10.29.2002
[Posted 4:59 PM by James Panero]
THE NEW CRITERION’S PRECIS FOR NOVEMBER, 2002:
What do the classicist Mary Beard, the playwright Harold Pinter, and the Islamofascists Mohammed Omar and Hussein Massawi have in common? How about Susan Sontag and John Walker Lindh? “Is there a connection between the Mary Beards and what Mark Steyn has aptly dubbed the weird beards of the world?–between the prattling intellectuals and the pragmatic terrorists?”
So asks Roger Kimball in the November issue of The New Criterion, which features a special section on anti-Americanism, one of the most virulent movements of our time. Gerald Frost, Paul Hollander, David Pryce-Jones, John Derbyshire, Michael Mosbacher, and Digby Anderson contribute essays to this very important section. As the political philosopher Richard Weaver reminds us in his signature phrase, “ideas have consequences.” These provocative essays, analyzing the toxic ideas that inform contemporary anti-Americanism, are essential reading for anyone concerned with this destructive cultural and political force. We hope you will spread the word.
CONTENTS:
* Notes & Comments (page 1): “Academic freedom for me but not for thee” on the sexual circus of pornstar/activist Annie Sprinkle; “Rhetorical incontinence” on the antics of NEW YORK TIMES columnist Maureen Dowd.
* “Anti-Americanism: a special section-
–“Failures of nerve” (page 4). Roger Kimball writes that “anti-Americanism, in both its patently murderous and fatuously sophisticated forms, is a growth industry.” Here he introduces this special section, occasioned by the conference on anti-Americanism that was held in Tunbridge Wells, England, October 3-4, 2002. (We have placed an advance, full-text PDF file of Roger’s article at a special address on our website. We invite you to download it now [300K-case sensitive]: https://www.newcriterion.com/nerve.pdf)
–“The European project” (page 9). As France holds up American resolutions in the United Nations, and the German chancellor Gerhard Schroeder rides American animus to political victory, Gerald Frost wonders where Europe went wrong-and asks if the European Union will get it right:
“It would be an exaggeration to suggest that Europe’s anti-American vocation asserted itself from the start of the European Union. Had it done so, America would presumably have noticed. Instead of indulging the European infant, it might consequently have smothered it. But if hostility to U.S. interests and policies did not assert itself immediately, it was inevitable that it would do so at a later date. The nature of the European project and the ideology of liberal internationalism that underlies it ensured that this would be so. Opposition to U.S goals and interests is likely to continue, and indeed to become more pronounced, unless the European Union is rebuilt on different assumptions or simply collapses.”
–“The politics of envy” (page 14). Paul Hollander explores the root causes of intellectualized anti-Americanism:
“From the sociological and historical points of view, anti-Americanism may best be understood as a diffuse, ongoing protest against modernity–its major components and unintended consequences. These include secularization, industrialization, urbanization, bureaucratization, mobility (both social and spatial), and the decline of community and social-cultural cohesion. Less obvious is how and why modernity nurtures anti-Americanism even in societies that are stable, democratic, wealthy, and thoroughly modernized–as opposed to those societies that are in the throes of uneasy and ineffectual modernization that undermines old certainties and social organizations, while yielding few tangible material benefits.”
–“Retreats into fantasy” (page 20). David Pryce-Jones looks at the historical misunderstandings between Islam and the West:
“Returning home from a journey to Arabia in the latter part of the eighteenth century, the explorer and historian Carsten Niebuhr put in at Alexandria. Once ashore, he used an instrument for surveying the landscape. Some intrigued Egyptians asked to handle it. What they then saw through the lenses was incomprehensibly upside down. Niebuhr was thrown into prison for sorcery. Some decades later, the great Richard Burton, disguised as Haj Ibrahim, was on the pilgrimage to Mecca, a city forbidden to all except Muslims to this very day. In his baggage was a compass which he hardly dared use, living in fear that its discovery would lead to his murder. Stories of the kind encapsulate what was already by then the unequal relationship between the world of Islam and the West.”
–“Yearning to be liked” (page 25). John Derbyshire takes a Grand Tour through China and the East, and, to his dismay, settles on a Roman proverb:
“We are not much given to Latin tags nowadays, but there is one that keeps popping up in American newspapers and web sites, and which just this last week I actually saw printed on a T-shirt. The tag is the one Seneca denounced as a “vile, detestable and deadly sentiment,” but which had a steady currency throughout the late-Republican, early-Imperial period of Roman rule: “Oderint dum metuant”–Let them hate us, so long as they fear us. I am with Seneca on this one; I hope things never come to that; but I am bound to say, from talking with and listening to my fellow Americans, that is the direction in which they are heading.”
–“Dubious moralisms” (page 31). Battles for Seattle? Torched ski-lodges at Vail? It would seem that, contrary to Francis Fukuyama’s famously argued point, the battle of ideologies is far from over. Michael Mosbacher and Digby Anderson look for answers in the new anti-Capitalist/anti-globalization movement:
“The new protest movement is heterodox and diverse. Some of its members would describe themselves as anarchists, others as every conceivable shade of green, a few as Marxist; the majority would, however, simply say that they were anti-corporate. It seems to have become de rigueur for those speaking on behalf of such protests to say that they are not even sure if they are anti-capitalist. The movement has no clear image of where it might wish to go, except away from where we are. A certain core set of viewpoints is, however, shared by the protesters. Taking their four core claims in turn shows how anti-American assumptions still underpin radical protest.”
* Additional feature in November–“Johnson, Boswell & the biographer’s quest” (page 35). Jeffrey Meyers returns to happier affairs with an essay on these great biographers:
“Johnson assumed that the purpose of biography was not simply to tell one man’s story, but to make sense of life. He was the first to define biography as an attempt to understand the lives of others, as “an act of the imagination.” Ideally, all literary biographers should be like him: with a vast knowledge, probing intelligence, fine critical judgment, and healthy skepticism tempered by common sense. Perhaps no writer today could equal Johnson’s learning or Boswell’s intimate knowledge of his subject, but the modern biographer, an investigative reporter of the spirit, still strives for their sympathy and intuition.”
* New poems: by Harvey Shapiro & Valerie Wohlfeld (page 41)
* Theater: “’Out’ at the old ballgame” (page 44). Gay camp? On Broadway? Mark Steyn attends TAKE ME OUT and cries foul.
* Art: “Erotic prudery?” (page 49). James Panero confronts the sexual politics of Jean-Baptiste Greuze. “Exhibition note” (page 52). Mario Naves visits the Morgan Library and takes delight in the art and theory of Stuart Davis.
* Music: “New York Chronicle” (page 54). Jay Nordlinger finds happiness, pride, vulgarity, and love in the new music season. “Concert notes” (page 58). Patrick J. Smith reviews Galileo Galilei, Philip Glass’s new opera at the Brooklyn Academy of Music.
* The media: “The scandal lobby” (page 60). James Bowman wonders why Congressmen David Bonior and Jim McDermott, speaking from Baghdad, trust Saddam Hussein over President Bush–and if the Democratic Party will ever recover.
* Fiction chronicle: “Suffer the children” (page 65). Infantilism invades the quality-lit game this season. Max Watman issues tickets for underage writing.
* Books–
–Martin Garbus COURTING DISASTER: THE SUPREME COURT AND THE UNMAKING OF AMERICAN LAW reviewed by Robert H. Bork (page 72). Garbus swings at the Court with a far-Left hook. Judge Bork counters with a knock-down punch:
“Garbus’s cavalier misrepresentations of the record may perhaps be accounted for by the fact that he is a trial lawyer. Someone, I think it was Leslie Fiedler, remarked on the close resemblance of a certain kind of lawyer’s jury summation to Joseph McCarthy’s wilder perorations. It is astounding, however, that Garbus would put his fabrications in print where they can be examined by people who know the facts.”
–John Leggett A DARING YOUNG MAN: A BIOGRAPHY OF WILLIAM SAROYAN reviewed by Brooke Allen (page 77). Ms. Allen examines the perils of young talent:
“The promising and, in the end, horrifying career of William Saroyan is a case study in the limits of raw talent. Talent Saroyan undoubtedly possessed, and in abundance. But he refused to refine it or develop it, refused to educate or to discipline himself, scorned the role of apprentice, scorned any role, in fact, but that of genius. As a result his early and meteoric success was succeeded by a long, humiliating, inevitable decline.”
–Joseph E. Stiglitz GLOBALIZATION AND ITS DISCONTENTS reviewed by Tim Congdon (page 81). Tim Congdon takes on the anti-globalists and finds himself discontented:
“By demonizing the IMF in this unfortunate book, Stiglitz has given help to the worst type of participant in the public debate on international economic policy. For all their problems (and they have many), the IMF, the World Bank, and the WTO want a world that is more liberal, international, rule-based, and ordered.”
–N. John Hall MAX BEERBOHM: A KIND OF LIFE reviewed by John Gross. Mr. Gross alights on the biography of this great wit:
“Hall’s account of Beerbohm’s writings is tactful and shrewd. He sets them in their biographical context; he steers you towards the best things–SEVEN MEN, A CHRISTMAS GARLAND, a handful of perfect essays, ’Enoch Soames’–and at the same time reminds you of lesser pleasures that might easily be overlooked. (There is an especially fine chapter on Beerbohm’s largely forgotten career as a broadcaster, in the golden age of BBC radio.) He also has some rewarding comments on literary influences and techniques–on the neglected affinity with Thackeray, for instance–but without attempting any systematic analysis. And it would have been a mistake if he had. The nimbleness of the wit would only suffer if you slowed it down for the purposes of demonstration.”
FORTHCOMING IN THE NEW CRITERION
* In December, a special section on art, including essays by Eric Gibson, Alex Katz, Roger Kimball, Hilton Kramer, Daniel Kunitz, Michael J. Lewis, Mario Naves, James Panero, E.V. Thaw, and Karen Wilkin.
* Also: The life of Christopher Marlowe, by Paul Dean; does Eric Hobsbawm write history? by David Pryce-Jones; Ovid today, by Gerald J. Russello; the literary outsider, by Mark Bauerlein; Sir Gawain, by John J. Miller; a new kind of science? by James Franklin; poetry chronicle, by William Logan; and Paul Valery, by Joseph Epstein.
NEWS
* For a free digital look at portions of the November issue, please do not forget to visit our website at www.newcriterion.com. The November issue will post on the first of the month.
* The New Criterion collection SURVIVAL OF CULTURE will be available from Ivan R. Dee in the third week of November.