge of nostalgia as I see these women and men breaking down boxes or pushing carts of onions and avocados out from the back room through those big swinging doors. Quite a few are from other parts of the country, or the world. How do I know? Because at the resister they ask how your day is going, almost expecting a conversation to ensue, and it often does.

As I was standing in the aisle, scrutinizing the rice and the canned beans, a passing stocker, perhaps Japanese-American, stopped and said, "Can I help you find something?"

"Well, I'm looking for split peas." 

"I'm afraid all we stock here is lentils," she pointed to a bag on the bottom shelf.

"I'm not surprised," I replied. But that struck me as an insult, so I added, " I mean, you have lots of good stuff, but you can't stock everything."

Around the corner I picked up a chunk of suet at the Wildbird Store and arrived at the barber shop a few doors down to discover I was still number five on the list. The tall Brazilian woman who sometimes cuts my hair came over to the resister. "Are you signed in? What's your name? John T? There you are. Don't worry. It won't be long. Maybe ten minutes."

I didn't quite believe her, but I'd brought a book along: Zoroaster's Children & Other Travels by Marius Kociejowski. The selection of locales was ample; I could take my choice—Prague, Aleppo, Tunisia, Moscow. I picked an essay called "A Journey to the Sun's Grave" but hadn't figured out which country Kociejowski was visiting—Norway? Estonia?—by the time my name came up. A young woman from Medina (Minnesota, not Saudi Arabia) took me back to her chair. I didn't recognize her. She's been working there only a month. She told me a little about her two sons, I mentioned a concert we'd attended years ago at the Medina Ballroom—Los Lobos—and explained why I'd begun bringing a yoga mat on camping trips. And that was that. It doesn't take long these days for someone to cut my hair.

A sense of lightness invariably presents itself after a haircut, and when I left the salon the day seemed brighter than ever. In fact, everything was going so well that on the spur of the moment I stepped into the narrow Triple-A shop that I've passed by many times before. A middle-aged woman—red hair, thin face, friendly demeanor—was sitting at a desk just beyond the luggage display.

"Can I help you?" she said.

"I don't know," I replied. "I was just passing by and thought I'd drop in. I see you sell suitcases."

"Yes, that's the merchandise. Guidebooks too. We also provide maps, travel advice. Are you planning a vacation?"

"Not really. We just got back from England in September. Maybe there's a trip to Scotland somewhere on the horizon. Fly into Edinburgh, take a train to Inverness, do some hiking ..."

"I lived in Scotland for three years," she said enthusiastically. "But Susan, back there in the last desk, is an expert. She's been there many times, knows all the hotels. She could help you plan your trip."

"So they help you plan your trip, and then you pay them?"

"Are you a member? Well, then it's free. Here. Let me give you her card." We spent a few minutes discussing traffic circles,but eventually I discerned a worried look creep into her eyes that said, This guy has a load of stories, and he just wants to talk, so I thanked her for her trouble and returned to the car.

What a morning! What an outing! What a neighborhood! I admit, it doesn't seem much like Paris, the way I'm describing it, but that's not the point. It was fun. Besides, a flat in Paris the size of our modest, one-story house might easily cost two million Euros. And it wouldn't have a yard.

"I Only Count the Foggy Hours"

I am invariably puzzled when I come upon the phrase printed on a sun dial: "I Only Count the Sunny Hours." It isn't hard to see the truth of the statement. It's obvious, and hardly worth mentioning. But is that supposed to be a good thing? As if the sundial's inability to register life's varied moods were an act of will, of denial, and a healthy one at that?

It was foggy this morning, and the streets in our neighborhood were somewhat slick. We proceeded around the block in the dark at a slower pace, and at one point I slipped and made a dramatic recovery, wrenching my back momentarily in the process.

The snow is gone, and the social element of the holiday season is over. It was grand while it lasted. 

Big family gatherings, a dinner or two with friends, breakfast with my cousin Pat, dominoes and lasagna (a fine combination!) with my sister Nancy. 

Hilary spent one afternoon baking cookies with her friend Carol. We stopped over to visit our friend Nadia, who's recovering from knee surgery with the help of a high-tech ice machine, and enjoyed an afternoon visit from another couple who were returning a hat I'd forgotten at their house a few days earlier.

It's been several years since we last tried to talk ourselves into attending midnight Mass on Christmas Eve, but we kept the house full of music, most of it vocal and "churchy" but not specific to the season—though Bach's Christmas Oratorio  and some carols performed by the Alfred Deller Consort did show up on the playlist.

One foggy afternoon we drove down to a viewing site at the airport out into the midst of the runways to see if we could spot the snowy own that's been reported out there. Success! Thanks to a gentleman from Kansas standing nearby with a very fine spotting scope. We then drove to the Fort Snelling Veteran's Cemetery nearby to take a look at the tombstone that was placed recently for Hilary's mom. There seemed to be a lot of traffic in the vicinity—people returning rental cars, light-rail trains whizzing by. Well of course, we're at an airport, and it's Christmas!

Now the hunkering down commences. After several weeks of too many sweets and too much rich food, we chop up some stray vegetables for a wholesome salade Niçoise. Fire in the fireplace. And books. Having finished The Invention of Curried Sausage by Uwe Timm, I decide to reread Penelope Fitzgerald's The Blue Flower. (I must be in a "German" phase.) Hilary has been working her way through the "Blind Justice" mystery series by Bruce Alexander.  

The festive season has come and gone. I hope the snow returns soon.   

 

Christmas Moods

Scanning the shelves to find just the right book before heading off to the waiting room of a dentist, barbershop, or doctor's office can be a challenge. The one you select must be small enough to stick in a pocket, yet engaging enough to hold your interest, while also being dull enough so that you can let it go at a moment's notice, and perhaps forever. I can attest from experience that such a deliberation often takes place at the last minute

On a a recent trip to the doctor's office I selected a mid-sized trade paperback I hadn't thought about in decades: Ernest Gellner's Plough, Sword, and Book: The Structure of Human History. (I'm tempted to admit that I had never thought about it at all, except that when I began to read it, I came upon passages I underlined decades ago, even a good ways into the book.)

Gellner divides human activities into three categories—the productive, the coercive, and the cognitive—hence the title: plough, sword, book. And he has a lot of insightful things to say about the follies of modern economists, atavistic hippies, and tendentious anthropologists. For example, he typifies Marx as the "ultimate bourgeois," and offers sound reasons for doing so. He pokes holes in the then-fashionable theories of Marshall Sahlins concerning the lifestyles of the Hadza people.

Where Hayek damns early man for his gregarious social morality, Sahlins praises him for his freedom from greed and, even more perhaps, for his freedom from the work ethic. Where nineteenth-century populists idealize the peasant, Sahlins' neolithic populism goes much further back and idealizes the hunter/gatherer. The rot had set in not with the first bourgeois, but with the first peasant.

 Here we catch a whiff of Gellner's wit, which can often be heard gurgling just beneath the surface of his prose. All the same, large sections of the book remain a bit abstract, because Gellner is writing a typology of cultural and social forms, not a history of civilization. For example, at one point Gellner asks: "How can it happen not merely that the weak, the swordless, overcome  the swordsmen, but that the whole organization and ethos of society changes, that Production replaces Predation as the central theme and value of life? Everything in the standard condition of agrarian life militates against such a miracle. Yet it did happen."

Gellner lists as many as fifteen factors that might have made such a transformation possible. He analyzes them, rejecting some, accepting others as possible, others still as even probable.

It strikes me that Gellner's analysis of the cognitive aspects of human life, while riddled with insights, also suffers somewhat from a failure to clearly distinguish between concepts, categories, and ideas. On the other hand, he's adept at ferreting out the contradictions inherent in nostalgic and utopian attitudes toward the past, for example:

The tendency of societies, especially small and simple societies, to have reasonably coherent visions of the world, to inhabit such a cosmos, has often been noted. The passing away of such coherent visions in complex and unstable societies, and its replacement by an impersonal, law-abiding, indifferent Nature, is a source of much recent romantic regret, poignantly expressed. The coherence of the world we have lost was thematic or stylistic rather than strictly logical. A fairly coherent picture was sustained by devices which evaded or ignored logic.  

This remark highlights Gellner's appreciation of patterns of social organization that "work" fairly well even though they don't really "make sense." He returns to the same theme at one point late in the book:

A man following traditional ideas is at least deploying something unlikely to be wholly false, and will at least fall in with the social proprieties of his culture. By contrast, given the infinity of possible truths, a man experimenting with new ideas is unlikely to be successful ... and at the same time is likely to be socially offensive.

We live in an age when the scientific method is strangely under attack by paranoid and often aggressive nay-sayers.

But Gellner's analysis, multifaceted and brilliant though it may be, inadvertently offers a clue as to why this might be so. In his treatment of cognition—concepts, categories, ideas, and empirical information and analysis—he has nothing to say about the important realm of images, imagination, and vision. That realm continues to be important, and available to us. Many people find both solace and meaning in the material that religions offer along those lines.

*   *   *

It being Christmas time, the current of my thought naturally drifts in that direction. One scholar who can supply the perspective to flesh out this dimension is the English philosopher and critic Terry Eagleton.

To call Eagleton merely a critic is to damn him with faint praise. The man is uncommonly erudite and he writes with singular panache—so much so that when reading him we’re reminded of philosophers and social critics on the order of Voltaire and Nietzsche, with touches of Ezra Pound and Wyndham Lewis thrown in for good measure. Like those brilliant and scurrilous gadflies, Eagleton is a counter-puncher. He feigns and jabs, often hitting his mark, while seldom planting his feet on the mat long enough for us to figure out where he really stands.

But perhaps this is a false impression, based on the fact that I’ve read only a few of the essays collected in his book Figures of Dissent: Critical Essays on Fish, Spivak, Žižek and Others. (I’m so out of touch, I thought  Spivak and Žižek were the same person!)

My favorite line from that book: “For postmodern thought the normative is inherently oppressive, as though there was something darkly autocratic about civil rights legislation or not spitting in the milk jug.”

That remark strikes me as both funny and true.

I recently stumbled upon Eagleton’s book, Reason, Faith, and Revolution: Reflections on the God Debate (2009) It was written largely in response to the then-popular works of Hitchen and Dawkins trashing religious sentiment. Reading the first chapter, “The Scum of the Earth,” I was impressed by Eagleton's grasp of Jesus’s mission, Aquinas’s analysis of first causes, and so on. He’s well aware, as few thinkers today are, that we live in the midst of several different "categories of being" and often partake of several simultaneously without contradicting any of them. Gellner would have agreed, I'm sure.

A few Eagleton sallies:

In Nietzsche’s view, the death of God must also spell the death of Man—that is to say, the end of a certain overweening humanism—if absolute power is not simply to be transplanted from the one to the other. Otherwise, humanism will always be secretly theological. It will be a continuation of God by other means. God will simply live a shadowy afterlife in the form of respectable suburban morality, as indeed he does today.

He responds to Christopher Hitchens assertion that “thanks to the telescope and the microscope, [religion] no longer offers an explanation of anything important” as follows:

But Christianity was never meant to the an explanation of anything in the first place. It is rather like saying that thanks to the electric toaster we can forget about Chekhov.

Pursuing the issue of God as creator, Eagleton continues:

God for Christian theology is not a mega-manufacturer. He is rather what sustains all things in being by his love, and would still be this even if the world had no beginning. Creation is not about getting things off the ground. Rather, God is the reason why there is something rather than nothing, the condition of possibility of any entity whatsoever. Not being any sort of entity himself, however, he is not to be reckoned up alongside these things, any more than my envy and my left foot constitute a pair of objects.

In case we haven’t quite wrapped our heads around this concept, Eagleton lays it on a little thicker, jumping from point to point as if he’s afraid our attention might be wandering.

God and the universe do not make two. In an act of Judaic iconoclasm, we are forbidden to make graven images of this nonentity because the only image of him is human beings. There is a document that records Gods endless, dispiriting struggle with organized religion, known as the Bible. God the Creator is not a celestial engineer at work on a superbly rational design that will impress his research grant body no end, but an artist, and an aesthete to boot, who made the world with no functional end in view but simply for the love and delight of it.

He goes on:

Or, as one might say in more theological language, for the hell of it. He made it as gift, superfluity, and gratuitous gesture—out of nothing, rather than out of grim necessity. In fact, for Christian theology there is no necessity to the world at all, and God may have long ago bitterly regretted succumbing to the sentimental impulse which inspired him to throw it off in the first place. He created it out of love, not need. There was nothing in it for him. The Creation is the original acte gratuit.

The danger implicit in this position is that morality relinquishes pride of place to delight. But once again, do we really have to choose between the two in every case?

If we are God’s creatures, it is in the first place because, like him, we exist (or should exist) purely for the pleasure of it.

And where does Jesus fit into all of this? The radical Romantics (according to Eagleton) including Marx, find in Jesus a character who fully grasped this radical disjunct between instrumental reason and the ontological freefall we actually live.

 Jesus, unlike most responsible American citizens, appears to do no work, and is accused of being a glutton and a drunkard. He is presented as homeless, propertyless, celibate, peripatetic, socially marginal, disdain­ful of kinsfolk, without a trade, a friend of outcasts and pa­riahs, averse to material possessions, without fear for his own safety, careless about purity regulations, critical of traditional authority, a thorn in the side of the Establishment, and a scourge of the rich and powerful. Though he was no revolutionary in the modern sense of the term, he has something of the lifestyle of one. He sounds like a cross between a hippie and a guerrilla fighter.

Excesses of energy about, and Eagleton's insights and combativeness are both ever-present.

At this holy time, I'm not much in the combative mood. I enjoy seeing a pine tree covered in lights and colorful glass balls, tiny ceramic statues of the Holy Family sitting on top of the stereo, from which  the sweet, mellow harmonies of Dufay, Victoria, Palestrina and others waft across the room.

It's a different zone of thought, of being. Cookies get made, friends stop by, we take a walk in the pre-dawn snow. And a poem by Thomas Hardy drifts into view that I haven't thought about in years. I think you know it. Hardy spends a few stanzas describing a manger scene in which the oxen kneel before the infant Jesus. He concludes:

So fair a fancy few would weave

In these years! Yet, I feel,

If someone said on Christmas Eve,

“Come; see the oxen kneel,

 

“In the lonely barton by yonder coomb

Our childhood used to know,”

I should go with him in the gloom,

Hoping it might be so.     

 

A Literary Ramble

Korean novelist Han Kang recently won the Nobel Prize for literature. I'd never heard of her. That's not unusual. I logged into my library account immediately and placed holds on a few of her works. I was tickled to see that no one else had done so; I was first in line for The Vegetarian—or so I thought. By the next morning I'd slipped to 96th. I guess they collate that kind of data overnight.

Now, many weeks later, the first of the novels I'd requested has come through. The White Book. It's a short book devoted to one- and two-page observations by a woman reflecting on a family trauma that took place before she was born. 

I liked the format. Reading it last night, I came upon the following sentence.

"Were it not the case that life stretches out in a straight line, she might at some point become aware of having rounded a bend." 

Hmm, I say to myself, Is life really like a straight line? Not exactly. 

I've been thinking  lately about how the richness of life is, at least in part, a result of  time doubling back on itself as it moves ahead, compounding impressions and creating a firmer, more intricate, and more beautiful fabric. Anyone involved in a healthy long-term relationship is nourished by the steady stream of echoes, reminders, and shared experiences that make up an average day, often without thinking much about it. And the material culture that many of us surround ourselves with--books, music, posters--serves the same function.

A case in point: Charles Dumond died a few days ago. He composed many of the songs that Edith Piaf made famous, including "Non, je ne regrette rien." Basically, "I Regret Nothing." Some friends were coming over that night and I was looking for a Piaf CD to play at the appropriate moment—though conversation is often  so lively no one cares, including me. During that search I came upon a recording of Darius Milhaud's piano music that Hilary's brother Paul made for me many years ago. I put it on the stereo. I hadn't heard it in years. It was a revelation.

I like Milhaud and occasionally listen to a William Bolcom recording of his piano music, but Bolcom's approach is boisterous, whereas these interpretations were quietly lyrical, almost as if Milhaud had been channeling Mompou. They were simpler and more open, though still pleasantly awkward and adventurous harmonically. I loved them. I played the CD three times. Something from my past had been returned to me, and it was precisely the "space" I wanted to be in.

The same thing also happens with books. After devouring Olivia Laing's The Garden Against Time, I found myself in need of a breather and began to read short books that I happened to spot on the shelves, almost at random, even though I'd read them before. The first, Max Frisch's Man in the Holocene (1978),is about old age and memory loss in the Swiss Alps during a weather catastrophe, though the parts I liked best were about mountain climbing. 
The second, Yasmina Reza's Hammerklavier (1997), was better than I'd remembered. Thirty years ago  I enjoyed the whimsy and the slightly cruel humor but missed the occasional moments of tenderness, honesty, and insight into the fleetingness of time and how hard it is to capture. Then again, the New Yorker wrote not long ago, "Reza is an adversarial writer even in her tender moments, which are infrequent, and she has a gift for derision which Flaubert might have admired."

The fleetingness of time also figures prominently in the third of the slim volumes I happened upon, Eugene Ionesco's Fragments of a Journal (1967). I suspect few readers have stuck with this collection of meditations from beginning to end. Ionesco is obsessed with death, absurdity, nothingness, but in an almost childlike way that resurfaces again and again like a bubbling fountain rather than congealing into an indigestible paste of theory. Along the way he relates sad and charming episodes from his childhood in a French village so small it doesn't appear on a map. You never know what's coming next. For example:

Two possible atitudes:

To imagine, because imagining means foreseeing. What we imagine is now true, what we imagine will be realized. Science fiction is becoming, or has already become, realistic literature.

A second possible attitude to consider: reality as something beyond reality, to be aware of it not as surrealistic but as unfamiliar, miraculous, a-real.

And a page or two later:

"What is life? I may be asked. For me life is not Time; it is not this state of existence, forever escaping us, slipping between our fingers and vanishing like a ghost as soon as you try to grasp it. For me it is, it must be, the present, presentness, plenitude. I have run after life so much that I have lost it."

Plenitude is a good word, I think, but it would be a mistake to associate it too closely with mere 'presentness.' Life is not a straight line. It's squiggly. The lines circle around and overlap. That's what gives life dimension. Memory is the mechanism by which life fleshes itself out, bolsters itself, and lays the groundwork for rounding the next bend--or heading off in an entirely new direction. 

Shared memories are even better.

I step into the den where Hilary is deep into Percival Everett's James, and there, sitting on the stereo cabinet, is the brightly lit, three-foot, artificial Christmas tree we've stored in the basement for her mom for many years, returning it to her for a few weeks every holiday season. Dorothy died in May at the age of 97. A few days ago Hilary set up the tree, took a picture, and sent it around to her brothers. "Anyone want it?"

No one responded. Meanwhile, we've grown to like it. The colored lights are cheery, and as Hilary says, "It reminds me of all the years I used to go over and help mom decorate it."