For Vidal’s imagination has always operated most vividly upon the past. Einfühlen is the word he has used, borrowing it from the German philosopher Johann Gottfried von Herder. In a 1999 interview, Vidal defined it as “an ability to get into the past, while realizing that it’s not just another aspect of the present, with people you know dressed up in funny clothes.” The present, especially in his fiction, sometimes hobbled him. The past — the pageant in the rearview mirror — gave free rein to his archeological brand of empathy with compulsively readable results.

But not, alas, this time. Despite some exquisite passages and frisky prose, “Point to Point Navigation” betrays a diminishing attention span. There are sentences so sloppy that I never would have attributed them to a spit-and-polish stylist like Vidal. There are clanging redundancies, including entire paragraphs lifted almost directly from “Palimpsest.” Nor can he resist kicking his biographer, Fred Kaplan, in the shins whenever the impulse seizes him.

That’s not the worst of it. It’s bad enough when the author turns over the microphone to a pair of his academic exegetes — one of whom helpfully informs us that Vidal “exploits the congruencies among critiques of genetic, genital, and technological determinism.” (Help!) But when one of our greatest living critics reprints a Publishers Weekly précis of a book rather than summarizing it himself, it’s really time to throw in the towel. Shame on the publisher for wheeling this subpar product into the marketplace.

As for the 81-year-old Vidal, I hope he’ll sail on to his centennial and beyond — and that he’ll go out on a more distinguished note than this one. He certainly has earned it.

more from the LA Times here.

Marvin Bell and Mark Strand walk into a bookstore in Iowa City. Neither of them sees any of his books on the shelf. Dejected, Bell says, “They must not stock any of my books.” Strand replies, “They must be sold out of mine.” Even in an age so densely populated with poets, few escape anonymity, and those who do usually escape into a life as the circus animal of some university’s English department. A few of these poets, such as Billy Collins, Seamus Heaney, or Ted Kooser, even sell a hundred thousand copies of their books. But Mark Strand embodies a different sort of “celebrity.” After all, how many contemporary poets are reviewed in the pages of Elle (where Blizzard of One was praised as a “beautifully wrought collection of poems”)? Good luck finding Kooser’s name in Liz Smith’s gossip column, or Collins’s among the elite of the New York art world. Elsewhere, a former colleague at the University of Chicago writes, “He’s also deadly handsome, tall and rugged; classic good looks. If God were to put an instrument on earth to make women suffer, Strand is it.” (As if his Pulitzer were not enough . . .) Not only do Strand’s poems, stories, and reviews appear frequently in The New Yorker, but the magazine also made his film debut (in Ethan Hawke’s Chelsea Walls) the subject of a “Talk of the Town” piece. It is strange, then, that most critical responses to Strand’s work have emphasized his evacuation of the self.

more from Virginia Quarterly Review here.

Clark: Immensely hard to talk about these things, Kathryn—but you’re right, they’re ultimately what the book is about. These days I can’t get the lines by Emily Dickinson out of my mind: “Because I could not stop for Death—/He kindly stopped for me”. I guess it’s Dickinson’s verb that particularly strikes home. Death is everywhere, but we can’t stop for it. We can’t make it part of our lives—and therefore of our politics. The capital D Dickinson was able to give it is way beyond us.

Yeah, yeah… I don’t mind you bringing on the word “spectacle” at this point, just as long as we’re not using the word to reduce the issues simply to “too many images too fast!” It’s not the technics and quantity that matter most, it’s the shattered sociality in which the images circulate. It’s the dismantling, over the past half-century, of so many forms of resistance to the image—so many of the forms of life in which the image-life of power could once be derided or spoken back to. Who was it who called the spectacle “the totalitarian dictatorship of the fragment”? It’s a bit clumsy, that formula, but it gets a lot right.

more from the interview at Brooklyn Rail here.

The Personages are, I think, the highpoint of Smith’s art and a series that could have gone on for as long as there was metal to be had. They are the very essence of creativity. Smith coined the term carefully: something between persona and assemblage, they are collaged characters, vivid figures that have force of personality without ever quite devolving into people.

A vertical crowned with a bowl that contains light but reflects it back becomes the embodiment of a smile. Another, dividing like tweezers, has the hint of a sashay. The tips of two arabesques meet like fingers, or lips if viewed from another angle. Rectangles or discs on rods seem caught in headstrong propulsion, while more fragile constructions hover like dragonflies. There is a photograph of Smith between two entirely abstract figures, neither man nor beast, and they appear to be standing shoulder to shoulder in the hills – a trio of equal friends.

more from The Guardian here.

In Die Welt, Georg M. Oswald reviews Gerhard Schröder’s memoirs, Entscheidungen (or Decisions). (Translated by signandsight.com.)

Then with Afghanistan, a couple of Red-Green do-gooders immediately started kicking up a fuss in the Bundestag and refused to understand that there was no going back. The allegiance to NATO left no room for manoeuvre. Chancellor Schröder called for a confidence vote and because no one was that keen to surrender the so-called responsibility of government so quickly after all, everyone voted in favour of joining Enduring Freedom. Now that’s convincing decision making!

The media soon adjusted to the new circumstances. But just when they thought things were starting up again, this time in Iraq, Chancellor Schröder pulled the rug out from under them. “I have ensured that Germany will not take part in the Iraq War. But of course it will fulfil its duties to the NATO Alliance.”

Aha. And we thought it was a contradiction to fly “No War” banners out the window and at the same time guarantee fly-over rights, take-off and landing rights and security services. But things are not as simple as all that. We did not take part in the Iraq War because there was no UN mandate to do so. But we did provide the USA with logistical support and the help of “our services,” as Schröder discretely calls the Federal Intelligence Services. Of course Schröder doesn’t mention that “our services” by the looks of things also had a hand in the torturing.

In The Nation, Richard Goldstein asks: what are we laughing at when we laugh at Borat?

Variations on these themes shape Baron Cohen’s new film, Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit of Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan. This flimsy mock doc, in the spirit of gross-out shows like Punk’d and Jackass, might have faded into dating-movie oblivion but for the vehement reaction of the Kazakh government. It didn’t appreciate Borat’s references to a national wine made from equine urine, or his observation that “America is strange country: Women can vote but horses cannot.” By protesting, the Kazakhs gave Baron Cohen a place on US news pages. But there’s more to this comic than politically incorrect creds.

Not too long ago, stand-up stars like Sam Kinison and Andrew Dice Clay went after women, gays and immigrants in a revanchist show of spleen, and it was boffo. But backlash entertainment has lost its sting–if only because it no longer represents a dissent from the orthodoxies of social politics. There’s a new comedy in which the ambiguities of laughter are explored and the connections between mockery and sadism are revealed. If you examine your response to Borat, you’ll have to face some dicey truths about the joy of bigotry.

After all, who is the butt of his jokes: those Americans straining to be polite to a foreigner or the foreigner who appalls them by expressing primitive sentiments? Are the rich and famous who curdle at the stupidity of Ali G the objects of our laughter, or is it Ali G, who could be the ignorant son of immigrants? Baron Cohen’s comedy rubs against fear and loathing of the Muslim Other. But what about those Jew jokes–why are they so funny? And why are some of the friendly Americans Borat encounters so willing to join in the fun?

Since much of the English world has decided to not notice Auden’s centenary, I’ll just celebrate with Abbas and any other who cares to join me. Here’s an audio recording of Auden reading his “On the Circuit”:

Among pelagian travelers/Lost on their lewd conceited way/To Massachusetts, Michigan/Miami or L.A.

An airborne instrument I sit/Predestined nightly to fulfill/Columbia-Giesen-Management’s/Unfathomable will

By whose election justified/I bring my gospel of the Muse/To fundamentalists, to nuns/to Gentiles and to Jews

And daily, seven days a week,/Before a local sense has jelled,/From talking-site to talking-site/Am jet-or-prop-propelled.

And on this day after elections, I want to note also the seemingly appropriate (in an out of context way) last verse from “A Walk After Dark”:

But the stars burn on overhead,

Unconscious of final ends,

As I walk home to bed,

Asking what judgment waits

My person, all my friends,

And these United States.

I’m tempted to invite: “Open thread: favorite Auden poem”.

On the day following the elections, DeLong offers this observation:

I wrote:

One way to look at last night’s election is that the implicit gerrymandering of the Senate and the in-the-tank-ness of the press corps are keeping people from realizing how big the blowout was. Consider this: it looks like 32,100 thousand Americans voted for Democratic Senatorial candidates, and only 24,524 thousand Americans voted for Republican Senatorial candidates. That’s a 13.4% margin of Democratic victory.

Hoisted from comments are Mo:

Brad DeLong’s Semi-Daily Journal: Fair and Balanced Almost Every Day: 32,100,000 vs. 24,524,000: Here are the totals for the complete Senate, using Brad’s numbers for last night:

Dem/Rep:

21,428,784 18,665,605 02

37,645,909 38,164,089 04

32,100,000 24,524,000 06

Total:

91,174,693 81,353,694

From Time:

Ebullient Democrats declared victory as months of brutal campaigning yielded one big prize they had been fighting for Tuesday night: control of the House of Representatives in the next session of Congress, under the first female Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi. With results projected in most races, the Democrats were set to win key battles in Connecticut, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Arizona, capitalizing on anger against the war in Iraq, Republican scandals and a broad anti-incumbent sentiment.

With momentum at their backs, Democrats were set to claim a gain of between 20 and 35 seats, well beyond the 15 they needed to take control. That in turn will give Pelosi a mandate for change to launch the kind of tough anti-GOP agenda the White House and their Republican allies on the Hill had feared. “The campaign is over,” Pelosi shouted on election night, grinning with confidence in front of hundreds of roaring supporters blocks from the Capitol in Washington D.C. “Democrats are ready to lead!” A hoarse Rep. Rahm Emanuel, head of the Democratic.

More here.

From Nature:

The war in Iraq, the price of oil, the deadlock over Iran’s nuclear ambitions, the terrorism of al-Qaeda and the tensions surrounding immigrant communities in Europe ensure that Islam is rarely far from the headlines. But you would have to be an avid student of Muslim affairs to come across any discussion of science and technology not linked to the development of nuclear weapons.
In this week’s issue, Nature offers an unprecedented look at the prospects for science and technology in the Muslim world.

In ignoring Muslim science, the West follows the lead of the Muslim world itself. Low investment and a low profile combine to keep the scientific community small, marginalized and unproductive. This is not simply a matter of underdevelopment; the oil-rich Gulf states invest pitifully in R&D. The poor scientific track record of Islamic countries might suggest that there is something about Islam inherently inimical to research. Muslims bristle at this idea, pointing to the major achievements of Muslim scholars under the Islamic caliphate.

More here.

The strain Hazlitt caught in Wordsworth’s face can be attributed in part to the project he and Coleridge set themselves: looking beyond or through “outward appearance”, often cruel and contradictory, to an underlying unity and benevolence. Sisman somewhat undervalues this strain in discussion of the poetry. He is writing biography not criticism, but he might have said more about the poetry’s often divided character, the struggle of the poets to sustain their faith in nature and the powers of the imagination. “Though he could no longer feel the ‘aching joys’ and ‘dizzy raptures’ of his boyhood”, writes Sisman, of the speaker in “Tintern Abbey”, “he had found ‘abundant recompense’ elsewhere”. This is a reading of the lines “for such loss, I would believe [italics added], / Abundant recompense”, one of several disquieting or disturbing notes in the poem (“If this / Be but a vain belief”, “And so I dare to hope”). In later poems – “Resolution and Independence”, “Ode: Intimations”, “Elegiac Stanzas” – similar notes sound more ominously; the assertion in “Tintern Abbey” that “Nature never did betray / The heart that loved her” becomes increasingly dubious. From the start, what Harold Bloom calls a “dark undersong”, that of nature as “hidden antagonist”, shadowed Wordsworth’s faith in the one life. Coleridge’s poems are even more divided, likewise in ways that call his and Wordsworth’s “joint labour” into question. Beneath the biographical factors which Adam Sisman so vividly and movingly recounts lies the difficulty of the labour itself.

more from the TLS here.

Still, when it comes to the state of the novel, to the future of the novel, I feel rather optimistic. Numbers don’t count where books are concerned, for there is only one reader, each and every time only one reader. That explains the particular power of the novel and why, in my opinion, it will never die as a form. Every novel is an equal collaboration between the writer and the reader and it is the only place in the world where two strangers can meet on terms of absolute intimacy.

I have spent my life in conversations with people I have never seen, with people I will never know and I hope to continue until the day I stop breathing.

It’s the only job I’ve ever wanted.

more from the Guardian Unlimited here.

From a new HRW study written by Farida Deif and our friend Lucy Mair:

A significant number of women and girls in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT) are victims of violence perpetrated by family members and intimate partners. While there is increasing recognition of the problem and some Palestinian Authority (PA) officials have indicated their support for a more forceful response, little action has been taken to seriously address these abuses. Indeed, there is some evidence the level of violence is getting worse while the remedies available to victims are being further eroded.

Defenders of the status quo on this issue typically justify the PA’s failure to take more decisive action by highlighting the many critical political, economic, and security matters facing the PA, a situation only exacerbated by events following the electoral victory of Hamas in January 2006. While it is true that Israeli actions since the outbreak of the current intifada in September 2000—including attacks on PA institutions and security services, and Israel’s current refusal to remit tax revenues, among others—have significantly weakened PA capabilities, this is no excuse for inaction. There is much that PA officials could be but are not doing to end violence against women inside the family. This report offers concrete suggestions for change, some of which are highlighted in the key recommendations listed at the end of this section.

Update: Also see The New York Times article on the study here. Lucy Mair:

“The problem is that no one sees this abuse as a crime,” Lucy Mair, a researcher in the Middle East and North Africa Division of Human Rights Watch and a co-author of the report, said in an interview. “It’s seen as a family or social problem, and some behavior is not even criminalized.”

Stanley Fish in the Chronicle of Higher Education:

Some years ago, just after Salman Rushdie was made the object of a fatwa, I found myself at an academic conference listening to a panel address the issues raised by his situation. A member of the audience rose and, without a trace of irony, gave voice to this question/accusation: “What’s the matter with those Iranians? Haven’t they ever heard of the First Amendment?” The empirical answer to the question was maybe yes, maybe no. Some individual Iranians and many members of the Iranian legal community would have heard of (and studied) the First Amendment, but even those who had read it could not have been counted on to affirm the assumptions informing it — the assumption that expression as an abstract category is to be valued over the content of what is expressed; the assumption that no content is to be either stigmatized or embraced in advance of its having been subjected to the test of rational scrutiny; the assumption that contents (ideas, ideologies, opinions, hypotheses) are equal before the law, and none is to be prohibited unless it is put into (dangerous) action; the assumption that religious pronouncements, even those that issue from revered authorities, are in no way privileged, exempt from criticism, or entitled to a place in the policy deliberations of the state; the assumption that the holding of views, however unpopular or even sacrilegious, cannot be a reason for the denial of rights, the withholding of privileges, or the distribution of rewards.

More here.

In the LRB, Ed Harriman explores corruption and waste in the reconstruction of Iraq.

American military spending on Iraq is now approaching $8 billion a month. Accounting for inflation, this is half as much again as the average monthly cost of the Vietnam War; the total spent so far has long surpassed the cost of the entire Apollo space programme. Three and a half months of occupation costs the equivalent of Iraq’s estimated oil revenues for the current financial year. We now know, thanks to the leaked report of James Baker’s Iraq Study Group, that if US troops withdrew, they would in all probability be redeployed to neighbouring countries, increasing the already massive expenditure and inevitably threatening new arenas of conflict. Here’s an unimaginable alternative. If the US army left the region, and if the money was instead handed out to every Iraqi man, woman and child, they would each receive more than $300 a month.

They need it: Iraq has run out of reconstruction money. The funds in the so-called Development Fund for Iraq – some $20 billion of Iraqi money – were spent by Paul Bremer’s Coalition Provisional Authority in the first year of the occupation. The US Embassy in Baghdad has spent virtually all of the $18.4 billion that Congress appropriated for ‘rebuilding’ the country; $5.6 billion of it was used to run the embassy, promote American ‘values’ and set up the new armed forces and police. Most of the American money never even gets to Iraq. The bulk of it has gone to American consultants, or into American contractors’ international bank accounts…

One thing is certain: the Coalition has created and fostered the least accountable and least transparent regime in the Middle East.

The Lancet has a series of article on global sexual behavior and reproductive health, a sort of global Kinsey report. In EurekaAlert:

The paper1 analyses data from 59 countries worldwide to answer questions such as when people start to have sex, how many sexual partners they have and whether they practise safer sex. The authors explore what the patterns and trends mean for sexual health and they review the literature on preventive approaches to improve sexual health status.

The paper contains a number of unexpected findings. In an age in which scare-stories about underage sex and promiscuity abound, there has in fact been no universal trend towards earlier sexual intercourse.

Another surprising finding is that it is the developed nations that report comparatively high rates of multiple partnerships, not those parts of the world which tend to have higher rates of HIV and AIDS, such as African countries. This has led the authors to suggest that social factors such as poverty, mobility and gender equality may be a stronger factor in sexual ill-health than promiscuity, and they call for public health interventions to take this into account.

Monogamy was found to be the dominant pattern in most regions of the world. Despite substantial regional variation in the prevalence of multiple partnerships, which is notably higher in industrialised countries, most people report having only one recent sexual partner. Worldwide, men report more multiple partnerships than women, but in some industrialised countries the proportions of men and women reporting multiple partnerships are more or less equal.

You can listen to Lancet Editor Richard Horton introducing the launch of the series here.

In Eurozine, Ted Cantle asks whether multiculturalism in Europe is a failure, and, if so, what can be salvaged?

The concept “multiculturalism” is no longer adequate to describe the extent and nature of diversity and has become seen as a means of legitimising separateness and division. It did provide a very useful way, in the past, of emphasising that “difference” should be respected and celebrated rather than feared. But it has also been used as a “catch-all”, encompassing a wide range of differences – economic, political, social, cultural, physical, etc – and conflates concepts of nationality, national identity, and group and personal affinities, and now has very little real meaning.

The lack of clarity about multiculturalism has enabled opponents of diversity to continue to present “Britishness” in narrow and homogenising terms, rejecting all other conceptions and trying to demonstrate that these differences are incompatible and based on “natural” or primordial distinctions. They use terms such as “people like us” to describe their idea of identity. This is a dangerous line of argument and it seems that even liberal-minded commentators can easily fall into the trap this language creates. People are not made up of genetically defined groups, and the ethnic, faith, and other boundaries that we create – and defend – are almost entirely socially and politically defined.

From media responses and online polls in the Middle East, there seems to be a sense that the trial of Saddam Hussein was flawed or “unfair”. If the trial’s intent (in addition to trying a thug and war criminal) was truth and reconciliation, to break with the past and legitimize the new political and legal order, it seems to have failed severely. There is division in Iraq and dissatisfaction even among the Kurds. Mufid Abdulla in Kurdish Media:

This trial was unprecedented from the very first day. It seemed to me that nothing other than the mercy of the American power in Baghdad towards the Iraqi people would bring a speedy and conclusive end. There was also always the question of how to manage a trial of this nature, given the magnitude and complexity of the alleged atrocities.

For me too, the result of this trial is nothing but part of a political game played by the Americans: for their own ends and purpose. I personally have not gained any satisfaction from the outcome: it does not give me back my childhood, my youth, or my country, all of which I lost when we had to escape the situation. So now it is ended? But it is too late for me and others like me!

In the Daily Star (Beirut), the jurist Chinli Mallat reflects on the trial and verdict.

Difficulties started well before the 2003 invasion, and it is unfortunate that a tribunal was not set up as early as 1991, when the German foreign minister at the time, Hans Genscher, suggested that Saddam should be held judicially accountable for the invasion of Kuwait. With colleagues from the Iraqi opposition then, I helped establish in 1996 “Indict,” an international NGO which sought to bring Saddam Hussein and his aides to trial in a neutral court for their unique record of crimes against humanity. Not enough support was garnered to establish an international tribunal. This is the more unfortunate since the delayed establishment of the Iraqi court proved to be another instance of victors’ justice.

Since then, the court has failed almost every single test of a fair trial under basic standards: The main accused and his acolytes were given deference which choice world criminals should have never been allowed to exercise, a plethora of lawyers postured to the world without judges questioning who was paying for all their fees and expenses. Since Saddam Hussein, his family and supporters were footing the bill, the court did not question where those funds came from, while killings by Baathists remained high, and continue to date to be supported by the main accused in open court. Lack of fairness extended in all directions. Two defense lawyers were killed, as well as a number of witnesses, while the court saw a dramatic turnover of leading personnel.

Reporters Sans Frontieres (Reporters Without Borders) has released a list of 13 enemies (national governments) of the internet. (Via the BBC)

Three countries – Nepal, Maldives and Libya – have been removed from the annual list of Internet enemies, which Reporters Without Borders publishes today. But many bloggers were harassed and imprisoned this year in Egypt, so it has been added to the roll of shame reserved for countries that systematically violate online free expression.

Countries in alphabetical order :

-Belarus

The government has a monopoly of telecommunications and does not hesitate to block access to opposition websites if it feels the need, especially at election time. Independent online publications are also often hacked. In March 2006, for example, several websites critical of President Alexandre Lukashenko mysteriously disappeared from the Internet for several days.

Burma

The Burmese government’s Internet policies are even more repressive than those of its Chinese and Vietnamese neighbours. The military junta clearly filters opposition websites. It keeps a very close eye on Internet cafes, in which the computers automatically execute screen captures every five minutes, in order to monitor user activity. The authorities targeted Internet telephony and chat services in June, blocking Google’s Gtalk, for example. The aim was two-fold: to defend the profitable long-distance telecommunications market, which is controlled by state companies, as well as to stop cyber-dissidents from using a means of communication that is hard to monitor.

From Guardian:

American writer Jonathan Littell won France’s prestigious Goncourt prize today with a 900-page novel narrated by a Nazi SS officer – and written in French. Les Bienveillantes (The Kindly Ones) has garnered wide attention in France both for its subject matter and the nationality of its author. The Goncourt is France’s most prestigious literary honour.

After an extensive bidding war the book, which has topped French bestseller lists for weeks, will be published in the United States by HarperCollins in 2008 and in the UK by Chatto and Windus.

The 38-year-old Littell grew up in the United States, but wrote his debut book in French as a tribute to two of his favorite authors, Stendhal and Flaubert. Littell’s father, Robert Littell, is known for such spy novels as “Legends” and “An Agent in Place.”

More here.