2013 book breakdown

This past year, I read seventy-three books, down from seventy-five the year before, and buttressed by some help from Shakespeare.  Not bad.

Despite my halfhearted commitment to read more fiction, I only managed to read fifteen of the buggers during the course of the year, the same as last year.  On the other hand, I did read nine plays, and a helpfully annotated poem. 

In the spirit of tradition, I hereby offer another equally halfhearted commitment. 

Here are my recommendations from the past year.  I tried to stay away from the classics: Tacitus and Plutarch are marvelous, but since everyone already knows that, there's little point in me bringing it up.

The Rise of American Civilization - Charles and Mary Beard.  Simply excellent.  Perhaps second only to Paul Johnson's book on the topic in terms of the insight and enjoyment it provided.

Shakespeare's Kings - John Julius Norwich.  The reviews seem mixed on this one, but I rather liked it.  Deserves to make the list if only because it: 1) finally got me to actually read all the plays about the kings Henry; and 2) greatly aided my understanding in that regard.

In the Basement of the Ivory Tower - Professor X.  College isn't for everyone.  Or, if it is--which I doubt--our schools fail to prepare people in this regard.  An important if depressing book.

The Little Way of Ruthie Leming - Rod Dreher.  Part memoir, part paean to his late sister, this book, which I reviewed here, is touching, without being sentimental.  Much recommended.

And lastly, as my piece of fiction:

The Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck.  I choose this less to puff up my chest at my good taste--I enjoyed a famous novel!--than to remind us of its timeliness.  If the next great American novel has been published, I would be among the last to know, but there's a need for someone to do for our recession what Steinbeck did for the Great Depression.  Read his book until that one comes along.

2014 Reading List

Read
The Crisis of Christendom - Warren Carroll
Tea Party Catholic - Samuel Gregg
The Fellowship of the Ring - J. R. R. Tolkien (*)
The Two Towers - J. R. R. Tolkien (*)
The Return of the King - J. R. R. Tolkien (*)
The Name of the Rose - Umberto Eco (*)
Dad is Fat - Jim Gaffigan
Grimm's Fairy Tales
An Anxious Age - Joseph Bottum
Summa Theologica - Thomas Aquinas (Vol. V of V)
Darwin: Portrait of a Genius - Paul Johnson
Purgatorio - Dante Alighieri (*)
Love and Responsibility - Karol Wojtyla
The Black Rose - Thomas B. Costain
The Image - Daniel Boorstin
Dracula - Bram Stoker
The Ballad of the White Horse - G. K. Chesterton
Real Education - Charles Murray
Daily Life in Ancient Rome - Jerome Carcopino
Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close - Jonathan Safran Foer
The Quest for Community - Robert Nisbet
How to Love Your Wife - John R. Buri
A History of the World in 6 Glasses Paperback - Tom Standage
Paradiso - Dante Alighieri (*)
Brave New Family - G. K. Chesterton
Darwin, Marx, Wagner: Critique Of A Heritage - Jacques Barzun
Leisure: The Basis of Culture - Josef Pieper
Gargantua and Pantagruel - François Rabelais
The Man Who Was Thursday - G. K. Chesterton (*)
The Art of Manliness - Manvotionals -  Brett and Kate McKay
The Conquest of Civilization - James Henry Breasted
Out of the Silent Planet - C. S. Lewis
Philebus - Plato
The Church and the World in which the Church Was Founded - Msgr. Phillip Hughes
The Church and the World the Church Created - Msgr. Phillip Hughes
Just Married – Gregory and Lisa Popcak
Perelandra - C. S. Lewis
The Ordeal of Civilization - James Harvey Robinson
Being and Some Philosophers - Etienne Gilson
Abuse of Language, Abuse of Power - Josef Pieper
The Guns of August - Barbara Tuchman
George Washington - Paul Johnson
Baby Catcher - Peggy Vincent
A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens (*)
The Death of Christian Culture - John Senior

* Denotes reread

On Barzun

It is not easy to know what to make of the late, great Jacques Barzun.  He wrote too many books over his long life--forty books, one hundred and five years--for more than a handful of people to fully immerse themselves in his oeuvre.  At best, we can hope to sample but a few of his more influential works.

His opus, From Dawn to Decadence is brilliant, nay--what else?--magisterial.  To understand Barzun, one may as well start here, but one is still beset with difficulties.  For to plumb the depths of five centuries of cultural history as Barzun did, one would need to possess the mind of a Barzun.  Read his book, by all means, but only a lifetime devoted to careful study of the topics on which he writes will allow one to competently pronounce judgment on the work as a whole.

I stumbled upon a key to interpreting and appreciating the great man in A Jacques Barzun Reader, a wonderful collection of his writings assembled by Michael Murray.  In his essay on Diderot, Barzun writes:

The group of geniuses I have in mind [William James, Walter Bagehot... Diderot] are figures known, at least by name, to all who discuss ideas and their history... Their distinction lies in the perennial disquiet they inspire.  Their praise is mixed with doubts.  Most significant, perhaps, the reason for valuing their work are many and conflicting.  In a word, the men and their achievements resist classification. (p. 203)

It is that last phrase which applies above all to Barzun.  In our age, we classify thinkers politically first and foremost.  Such and such is a conservative, is a liberal, is a neo-conservative, a socialist, a libertarian.  What were Barzun's politics?  I've read over one thousand pages of the man's works and I cannot tell.  No doubt, he can be used as a cudgel with which to beat the political opposition, but that is a testament to our sophistry, not an indictment of his views.

It would be silly to insist that this is the proof of his greatness; buffoons can likewise appear politically indifferent.  But it is a clue.  In these times of tired political paralysis, in which we cast truth aside to root for our team, there is much wisdom in withdrawal.  There is more, yet, in a man like Barzun, who devoted his time and energy to culture, which informs and is therefore more lasting and important, than practical politics.

Sweet, sweet failure

Over at his wonderful blog, Steve Sailer frequently discusses the importance of The Narrative.  Essentially, the media settles on a single interpretation of a story.  All reactions to it must accede to this frame.  The Internet provides a partial exception to this, but one which is not important insofar as the gatekeepers--or, rather, myth makers--are concerned, at least at this juncture.

For instance, when it comes to dealing with illegal immigration, we are bombarded by insistence that the "system is broken."  In order to fix this "broken system", we need "comprehensive immigration reform."  Since illegal immigrants, are, by definition thwarting the law, a sensible person might wonder what obstacle prevents the laws from being enforced.  Further, one may ask why we would expect these new laws to be upheld when the current ones are routinely disregarded.

The Narrative is designed to preclude anyone from raising these quite reasonable objections.  Far from trying to frame a debate between two sides positing different approaches towards the national question, the issue has been framed in such a way that only one approach can be seen as possible.  Once the idiot Americans realize the wisdom of the elites, the latter can get around to achieving the real goal: passing a bill to ensure more Democratic voters and cheaper labor for Republican businessmen. 

I am not a Republican, but if I were to offer them advice, it would be to convince them of the importance of understanding the Narrative.  In their typical, bungling way, the Republicans have "shut down the government."  This is a myth, given that most of Leviathan plods steadily along, and those parts which have been furloughed will almost assuredly be paid back, for work not done, once the "shutdown" ceases. 

So, who is to blame for the shutdown?  The Republicans have pointed the finger at the Democrats, who have returned the gesture in kind.  No surprises there.  Yet this is the wrong question to ask since the matter at hand is not one based on any objective criteria.

If this seems cynical and relativistic, bear with me for a moment.  First, considered factually, both parties are responsible so long as a deal remains undone.  Until a "compromise" is reached, it is entirely fair to place blame on any one--or both--of the parties.

Moreover, we are a representative republic.  Elections are decided by the whims of the citizenry; it is to them that appeal must be made.  Any decisions reached by the people are, by nature, subjective.

Hence the importance of Narrative.  In short order, the Republicans will cave, as they always do.  However, next time they decide to make a futile gesture, if they wish to break with history and accomplish something for a change, it is imperative that they agree on a Narrative, but also that the Narrative frames their option as the only reasonable solution to the problem at hand.

When it comes to Obamacare, they should have noted that the piece of legislation was such an obvious boondoggle, that it was nowhere near ready, and therefore, they should have offered to postpone the implementation for another year.  Actually, they did this, but when it was rejected, they ought to have immediately passed a budget funding it to the hilt.

Having stated their objections, Obama would then be forced to explain to the American people why his signature piece of legislation was such a train wreck.  Then, the Republicans could campaign against a failure; this, coupled with a real reform bill--and no, they don't actually have one, which is a big problem, but this is mostly hypothetical--would posit a substantial weapon in the upcoming election.

When it comes to the debt ceiling, so long as the Republican house refuses to pass a balanced budget, that is, one that does not require us to borrow any more money and therefore breach the debt ceiling, all objections are mere bluster.  If they can produce such a budget, then they point out that while Obama is content to bankrupt the nation's children so that he can avoid tough decisions, in the house, adults are ready to make hard decisions. 

The only problem with this approach is that there are no adults in the Republican house.  Which is why a balanced budget will never be passed, the debt ceiling will again be raised, Obamacare will become the settled law of the land, and the GOP will take it on the chin without having accomplished a single thing.

Party politics

In a recent piece over at VDare, John Derbyshire observes:

To be interested in party politics nowadays, other than as a clash of personalities—which anyway happens much more within parties than between them—is a puzzling but harmless eccentricity, like stamp collecting...

A friend quipped to me recently that the GOP is just the Democratic Party with an anti-abortion plank. That’s depressingly close to the truth.

Precisely right.

There are two takeaways from this tawdry state of affairs. First, disengage from party politics; or, if one remains engaged, do so in full knowledge that one is engaged in a "harmless eccentricity."  There is much for to be said for politics as a humorous diversion.  If one prefers one's comedy dark, what could be more amusing than a Nobel Peace Prize winning president lobbing bombs indiscriminately at the Middle East, just like his cowboy predecessor?  If not exactly edifying, there is nonetheless an appeal to this level of decay.

Second, that which cannot continue eventually stops.  Naturally, the precise manner in which affairs will be altered is impossible to foresee.  Still, it seems unlikely that our bifactional ruling party will be able to thwart the will of the people forever--or even, very much longer. 

Perhaps the solution will be political, which is to say, reasonably peaceful.  Or maybe, as Jefferson put it, the tree of liberty will be watered with the blood of patriots.  We can only wait and watch.

As things stand

"Christendom is honor and the fatherland and man with his back to the wall. It is the glory of lost causes and the splendor of certain defeat." - Frederick D. Wilhelmsen

I find myself returning to Wilhlemsen again.  About the man, I know nothing, yet his succinct quote seems to capture perfectly the mood of the moment.

My preternatural pessimism has been confirmed by a recent reading of Strauss and Howe's book The Fourth Turning.  The authors posit a generational theory of history that repeats its cycle every eighty to one hundred years.  According to their calculations, we have passed into a crisis stage, during which Americans will need to band together to cast aside our broken institutions and go about the arduous task of rebuilding new ones.

I shall pause here to allow the reader time for laughter.

A crisis is certainly upon us, but I see no indication that either the people or our foolish leaders possess even a fraction of the virtue needed to steer us through these tumultuous times.  Instead of frankly admitting that our nation is insolvent, and going about the thankless task of cutting inessentials, we're pondering another war, this time in Syria.  Rather than recognizing the multitude of problems that confront our growing underclass, we are seriously considering granting amnesty to some twelve million Mexicans, many of whom will merely join the fraternity of the left hand of the bell curve beneath the poverty line.

Meanwhile, having redefined marriage, the progressive forces march onward.  The most pressing social issue of the day--now that the bigoted traditionalists are all but vanquished--is to normalize transsexualism.  No longer will a man or a woman be constrained by biological reality.  In our triumphant future--which one can almost taste, we are so close--one can be whatever one feels.  

Mencken would have loved all of this, and perhaps Swift could use his genius to find a way to satirize it.  But I grow weary.  It is all far too stupid for words.

The Trial of the Century

Two great writers chronicled the sub-culture turned dominant culture of the tumultuous 60's: Hunter S. Thompson and Tom Wolfe.  Thompson dove head first into the mess, developing his notorious gonzo journalism in the process.  Wolfe, meanwhile, stood off and above. 

Thompson at his best--Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72--was probably better than Wolfe, but decades of heavy drinking and indiscriminate drug use wear on a guy, and suicide puts an end to one's literary output, so Wolfe has had the longer career. 

Despite, or perhaps because of, its commercial success, a lot of critics seem to hate Wolfe's fiction.  Granted, Back to Blood bears the mark of an octogenarian who has lost his fastball, and A Man in Full starts well, but reads like it was finished by a writer who had just suffered a stroke--which Wolfe had.  I found I Am Charlotte Simmons to be devastatingly brilliant, but I seem to be fairly alone in this regard, so that's a topic for another day.

This leaves us with Wolfe's debut novel: The Bonfire of the Vanities.  Here, Wolfe prophetically paints a picture of contemporary America, where race, money and violence intersect in strange ways.  Parts of his book read like transcripts from the Zimmerman trial; we can't help but think about this event in Wolfe's terminology: The Trial of the Century, the Great White Defendant, and so forth.

The details of the case are actually rather dull.  Since Martin is dead, only Zimmerman really knows what happened.  And since Zimmerman was injured, his account is as least plausible.  If this were an ordinary trial, the prosecution would probably fail to convict.  But this is no ordinary trial; the malicious media has ensured that if Zimmerman walks, there will be Chaos in the Courtroom, and... blood in the streets.  It could be an interesting summer.

When it comes to crime in America, the depressing reality, as Wolfe recounts, is that it's mostly blacks killing other blacks.  So when the pattern is reversed and a white guy killed a black guy--never mind that the white guy isn't white, and that the black guy may have attacked him--we get a chance to excise our sins by placing our white guilt onto the scapegoat. 

If you want to understand race in America, and the Zimmerman case in particular, Bonfire is simply a must read. 

Labor and immigration

I've been reading Charles and Mary Beard's delightful book The Rise of American Civilization.  One of the passages I came across yesterday caught my attention in lieu of the debate--or, rather, lack of debate--over Comprehensive Immigration Reform.

In case such obstacles were surmounted, one equally perplexing remained to plague the labor organizer, namely, the practice of importing laborers in armies bound by contract to specified employers, coupled with the reduction of the ocean fare by competing steamship companies which kept the tide of immigration at its flood.  When a union successfully organized a craft and struck, either against a wage cut or in favor of an increase, it was comparatively easy for the employer to cable to Europe for a new supply of workers and have them on the spot within a fortnight, if indeed a shipload of competent workers, bought by the latest steamer, did not stand at the moment on the docks in New York waiting for jobs.  That a trade union movement was able to get under way at all is a marvel. (Vol. II, p. 216)

Although a continuous supply of cheap labor acts to depress wages, the chief beneficiaries have been so effective at castigating immigration skeptics as inveterate racists that no one seems to have noticed this rather obvious fact. It would be much more honest to admit that the purpose of the bill is to ensure that corporate profits continue to climb, but our elites are not quite that brazen.

It may not meet the criteria of libertarian purists, but the old method of restricting immigration so as to drive up wages for men--who can then afford to marry children and pay for them--seems vastly preferable to the present policy of awarding women for becoming pregnant out of wedlock.  This system, moreover, reduces the pool of marriageable men, which further exacerbates the illegitimacy crisis. 

It would be difficult to come up with a more convoluted series of incentives.  One begins to suspect that the elites not only don't like ordinary Americans, they frankly despise them.

Our Opportunity

On November 6th, 2012, the citizens of my home state of Minnesota voted down a proposed amendment to the constitution that defined marriage as an act between a man and a woman. Six months later, the Minnesota state house and senate passed a bill legalizing gay marriage, which Governor Mark Dayton signed into law. As a Catholic who tries to live in accordance with the teachings of the Church, it's clear where I side, but I find it hard to get too worked up over something that was going to be embraced, sooner or later, by the denizens of what philosopher Charles Taylor rightly calls a secular age.

No doubt some of my passivity has to do with my comparative youth. Older readers can recall a time in which the love that dare not speak its name was actually quiet. I can't. I'm 27, and for as long as I can remember, gay marriage has been a Very Important Issue.

From a purely statistical point of view, this has always struck me as odd. There are probably more cat ladies who wish to marry but cannot find a husband than gays who wish to marry but are legally prohibited from doing so. But enough about Maureen Dowd. Ignoring the oft-cited and utterly preposterous 10% figure of Kinsey's, perhaps 1-3% of the population is homosexual. Since not all of them are clamoring to embrace the mostly respectable institution of marriage, the amount of energy devoted to this minute portion of the population strikes me as disproportionate, which it is, unless one considers gay marriage as a symbol—of which more, later.

Not only has gay marriage been seen as the next big civil rights issue, most of my contemporaries have either accepted it or supported it passionately. This is especially disconcerting considering that for the first thirteen years of my education, I attended Catholic schools. I recall one incident in particular. It was my junior year of high school, and I was in a class called Christian Controversies.

If our school aimed for orthodoxy, the class could have examined various heresies throughout human history—Arianism, Manichaeism, Protestantism, Modernism, etc.—as well at the corresponding teaching of the Church. Instead, we took topics that interested us and discussed how we felt about them. This is reasonable shorthand for what passes for education these days outside of, say, the math department, which hasn't yet displaced reality with paroxysms of emotion.

No one in the class had the foggiest clue why the Church taught what She did. So when someone brought up gay marriage, it was incumbent on me, the world's worst apologist, to cobble together a defense of Church teaching. Although I wasn't a mature Catholic, I felt instinctively that: 1) it wasn't in the least bit obvious that homosexual acts were ethical; and 2) there had to be something to the Church's teaching, even if I didn't quite know what that was. It wasn't until later that I would discover Chesterton, and my faith, but I like to think that I grasped his points about tradition being the democracy of the dead and defending the cardinal virtues having all the exhilaration of a good vice.

I made a mess of things, and I can't conceive that I convinced anyone. Since then, I've found my way back home, and could now offer a much better defense of the Church's teaching on sexuality. I keep in touch with some of my friends from high school. Two of them remain committed Catholics. The rest have apostatized, rejecting a faith I know they understood no more—and probably a good deal less—than I did more than a decade ago.

Granted, this is mere anecdote; all I've demonstrated is that my particular high school could reliably produce ignorant apostates. Georgetown has been doing that for years. My observations comport with the data, though. In a recent piece in The American Conservative, Rod Dreher cited the work of sociologists Robert D. Putnam and David E. Campbell in their book, American Grace. He noted that:

“They found that young Americans coming into adulthood at that time began to accept homosexuality as morally licit in larger numbers. They also observed that younger Americans began more and more to fall away from organized religion... Nones [nonreligious individuals who do not identify as agnostic or atheist] comprise one out of three Americans under 30.”

What I was seeing with my friends was playing out on a generational scale all across the fruited plain. We rejected the traditional ethic of restraint in sexual matters—and then we just sort of drifted away from religion altogether. Barring another great awakening, when my generation has children, a significant portion of them will grow up in a completely secular environment. The lucky ones will at least have a mother and a father.

The salient point here is that even if the forces of tradition were to make a brilliant case for marriage and find a way to sneak this message passed the gatekeepers, it would do little good. When it comes to sex, our minds are made up. We have decided, a priori, that sex is good, only to be abstained from if consent is lacking, or perhaps for those in “committed relationships”, whatever that may mean. Appeals to the Natural Law were unpersuasive to a generation that ought to have been familiar with the concept. They'll become even less effective as society becomes more secular.

Earlier, I mentioned that gay marriage was a symbol, by which I mean that it possesses a significance which far outweighs the immediate ramifications of its adoption. It's doubtful, for instance, if a small number of gays marrying could possibly be more disastrous than the epidemic of illegitimacy. But as a symbol, gay marriage is the apotheosis of the sexual mores that very precariously hold our society together: temporary commitment in a relationship that is as fertile as the couple and their doctor want it to be.

There are two points I wish to make about the symbolism of gay marriage. First, it provides nascent Nones a way to distinguish themselves from the superstitious proles who watch NASCAR and believe that the earth is only a few thousand years old. This requires surprisingly little effort, and almost no discomfort. One can update one's Facebook profile to display an equals sign, or wear a pro gay marriage t-shirt. This marks one as a member of the elect, while failing to make such a gesture renders one suspect.

The key point here is that once gay marriage is accepted, another symbol will be needed. If I read the tea leaves right, the next move could involve the transgendered. Someone, probably an idiot academic, has even created a term, cisgender, for those of us who know whether we are male or female. I was going to joke that those of us don't happen to think that we're dinosaurs may also be cisspecies, but then I looked it up, and apparently that's a thing, too. One of the drags of a civilization's collapse is that it makes satire all but impossible.

Second, gay marriage serves as an excuse for the majority to rub the noses of traditionalists in their failure. Most supporters, like my apostate friends, are uninterested in this, but this is immaterial since: 1) as Lenin discovered, it only takes a committed minority to make a revolution; and 2) moderate supporters aren't bound to be any better at defending the claims of benighted bigots than the moderate forces of Islam have been at stemming the tide of Jihad. Sooner or later, all of our institutions will be compelled to go along with gay marriage. Magnanimity will not be reserved for those who are regarded as hateful.

In the midst of all the gloom, the silliness, and the evil, there is hope. We will not return to a sensible definition of marriage in the foreseeable future, but if our opponents press us to accept their nonsense, we may have our opportunity. For while our arguments will continue to fall on deaf ears, if we set an example of peaceful defiance, we may stand as a stern rebuke to the spirit of the age. As Hilaire Belloc put it: "But if I be asked what sign we may look for to show that the advance of the faith is at hand I would answer by a word the modern world has forgotten: Persecution. When that shall once more be at work it will be morning." That is our opportunity.

Going Benedict

During one of the recent presidential debates, moderator Candy Crowley, who is as objective as she is beautiful, cut to an audience member who asked the candidates what they would do to rectify the situation whereby females make “only 72 percent of what their male counterparts earn.” Despite the paucity of evidence for this much vaunted gap, Obama and Romney stumbled all over themselves in order to demonstrate how willing they were to help women.

Less than a month prior to the debate, an article in the Daily Mail noted that in the U.S., the labor participation rate for men had dropped to 69.9 percent, the “lowest level ever recorded.” A spurious wage gap between men and women is regarded as an occasion for Government to Do Something; if men are falling behind in the economy, they need to Man Up.

In her new book, Men on Strike, Dr. Helen Smith takes umbrage with this double standard and speaks up for the men who are reluctant to champion their own cause. In our haste to better society for women, we have eroded the institutional incentives which spurred a man to go to school, to work hard and to marry. Now, many men are going Galt.

She quotes the blogger Roissy: “Men slowly discover that the effort to win women's attention via employment is not rewarding them the way it did for their dads and grandads, and that now only herculean efforts to make considerably more than women will give them an edge in the mating market.” From a certain standpoint, dropping out is rational.

Probably the most important chapter of her book covers the kangaroo courts of family law. Men are routinely forced to pay child support for children that aren't their own; if they fail to pony up, they are sent to jail. Courts have even held that a boy who was statutorily raped by an older woman was liable for her child support. When it comes to procreation: women have rights, men have responsibilities.

Dr. Smith possesses a sympathetic understanding for the plight of men. Her book is filled with insightful anecdotes from men she has interviewed or who have commented on her blog. Since men are reluctant to bring their concerns forward, for fear of being seen as unmanly, Dr. Smith provides a helpful service in reminding men that they are not alone. The media remains oblivious to the extent, as well as the nature, of the man strike, but her book is a welcome addition to the trickle that will soon become a deluge.

There is a minor flaw in her book, or, rather, there is an unresolved dilemma among those who wish to supplant female privilege with justice. One camp argues that only a doctrine of separate spheres is sufficient to maintain a stable society; that female suffrage leads to civilizational collapse by way of unchecked hypergamy. A more moderate school of thought, to which Dr. Smith subscribes, wishes to replace our regime with one that, at least legally, treats men and women with genuine equality.

Regardless of the specific program, if the political problem proves to be intractable, more radical gestures may be required. For while opting out might work for individual men, the author astutely observes that such an approach is not good for civilization as a whole.

Perhaps a better model than John Galt, the striker, would be the great founder of monasticism: St. Benedict. Today's Benedictines would not need to be celibate like the saint and his monks. Instead, as the philosopher Alidsair MacIntyre suggested, we could start little communities with wives and children, far away from the evils of modern society. One might call it: going Benedict.