William Deresiewicz in The Nation:

There’s no better way to take the profession’s temperature, it seems to me, than by scanning the Modern Language Association Job Information List, the quarterly catalog of faculty openings in American English departments. If you want to know where an institution is at, take a look at what it wants. The most striking fact about this year’s list is that the lion’s share of positions is in rhetoric and composition. That is, not in a field of literature at all but in the teaching of expository writing, the “service” component of an English department’s role within the university. Add communications and professional and technical writing, and you’ve got more than a third of the list. Another large fraction of openings, perhaps 15 percent, is in creative writing. Apparently, kids may not want to read anymore, but they all want to write. And watch. Forward-thinking English departments long ago decided to grab film studies before it got away, and the list continues to reflect that bit of subterfuge.

That’s more than half the list, and we still haven’t gotten to any, well, literature. When we do, we find that the largest share of what’s left, nearly a third, is in American literature. Even more significant is the number of positions, again about a third, that call for particular expertise in literature of one or another identity group. “Subfields might include transnational, hemispheric, ethnic and queer literatures.” “Postcolonial emphasis” is “required.” “Additional expertise in African-American and/or ethnic American literature highly desirable.”

More here.

From the London Review of Books:

If he hadn’t been a poet, Cavafy said, he would have been a historian. ‘In part to examine an era/and in part to while away the time,/last night I picked up to read/ a collection of Ptolemaic inscriptions,’ is how he begins one poem. The historical periods that interested him were the Hellenic Age (fourth to first century BC), the Roman (first century BC to fourth century AD) and the late Byzantine (11th to 14th century), with their cosmopolitan way of life, their high civilisation and the political and religious turmoil that eventually did them in. Small episodes or debacles in the history of old Alexandrians, Antiochians, Seleucians or the Hellenes of Egypt, Syria and Medea provide his subjects. Cavafy’s historical poems are both nostalgic and realistic. He may grow dreamy – as he often does – thinking of some beautiful young man’s heroic life and early death, but he doesn’t forget the cynical power struggles of the day. He’s ‘more coroner than commentator, equally disinclined to offer blame or grant the benefit of the doubt’, is how Seamus Heaney puts it in his foreword to Haviaras’s translations. Tyrants with one mad idea in their head fascinated Cavafy. He has six poems, for example, about Julian the Apostate, a vicious fourth-century Roman emperor who tried to abolish Christianity and return to an intolerant version of paganism.

More here.

Natalie Angier in The New York Times:

You can accuse the disgraced ex-governor Eliot Spitzer of many things in his decision to flout the law by soliciting the services of a pricey prostitute: hypocrisy, egomania, sophomoric impulsiveness and self-indulgence, delusional ineptitude and boneheadedness. But one trait decidedly not on display in Mr. Spitzer’s splashy act of whole-life catabolism was originality. It’s all been done before, every snickering bit of it, and not just by powerful “risk-taking” alpha men who may or may not be enriched for the hormone testosterone. It’s been done by many other creatures, tens of thousands of other species, by male and female representatives of every taxonomic twig on the great tree of life. Sexual promiscuity is rampant throughout nature, and true faithfulness a fond fantasy.

Even the “oldest profession” that figured so prominently in Mr. Spitzer’s demise is old news. Nonhuman beings have been shown to pay for sex, too. Reporting in the journal Animal Behaviour, researchers from Adam Mickiewicz University and the University of South Bohemia described transactions among great grey shrikes, elegant raptorlike birds with silver capes, white bellies and black tails that, like 90 percent of bird species, form pair bonds to breed. A male shrike provisions his mate with so-called nuptial gifts: rodents, lizards, small birds or large insects that he impales on sticks. But when the male shrike hankers after extracurricular sex, he will offer a would-be mistress an even bigger kebab than the ones he gives to his wife — for the richer the offering, the researchers found, the greater the chance that the female will agree to a fly-by-night fling.

More here.

William Dalrymple in the New York Review of Books:

What happened in Khairpur was a small revolution—a middle-class victory over the forces of reactionary feudal landlordism. More astonishingly, it was a revolution that was reproduced across the country. To widespread surprise, the elections in Pakistan were free and fair; and Pakistanis voted heavily in favor of liberal centrist parties opposed to both the mullahs and the army. Here, in a country normally held up in the more Islamophobic right-wing press of Western countries as the epitome of “what went wrong” in the Islamic world, a popular election resulted in an unequivocal vote for moderate, secular democracy.

More here.

Our own  Morgan Meis in The Smart Set:

I can’t stop thinking that Eliot Spitzer’s downfall is extraordinary in its Oedipal dimensions. I don’t mean this in the Freudian sense, but in the classical. In Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex a man, Oedipus, attempts to engineer his own fate in the face of a terrible prophecy. In the end, Oedipus comes to realize that his own actions, meant to liberate him from this course of fate, have been the agents of its realization. He declares:

No human hand but mine has done this deed.
   What need for me to see,
When nothing’s left that’s sweet to look upon?

It has been noted again and again in the Spitzer story that ironies abound, multiplying quicker than they can be sorted out. This is a man who seemingly went out of his way to commit a crime that A) he would eventually get caught doing and, B) that he would have no defense against when caught. As a prosecutor Spitzer made enemies — lifelong abiding enemies in the banking world, the Republican political establishment, and organized crime. He then frequented a call girl service (which he had to know was likely tied to organized crime), used bank transfers to pay for it, and crossed state lines in the process. He was tempting fate, surely. More like sticking his finger in its eye. (Speaking of eyes, it must be noted here that Oedipus ends up blinding himself. Spitzer, meanwhile, hands his governorship over to the blind David Paterson.) If this is not hubris, the tragic flaw of arrogance, what is? Let us not forget, further, that Spitzer is a man who chose to define himself, and his political career, in opposition to corruption and to hypocrisy.

But it gets more intriguing.

More here.

A R Chughtai. The Shepherd Girl.

Water color on paper.

More on this illustrious Pakistani painter (1899-1975) here and here.

Arthur Ituassu’s internal Amartya Sen guides him through Goa, in openDemocracy:

For a Brazilian, this is a very interesting place to be. It is so clear that both former colonies of Portugal (Brazil 1500-1882, Goa 1510-1961) are products of a shared history – Portugal’s pioneering globalisation – that enables people from widely distant territories to feel at home in the other. When, for example, a mass in Portuguese is celebrated on Sunday morning at the church of Imaculada Conceição, both the oceans and the centuries between Brazil and Goa seem to fall away.

But a common history, as Amartya Sen argues, is no excuse from reasoning. A Brazilian in Goa can equally see that everything here is also “similar, but different”. The space for human creation and intervention – for making it new – must never be suppressed. It is such intervention that has also made Brazilia and Goan cultures – their shared histories notwithstanding – different.

Goa is India, and the Portuguese influence could not change this fact. This is a place where Hindus, Muslims, Buddhists, Christians, Jews, Arabs and the non-religious have been talking to each other for centuries – even though some people are (often violently) trying to sell the idea of a “pure” Hindu India. In that particular sense, a Brazilian’s journey through Goa is one that triggers reflection on one’s own self amid Goan/Indian complexity in order to come to a better understanding of one’s place in the world.

Harry Kreisler discusses the US’s response to terrorism with Stephen Holmes:

John Mullan reviews Rónán McDonald’s The Death of the Critic in the TLS:

Nowadays, there are more critical responses than ever, but critical authority has been devolved from the experts. McDonald surveys the rise of blogs and readers’ reviews, of television and newspaper polls and reading groups, under the heading “We Are All Critics Now”. He argues that the demise of critical expertise brings not a liberating democracy of taste, but conservatism and repetition. “The death of the critic” leads not to the sometimes vaunted “empowerment” of the reader, but to “a dearth of choice”. It is hardly a surprise to find him taking issue with John Carey’s anti-elitist What Good Are the Arts? (2005), with its argument that one person’s aesthetic judgement cannot be better or worse than another’s, making taste an entirely individual matter. McDonald proposes that cultural value judgements, while not objective, are shared, communal, consensual and therefore open to agreement as well as dispute. But the critics who could help us to reach shared evaluations have opted out. The distance between Ivory Tower and Grub Street has never been greater. While other academic disciplines have seen the rise of the professional popularizer of art, music and film, literary expertise has sealed itself off in the academy. McDonald believes that the main reason for the gulf between academic and non-academic criticism is “the turn from evaluative and aesthetic concerns in the university humanities’ departments”. He does not bemoan the influence of the Richard and Judy Book Club or the internet; he blames his fellow academics.

If you ever wanted to know a little more about Cosma Shalizi, Norman Geras has a profile:

Can you name a major moral, political or intellectual issue on which you’ve ever changed your mind? > Whether or not we have free will; reading Daniel Dennett’s Elbow Room convinced me that (in every meaningful sense) we do.

What philosophical thesis do you think it most important to disseminate? > The old Enlightenment/liberal thesis that it is neither necessary nor desirable to have a single vision of the good enforced on society. (I wish I could answer ‘individual rationality and morality are delicate social products’ or something like that, but, sadly, no.)

What philosophical thesis do you think it most important to combat? > That there are any such things as discrete, distinct civilizations, cultures, races, etc., with enduring essences, destinies or interests. There are only ‘real individuals, their activity and the material conditions under which they live’.

Can you name a work of non-fiction which has had a major and lasting influence on how you think about the world? > Karl Popper’s The Open Society and Its Enemies permanently shaped how I think about the goals and means of politics and progressive social change; I like to think of myself as a sort of Left Popperian.

In my reply to a comment a few days ago I referred to a man I’d done some carpentry work for, maybe 25 years ago. He’d just retired, so was in his late sixties at the time.

Jos lives across the road from my daughter and when I go there I often turn around in his driveway. About a year ago when I pulled in, there he was on his riding mower —by then he was in his early nineties. He got off, came over to my truck and we chatted. Jos has always been an upbeat man with a gentle demeanor and practical outlook.  In the conversation his physical condition came up, which was excellent for a man his age; but as we talked further he suggested this thing called life might be getting a little old.

I asked, “You’re not telling me you’re ready to check out, are you Jos?”

He just grinned from ear to ear and said, “Anytime, Jim. Any time.”

Then I came across this poem by Dante Gabriel Rosetti.

Autumn Song

Know’st thou not at the fall of the leaf
How the heart feels a languid grief
Laid on it for a covering,
And how sleep seems a goodly thing
In Autumn at the fall of the leaf?

And how the swift beat of the brain
Falters because it is in vain,
In Autumn at the fall of the leaf
Knowest thou not? and how the chief
Of joys seems–not to suffer pain?

Know’st thou not at the fall of the leaf
How the soul feels like a dried sheaf
Bound up at length for harvesting,
And how death seems a comely thing
In Autumn at the fall of the leaf

..

I wrote a play about politics (November, Barrymore Theater, Broadway, some seats still available). And as part of the “writing process,” as I believe it’s called, I started thinking about politics. This comment is not actually as jejune as it might seem. Porgy and Bess is a buncha good songs but has nothing to do with race relations, which is the flag of convenience under which it sailed.

But my play, it turned out, was actually about politics, which is to say, about the polemic between persons of two opposing views. The argument in my play is between a president who is self-interested, corrupt, suborned, and realistic, and his leftish, lesbian, utopian-socialist speechwriter.

The play, while being a laugh a minute, is, when it’s at home, a disputation between reason and faith, or perhaps between the conservative (or tragic) view and the liberal (or perfectionist) view. The conservative president in the piece holds that people are each out to make a living, and the best way for government to facilitate that is to stay out of the way, as the inevitable abuses and failures of this system (free-market economics) are less than those of government intervention.

I took the liberal view for many decades, but I believe I have changed my mind.

more from The Village Voice here.

Permit me to begin with a few thoughts about Europe, before we come to the Middle East. It is strange, but when you look at Europe today you get the impression that the better off Europeans are, and the more we succeed in rising to the challenges of the time and overcoming the demons of our history, the less popular this Europe becomes – especially among the younger generation. In the French referendum the majority of young people voted “no”, even though it is their future that is at stake, and even though it is precisely for them that this Europe should hold a strong attraction.

Of course, there are populist arguments against Europe. However much we may criticize it – and nothing in a democracy, whether it be an institution or a person, is beyond criticism – a glance at the history books (and we’re not only talking about the remote past but recent history as well) really ought to teach us what the alternatives to Europe are. Despite that, we find euroscepticism everywhere – today Europe meets with rejection in both the old and the new member states. That is why I would like to begin with this Europe of ours.

more from Eurozine here.

Tears in Heaven

Would you know my name
If I saw you in some socialist paradise in the afterlife?
Would it be the same
Again, if I saw you in some socialist paradise in the afterlife?

Layla

Layla, you’ve got me off my knees.
Layla, I’m not begging, there’s no such thing as begging here, only juche, darling, please.
Layla darling, no need to ease my perfectly content and never-worried mind.

Cocaine

If you got bad news (which does not exist), you wanna kick them blues (ditto).
Unlike Americans, don’t do cocaine.
When your day is done and you wanna stay. Go home.
No Korean has ever tried cocaine.

more from McSweeney’s here.

Eugene, a Belgian computer programmer, has retired to a cottage in southern Paraguay, and the pride of his golden years is his view. From his stone patio, he sees forested hills, the fringes of yerba mate plantations, and, in the distance, the crumbling ruins of a Jesuit settlement two centuries old. “Like a picture,” he says, and I nod to agree, even though my mind is not on the beautiful vista, but on the dark figure who once shared it.

The Nazi doctor Josef Mengele cheated justice for decades by hiding out in South America, sometimes in these very hills. Had he stayed in Germany he would almost certainly have died by the noose. Jews and Gypsies at Auschwitz called him “the Angel of Death”: He killed men and women for the dubious medical value of dissecting them, and for pleasure. He injected dyes into children’s eyes to see if he could change their color. When he ran out of Jews, he sent memos asking for more, and he got them.

more from the Smart Set here.

From Edge:

Ants have algorithms. If you think about an ant colony, it’s a computing device; there’s some wonderful work by Jean-Louis Deneubourg in Brussels and his collaborators that really started this field in a way with Ilya Prigogine and later on Jean Louis Deneubourg looking at the ways in which social insect colonies can interact. One example would be—it sounds trivial, but if you think about it, it is quite difficult—how can a colony decide between two food sources, one of which is slightly closer than the other? Do they have to measure this? Do they have to perform these computations?

We now know that this is not the case. Chris Langton and other researchers have also investigated these properties, whereby individuals just by virtue of the fact that one food source is closer, even if they are searching more or less at random, have a higher probability of returning to the nest more quickly. Which means they lay more chemical trail, which the other ants tend to follow. You have this competition between these sources. You have an interaction between positive feedback, which is the amplification of information—that’s the trail-laying behavior—and then you have negative feedback because of course if you just have positive feedback, there is no regulation, there is no homeostasis, you can’t create these accurate decisions.

There’s a negative feedback, which in this case is the decay of the pheromone, or the limited number of ants within the colony that you can recruit, and this delicate balance of positive and negative feedback allows the colony to collectively decide which source is closest and exploit that source, even though none of these individuals themselves have that knowledge.

More here.

From The Guardian:

When, in October 2001, the telephone rang in VS Naipaul’s remote Wiltshire home, it was his wife who picked up, as usual. The writer himself never answers. Horace Engdahl, head of the Swedish Academy, was on the line with some long-awaited information. The Nobel prize committee had awarded its literature prize to ‘Mr Naipaul’. Could he, please, communicate this honour to the great writer? But no, the 98th Nobel literature laureate could not come to the phone. He was busy, writing, and did not wish to be disturbed.

Everyone agrees that VS Naipaul is fully alive to his own importance. A mirror to his work, his life is emblematic of an extraordinary half century, the postwar years. Let it not be said that he does not know this. ‘My story is a kind of cultural history,’ he remarks, in part of an overture to a long conversation. Nevertheless, he will not be reading Patrick French’s forthcoming authorised biography, The World Is What it Is. ‘I asked Patrick to do it, but I haven’t read a word,’ he emphasises, brushing past rumours of discord over the manuscript. ‘I don’t intend to read the book.’

More here.

Anne Penketh in The Independent:

Yaghoub Yaadali, a 36-year-old television director, received a suspended jail sentence last summer on charges of “spreading lies, defamation and insulting a tribal minority”.

In his book, The Rules of Restlessness, a fictional character has an affair with a woman from an ethnic Bakhtiari village. It won Iran’s highest honour for literature, the Golshiri award, in 2004. As with any other work, it was only published after obtaining permission from the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance.

When he was sentenced to three months in jail, suspended for nine months, last September it caused a sensation in Iranian intellectual circles. He had already spent 47 days in prison. The judge ordered him to write four articles on “cultural and artistic personalities, each at a minimum length of one page on size A4 paper, to be published every six months” at his own expense.

His supporters were dumbstruck when, on appeal last month, the court toughened the sentence to actual imprisonment. “It’s unheard of,” said one Iranian. The writer was ordered to begin his sentence before the Iranian new year, (21 March) but hopes that if he completes the articles the jail time will be suspended.

The censor’s verdict is even falling on new editions of published works. The Culture Ministry demands changes, and if the demand is not met, halts publication.

[H/t: Hadi Ghaemi]

Aldous Huxley — born in England in 1894, visionary author of 11 novels (most famously “Brave New World,” in 1932), seven short-story collections, seven books of poetry, three plays, two books for children and countless essays — is there for us when we need him most. All his life, Huxley concerned himself with the most pressing issues facing humanity: environmental degradation, capitalist greed, totalitarian oppression, scarcity of resources, war, human cruelty and human potential. After his death — on Nov. 22, 1963, the day JFK died — his widow, Laura, tried to keep his memory and his work alive, but a perfect storm of factors — personalities, family politics — kept most of the work from getting the wide distribution and range of media it deserved.

In the last two years, all this has changed. With his estate finally in some kind of order, a movie of “Brave New World” is in the works, produced by George DiCaprio and starring his son, Leonardo, directed by Ridley Scott with a screenplay by Andrew Nicholls. The respected New York agent Georges Borchardt is shepherding new editions of his books and selling foreign rights to a world market hungry for Huxley’s work (especially those countries of the former Soviet bloc). We are, it is safe to say, on the eve of a Huxley revival.

more from the LA Times here.

The “categorical imperative” means something quite different, but it does sound like the right term for the self-protective psychological urge that drove Peter Mark Roget (1779-1869), creator of the Thesaurus, to classify and categorize all manner of things over a long lifetime. Madness did not just run in his family; it galloped, sped, sprinted, dashed and made haste. If the title of Joshua Kendall’s fine new biography of Roget has a clinical Oliver Sacks feel, the material pretty much justifies it. “The Man Who Made Lists” outlines the “chronic mental instability” of Roget’s maternal grandmother; the “psychotic trance” in which his mother spent her last days after a life of neurotic “neediness”; the breakdowns undergone by Roget’s sister and daughter (he married late and was widowed early); and the grief-driven, throat-slashing suicide of his uncle, the great British civil libertarian Samuel Romilly, who expired in Roget’s blood-soaked arms.

more from the NYT Book Review here.