Training Manual for the Final Solution

Ordered to shoot, these men will not refuse
To kill a Jew on principle. For them,
Principles are abstract, and too complex,
And if the other men, without sweat
Or friction, do as you’ve instructed, Jews
Can be negotiated: no man wants
To be a coward. Your job is preparation.
Untutored, they will shoot above the neck,
Thinking it more efficient, but it will spray
Splinters of bone and brain in bloody fragments
To sting their eyes, and stain their shirts and skin.
Such things will shake and strengthen in a man
The residue of god he still concedes,
Skinning his nerves with sharpened teeth and claws
Until he vomits black and bile. His will,
Thus deformed, is useless. You should imagine
These young men as young wives, who must be eased
Into their role: the wedding night is not
The place for carnal horrors. If a man
Hangs back and disappears into the forest
Allow it—but announce no policy.
All burden of a choice should be removed.
Meanwhile, instill in them a good technique,
Which must become a blind and boring habit:
The target prone, his face down in the dirt;
Bayonet tip just above the shoulder blades;
And then, as one, deliver the release.

This poem is part of Interviews With Vampires.

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Part 1: Knowledge.

We know the sun will rise tomorrow, by “reasoning from experience.” Philosophers call it inductive knowledge. From the fact that the sun has risen each morning past, we infer that it will do so again. Not all knowledge is inductive—no insecure leap from past observations is needed, to know that 2+2=4—but inductive knowledge is important, indeed is “essential to the subsistence of all human creatures.” If previous encounters with baked goods leave you helpless before the next a loaf of bread, unsure whether it will nourish or poison you, you won’t last long.

David Hume wondered how induction generates knowledge, and found a problem: in all inductive reasoning, “there is a step taken by the mind, which is not supported by any argument or process of the understanding.” That is the step from observing a regularity, to expecting it to continue. How did we acquire the propensity to take this step? Not by constructing a proof that regularities must always continue. The continuation of regularities is not necessary, so no such proof is possible. Even if one were, you had the propensity long before you had the ability to produce proofs; you had it even in the crib, as your parents may testify. Nor could the propensity be the result of reasoning that (i) in the past, regularities continued into the future, and therefore (ii) this regularity will also so-continue. Only if you were already disposed to extrapolate past regularities, could you reason this way: the inference manifests the disposition and cannot explain it. These are Hume’s “skeptical doubts concerning the operations of the understanding.”

To these doubts Hume proposed a “skeptical solution.” The mind is “induced” to “make this step,” that is, to extrapolate, not by some argument, or the operation of (what he calls) the understanding, but “by some other principle,” which he calls “Custom or Habit.” Today, we might say this Habit was built into us by natural selection; Hume said it was part of human nature.

Reason, which for Hume is but one of the mind’s many faculties, is, Hume concludes, somewhat feeble, and we are fortunate that other mental faculties help it along, or we would know very little indeed. We are fortunate, in Hume’s somewhat unfortunate terminology, that our reasoning from experience does not rely entirely on the faculty of Reason. Reasoning from experience “could [not] be trusted to the fallacious deductions of our reason, which is slow in its operations...[and] in every age and period of human life [is] extremely liable to error and mistake”:

As nature has taught us the use of our limbs, without giving us the knowledge of the muscles and nerves, by which they are actuated; so has she implanted in us an instinct, which carries forward the thought in a correspondent course to that which she has established among external objects.

Part 2: Well-being.

One form of conservatism is a simple attachment to the familiar, and consequent resistance to change. Another form is the assertion that such-and-such form of life and of society (fill in the blank: feudal, Christian, etc)—one that, as it happens, was realized in the past—is the right one, and is known to be right; we should, therefore, return to it. This second form of conservatism is based on knowledge, but a third form, the one of interest here, is based on skepticism. What Hume said about our capacity to know, this conservative says about our capacity to live well. Edmund Burke was this kind of conservative. Explaining his opposition to the French Revolution, he wrote

We are afraid to put men to live and trade each on his own private stock of reason; because we suspect that the stock in each man is small, and that the individuals would do better to avail themselves of the general bank and capital of nations and of ages. Many of our men of speculation, instead of exploding general prejudices, employ their sagacity to discover the latent wisdom which prevails in them.

Joseph Henrich’s The Secret to Our Success is a book about culture and evolution, and a secret case for Burkean conservatism. In a chapter titled “On the Origin of Faith” he discusses the starch-rich tuber manioc, which in several parts of the world is a dietary staple. If eaten unprocessed, manioc “can cause both acute and chronic cyanide poisoning.” To solve this problem the Tukanoans, a society in the Columbian Amazon,

use a multistep, multiday processing technique that involves scraping, grating, and finally washing the roots in order to separate the fiber, starch, and liquid. Once separated, the liquid is boiled into a beverage, but the fiber and starch must then sit for two more days, when they can then be baked and eaten.

This process reduces the cyanide to a negligible, safe level. But that is not why the Tukanoans do it. Removing cyanide is not the explanation they offer for their behavior. They do it out of custom or habit. They cook manioc that way, because their parents cooked manioc that way. Henrich elaborates:

despite [the process’s] utility, one person would have a difficult time figuring out the detoxification technique … the multistep task of processing manioc is long, arduous, and boring, sticking with it is certainly nonintuitive.

A “self-reliant” Tukanoan could examine the technique handed to her by tradition, scrutinize it carefully, and try to suss out which parts of it were essential to its effectiveness:

She might … conclude that the goal of the procedure is to remove the bitter taste … She’d find that with a shorter and much less labor-intensive process, she could remove the bitter taste. Adopting this easier protocol, she would have more time for other activities, like caring for her children. Of course, years or decades later her family would begin to develop the symptoms of chronic cyanide poisoning.

“Individual learning,” says Heinrich, “does not pay here.” The Burkean conservative holds that life-plans handed down through custom are similarly opaque. Those plans are good paths to happiness and fulfillment. But clouds and storms obscure this from our view. Think it all through for yourself, refuse to take anything on trust, and your evaluations of possible life-plans will be poor if not terrible. Hume held that Reason alone can produce little by way of knowledge; Burke held that reasoning about the good life will produce little by way of well-being. In both cases the solution is the same: follow custom or habit, a process or plan handed down through generations of refinements, which ahead of time you cannot justify.

Part 3: Liberalism.

Liberalism is a canvas covered in paint splattered by a monkey. But one idea is close to its center: that people should be free to live their lives as they choose, so long as they don’t harm, or otherwise violate the rights, of others. That is hard to dispute. But John Stuart Mill, the arch-liberal, had a more extreme view: that making a reasoned choice is itself a core part of living well. And one does not make a reasoned choice, Mill held, if one does X “because that’s what we do around here.” It is this version of Liberalism that the Burkean conservative rejects. For Mill, reasoned choice is so important, that he thinks you are better off deciding that way, and ending up miserable, than being happy as a result of following custom. Mill’s conviction on this point turns his stirring rhetoric up to eleven. Following custom is not just bad, it is fit only for brute beasts:

He who lets the world, or his own portion of it, choose his plan of life for him, has no need of any other faculty than the ape-like one of imitation. He who chooses his plan for himself, employs all his faculties. He must use observation to see, reasoning and judgment to foresee, activity to gather materials for decision, discrimination to decide, and when he has decided, firmness and self-control to hold to his deliberate decision. And these qualities he requires and exercises exactly in proportion as the part of his conduct which he determines according to his own judgment and feelings is a large one. It is possible that he might be guided in some good path, and kept out of harm’s way, without any of these things. But what will be his comparative worth as a human being? (On Liberty)

In the domain of cooking techniques, Henrich refuted Mill in favor of Burke. One who eschews “ape-like imitation” and instead “chooses his plan for himself,” poisons his whole family. (In fact and ironically, the refutation goes a level up: the form of imitation by which custom is passed on and improved, Heinrich argues, is uniquely human, not something apes are so much as capable of.) Go ahead, ye Millians, and tell the lover of autonomy that, despite the evil he has wrought, his “comparative worth as a human being” remains higher than that of his custom-following neighbor, who is smiling and playing with his grandchildren. And if Mill was wrong about culinary techniques, how right could he be about Bigger Topics, say, whether to get married and raise a family?

I suspect, though, that a True Conservative won’t trouble too much about whether living as Mill directs us is a Bad idea. He’ll suggest that, in any regard, living that way through-and-through is impossible. Those who defy one tradition only do so by acquiescing in another. It’s like Saint Paul’s idea in the letter to the Romans, that to be “set free from sin” one must become a “slave of righteousness.” Or Bob Dylan, who’d read Paul, singing “Gotta Serve Somebody.” The Christian philosopher Peter van Inwagen puts it more clearly if less memorably: “each of us accepts certain authorities and certain traditions,” even those of us who believe that we trust only ourselves, and that we critically examine everything before accepting it. Here the Burkean view gets complicated and difficult. In small close-knit communities there may be just one tradition, or set of customs and habits; but in our cosmopolitan world there are many, and some are better than others. Van Inwagen divides them into two camps, and says you likely “trust one or the other of two authorities: the Church or the Enlightenment.” He is an “apostate” of the Enlightenment, now finding that “its social consequences,” and its effects on those who live according to its tenets, “have been horrible.” But these are the words of someone guided by the customs and the habits of the Church. What if you agree that complete autonomy is impossible, but are anxious about which tradition should be yours? You want to live according to the better sort of tradition, but how? Stick where you started, hoping you were lucky and were born in the right place? Or, what? Use your Reason to decide between them?

See also: Edmund Burke and the Limits of Pragmatism.

Sources: David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding; Peter van Inwagen, Quam Dilecta.

An earlier version of this essay was published in November 2023.

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But one should persist. Interleaved with the marginal marginalia is serious literary criticism, and essential information about Chandler’s view of his creation. The plot of The Big Sleep is famously opaque, and Chandler himself later admitted he couldn’t quite figure it all out—screenwriters for the film version were stumped, and asked Chandler who killed Owen Taylor, the chauffeur employed by Marlowe’s client; Chandler did not know. This public fact hints at the private truth, revealed in Chandler’s letters (and quoted in note 2 on page 83):

In the long run, however little you talk or even think about it, the most durable thing in writing is style and style is the most valuable investment a writer can make with his time.

Following this tip, The Big Sleep can be fruitfully read as a study in the simile. J. S. Bach’s The Art of the Fugue was meant to illustrate each fugual technique in a single work of art, and Chandler is doing something similar, in a pulp detective novel. I mean, there seem to be ten startling comparisons per page, sometimes more:

The light had an unreal greenish color, like like filtered through an aquarium tank. The plants filled the place, a forest of them, with nasty meaty leaves and stalks like the newly washed fingers of dead men.

Like the newly washed fingers of dead men: how did he come up with that? What did Chandler sell to the devil, for this ability? For another, here’s Chandler on General Sternwood, Marlowe’s client in the novel:

His thin clawlike hands were folded loosely on the rug, purple-nailed. A few locks of dry white hair clung to his scalp, like wild flowers fighting for life on a bare rock.

The flaw in The Big Sleep is that so much energy is put into its style, that not enough is left for character. Chandler told us what his hero means, in his essay “The Simple Art of Murder”:

Down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid. The detective in this kind of story must be such a man. He is the hero; he is everything.

The story is this man’s adventure in search of a hidden truth, and it would be no adventure if it did not happen to a man fit for adventure...If there were enough like him, the world would be a very safe place to live in, without becoming too dull to be worth living in.

In Chandler’s novels generally Marlowe is loyal, and a man of integrity; in The Big Sleep he stands by his client at great cost to himself, though it’s not clear whether or why the General deserves it. But Marlowe is still not quite human, and I was not able to care about any of the other characters, even the ones who aren’t caricatures of Bad Men or Fallen Women. The book is full of hate, love, fear, and madness, but my strongest emotional response was not to a murder or a rescue; not to Marlowe’s inevitable physical beating, or to his also-inevitable but sideways solution to the crime; it was delight in the crazy images that only Chandler can produce:

His office had the musty smell of years of routine.

The giggles got louder and ran around the corners of the room like rats behind the wainscoting.

Her whole body shivered and her face fell apart like a bride’s pie crust. She put it together again slowly, as if lifting a great weight, by sheer will power. The smile came back, with a couple of corners badly bent.

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In the sci-fi film Contact Dr Eleanor Arroway is in love and at odds with Palmer Joss, a man of faith. Joss first presents as a writer and a defender of local communities, but Arroway soon learns he’s a lapsed seminarian—he “couldn’t live with the whole celibacy thing,” as it clear from how quickly he takes her to bed. His is the weaker performance, as Jodie Foster (Arroway) is better at playing a skeptical scientist, than Matthew McConaughey (Joss) is at playing a devout Catholic. Arroway can’t take religion seriously, and says to Joss:

what’s more likely? An all-powerful, mysterious God created the universe, and then decided not to give any proof of his existence? Or that he simply doesn’t exist at all and that we created him, so we wouldn’t have to feel so small and alone?

In the film’s second act, Joss betrays Arroway. She’d discovered a message from Vega, proof of extraterrestrial intelligence. The message is decoded and found to contain blueprints for a space vehicle, but where it will go, no one knows. Then follows a contest: who will represent humanity to the aliens? The Americans acknowledge, to themselves and behind the scenes, that an American will be chosen. That means Arroway has only one competitor, David Drumlin, former science advisor to the President. Drumlin has sought to upstage and undermine Arroway throughout the film, and for her entire career, and he is worth booing every time he appears on screen. Joss is on the selection committee, and he sabotages Arroway’s interview, by asking if she believes in God. She evades, complains about lack of evidence, questions the relevance of the question, and is rebuked by a committee member:

Ninety-five percent of the world’s population believes in a supreme being in one form or another. I believe that makes the question more than relevant.

Drumlin then smirks through some pious remarks, a snake lying through his teeth, and the job is his. But a terror attack on the vehicle kills Drumlin, and Arroway becomes the pilot for the backup vehicle, built in secret off the coast of Japan, whose existence is explained in one of the film’s better lines: “First rule of government spending: why build one, when you can have two at twice the price?”

The vehicle “works,” as far as the humans can understand, by dropping a spherical pod into some spinning circular thingys, at which point...well, as Dr House often said, no time for tests. Down Arroway went. We see her traverse a wormhole, visit several star systems, and she is overcome by the beauty of what she sees:

No words, no words, to describe it. Poetry. They should have sent a poet. It’s so beautiful....I had no idea.

She converses with an alien, who takes the form of her dead father, whose death by heart attack she witnessed at the age of nine—and, pause for a minute. Arroway is fooled at first, and thinks she’s really talking to her dad, but not for long, and the alien addresses her natural confusion—

we thought this might make things easier for you

—which, I don’t know: dredging up trauma from her youth, and proving they’ve scanned her mind and her most guarded memories, seems to me the opposite of comforting. How superintelligent can these aliens be, if they couldn’t pass Human Psychology 101?

But the ending of the film is what I really want to talk about. When Arroway returns to earth, she has no evidence or proof that she ever left. All the observers saw, and all that the “forty-three separate remote cameras” recorded, was her pod falling straight through the spinny things without pause or interruption. The video and audio recording device she wore throughout, and diligently used and maintained, showed nothing but static. During the follow-up congressional investigation, she battles skepticism incarnate in James Woods, who plays the National Security Advisor:

You come to us with no evidence, no record, no artifacts. Only a story that, to put it mildly, strains credibility. Over half a trillion dollars were spent. Dozens of lives were lost. Are you really going to sit there and tell us we should just take this all on faith?

Arroway replies:

I had an experience. I can’t prove it. I can’t even explain it. But everything I know as a human being, everything I am, tells me it was real. I was given something wonderful, something that changed me forever. A vision of the universe that tells us undeniably how tiny and insignificant and how rare and precious we all are. A vision that tells us that we belong to something that is greater than ourselves, that we are not, that none of us are alone. I wish I could share that. I wish that everyone, if even for one moment, could feel that awe and humility and hope.

Jodie Foster is a marvel in the film. Her Arroway has a soul of iron, and a face that’s vulnerable and transparent. In each scene it shows an infinite range of emotions, like subtle waves in grains of sand. These factors combine to make her speech in Congress moving, as a spectacle; but as a plot turn it’s ham-fisted and weak. Do you get it?—Arroway, the skeptical woman of science, now sounds just like Joss, the credulous man of faith. The filmmakers, and Carl Sagan (who wrote the book on which the film is based), wanted, I think, to make an epistemological point. Those who believe in God cannot be criticized, for believing things they cannot prove to skeptical third-parties, because everyone does, or may easily come to, believe such things, and be rational in doing so. But that point can be made, without bringing in the meaning of life and our place in the universe, the topics of Arroway’s speech. When Peter van Inwagen defends religious belief against “epistemological minimalism,” which Arroway endorses several times in the film (all before her mind-expanding journey)—a theory of knowledge that admonishes us,

Don’t accept any proposition not subject to straightforward factual verification unless that proposition is endorsed by the sciences or is necessary for explaining some global fact that the sciences leave mysterious,

he emphasizes its absurd consequences in domains far from religion or the meaning of life, suggesting there is no real difference, with respect to this principle,

between an atheist and theist (on the one hand) and (on the other) two equally expert and informed astronomers in, say, 1994, one of whom thought that gamma-ray bursts occurred inside our galaxy and the other of whom thought they occurred at cosmic distances.

Epistemology is a cold-blooded discipline, best pursued by shy and quiet reptiles. But Arroway’s blood is up, and she sounds like a prophet, who has been delivered a vision she can tell about but cannot share, and with those limited means must convince a stiff-necked people to trust and follow her. Her frustration is the frustration of a saint and mystic:

It seems to me that if all creatures had received the same graces I received, God would be feared by none but would be loved to the point of folly. (St Thérèse of Lisieux)

Thus Arroway’s appearance before all those fancy government officials is powerful, and totally unfit for the material that is meant to justify it. An experience of God, and a knowledge of God’s love, would be “something wonderful” that would “change you forever,” and could tell us we “belong to something greater,” and “how tiny and insignificant and how rare and precious we all are.” But I don’t see how meeting some aliens could do that. Wouldn’t meeting aliens make us seem less rare and precious? And “none of us are alone”? There are eight billion human beings on planet earth. If despite that you feel alone, then learning of intelligent life on other planets, of a universe teeming with such life, would not help; I do not understand how it would help. Knowing God, and knowing of his love for you and all creation, might make you feel less alone, but not that.

But let us grant that Arroway was (in her words) “given something wonderful,” and that she understands, for the first time, that we are “part of something greater”—a bit more plausible, if we include not just the aliens, but the beauty and sublimity she experiences en route. She says she’s “changed forever,” but how? Throughout the film Joss has been her mirror and her foil, and now we are to believe they are the same, except Arroway’s faith is in aliens and not in God. But how much is she like him—or like him if he were as he is supposed to be, a truly religious man? The prompt is the same: each has received a gospel, and Arroway is eloquent to her interrogators about its newness, and the goodness of that news. Her reaction is usefully compared to some paradigms. When Jesus told Peter and Andrew to “follow me,” they “immediately left their nets,” abandoning career and livelihood. When Paul the Apostle was struck blind and instructed by Jesus, he turned away from who he had been and what he had stood for—a zealous persecutor of Christians—and became something that could (and would) easily get him killed, the lead advocate and defender of that religion. But where is Arroway, and how does she change her life, after her revelation? Back where she was before, in New Mexico, building more telescopes.

See also: Hide Not Your Face From Me; The Plague Crucifix; On Fear of Religion.

Sources: Peter van Inwagen, Reply to Sean Carroll; Story of a Soul: The Autobiography of St. Thérèse of Lisieux; the Gospel According to Matthew.

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“I rammed him for a good five to ten minutes,” Bowie later recalled, between songs at a BBC concert in 2000. “Nobody stopped. Nobody did anything.”

At a time of such incredible personal turmoil, he was able not just to continue working, but to create some of the most striking, moving, and groundbreaking work. 

The cover of the live album he released in October 1974, David Live, shows the full extent of his physical deterioration.

This kind of paranoid, drug-fueled rambling would become typical of David Bowie interviews over the next 18 months.

…about watching for UFOs (“I made sightings six, seven times a night for about a year”), Mayan civilization, media control and “cultural manipulation”, and Nazism… 

It was the first of his albums to abandon, almost entirely, rock ’n’ roll in favour of something funkier and more soulful.

Angela Bowie notes that she “never saw any jugs, jars, vials, or any other containers full of urine.”

He also read avidly, as ever, having apparently brought 400 books with him for the 11-week shoot.

He would arrive at the studio with little more than a couple of song fragments—in this case ‘Word On A Wing’ and ‘Golden Years’—which he then handed over to bandleader Carlos Alomar. Alomar would then figure out several arrangements of each song with Dennis Davis and George Murray, from which Bowie would pick the one he liked best.

Dennis Davis’s drumming might be metronomic, but is keenly felt, while Murray’s bass is responsive rather than restrictive.

But then Bowie always had, and still has, an almost childlike enthusiasm for thrusting his latest discoveries on anyone.

Bowie’s interest in fascism is symptomatic of the very aspect of his character that is most often praised: his near-constant desire to grow and change.

As bandleader Carlos Alomar put it some years later, “He’s a pseudo-intellectual. He is what he reads, and at that time in his life, he was reading so much bullshit.”

The point of his return to Europe, as he had decided six months earlier, was “to experiment; to discover new forms of writing; to evolve, in fact, a new musical language.”

“Nobody gives a shit about you in Berlin.” 

Bowie, on the other hand, preferred to work in a much more spontaneous fashion.

The Idiot also dispels the myth that Brian Eno led Bowie away from conventional rock and pop music. 

…his decision to work with Eno made more sense. Both had risen to prominence as extravagant key players in the UK’s glam-rock scene, but were bookish and intellectual at heart…

Here it was the producer’s turn to impress, describing how his newly bought Eventide Harmonizer “fucks with the fabric of time.”

…he new “full well’” that what the singer might initially consider to be demos “could end up as masters, and they did.”

…he fed Dennis Davis’s snare drum into his much-trumpeted Eventide Harmonizer, and set it to feed back into itself, at an almost imperceptible delay, with the pitch gradually lowering each time, resulting in a strange, weightless thump that sounds as if it might carry on indefinitely…

Bowie told Visconti that he didn’t think it quite right for what he was trying to achieve on Low, but the producer persevered, engaging in a spot of musical subterfuge by turning the effect off in the main studio monitors.

Gardiner “was given no instructions whatsoever” as to what he should play, except for “one solo where [Bowie] sang the first three notes.” 

Robert Fripp, meanwhile, would later note that Eno’s approach to record-making is “not governed by musical thinking.”

…it was also felt that the fact that Chopin died there of consumption “resulted in Eno developing a cough.”

The most striking aspect of this material is not so much its largely instrumental nature, or its synthetic sheen, so much as its refusal to resort to conventional song structures.

Bowie found himself too physically and emotionally drained to record.

Bowie intended each of the seven songs on side one to have words, but in the end failed to write anything suitable for the first and last of them, ‘Speed Of Life’ and ‘A New Career In A New Town’. As a result, both are instrumental.

The music on side one is frenetic and often unresolved, each song fading out inconclusively. 

RCA executives … considered it to be distinctly unpalatable for the Christmas market.

“Virtually every time I saw him in Berlin,” writes Angela Bowie of the period, “he was drunk, or working on getting drunk.”

In the case of ‘Warszawa,’ however, Eno deserves all the credit he can get, since he effectively wrote and recorded the entire piece himself, but for Bowie’s surprising, freeform vocal.

“the ONLY contemporary rock album.”

“Who needs this shit?” he asks—this shit being “the sound of nothing.”

Everyone from The Ramones to The Damned put Iggy atop the punk-rock pedestal.

“Watching Iggy Pop in 1977 is like watching a film,” he wrote, “He’s not real any more, he’s like a puppet.”

As ever, Bowie obliged, declaring punk to be “absolutely necessary [as] a sort of musical enema.”

Somewhat surprisingly, for the first time in six years, he flew, from Heathrow, having belatedly decided that “the aeroplane is a really wonderful invention.”

There’s a looseness not present on any of the other records either of its principal authors made at the time, best exemplified by ‘Success.’ 

Iggy came up with a lot of the lyrics and vocal melodies on the spot.

His Low, however, for all its unquestionable artistic merit and pronounced effect on what followed, was a very insular record. 

“I thought, ‘Shit, it can’t be this easy.’” But it was. Most of the rhythm tracks heard on “Heroes” are first takes.

Of all of Eno’s interventions on “Heroes”, the one that drew the most resistance was the deployment of his Oblique Strategies. These are contained on a set of around 100 cards he first produced in 1975 in collaboration with the artist Peter Schmidt; each features a non-linear instruction designed to help the musician or artist in question overcome a creative block. “The kind of panic situation you get into in the studio is unreal,” Eno said in 1978. “The function of the cards was to constantly question whether [the direction the music took] was correct. To say ‘How about going that way?’” 

…prior to the release of the fifth edition, in 2001, older decks were changing hands for up to $1500 on ebay.

Despite the fact that they found themselves in what was, essentially, a tiny enclave of Westernism deep in Soviet-controlled East Germany, overlooked by border guards, the musicians involved felt less isolated.

The arrangements on “Heroes” are, by and large, much more atonal and confrontational than anything on its predecessor, with noisy, distorted, multi-tracked electric guitar very much at the forefront. 

Fripp famously recorded his guitar parts for “Heroes” at a pace that rivaled even Bowie’s rhythm section. 

…From there he simply started playing, apparently without having heard the songs first. Bowie, as ever, resisted the opportunity to give the new arrival anything approaching a tangible instruction, suggesting only that he “play with total abandonment, and in a way that he would never consider playing on his own albums.”

…with that, the first side of “Heroes” was, for all intents and purposes, complete—except, of course, for the lyrics, to which Bowie had not yet given any thought whatsoever.

…each would record a track (or several) on his own and then, before the other added his, push down the sliders, leaving them both unsure as to exactly what they were working with.

…there is also a sense beneath the surface of them being created by a pair of musicians delighting in playing musical tricks on one another. 

Bowie’s vocal performances are magnificent throughout, switching effortlessly from histrionic falsetto to low, warm, conversational tones. From a pure singing perspective, he had never sounded as good, and perhaps never would again.

Living in Berlin, Bowie had told Rock Et Folk immediately before the “Heroes” sessions began, had taught him to write “only the important things”. 

The five-song suite that makes up side one, in fact, is perhaps the strongest sequence of songs on any Bowie record. But in terms of overall canonical importance and sheer artistic bravery, Low has the overwhelming advantage of having been released first.

A less punctuated version of this piece was published in November, 2023.

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Frog: Toad, Hello! Have you read the rest of Book 1 of the Lives?

Toad: Blah.

Frog: Toad? What is wrong?

Toad: You and I chose to read Lives of the Eminent Philosophers to learn about eminent philosophers. None of these people are philosophers. It is boring.

Frog: Toad, you must read it again. It is brimming with wisdom. Did you not notice? It has been a week but still I remember these maxims:

Do not speak ill of the dead.
Honor old age.
Do not laugh at another’s misfortune. (Chilon)
It is hard to be good. (Pittacus)
Prefer knowledge to ignorance. (Cleobulus)
Keep your promises. (Periander)

Toad: There is too much advice. Sage sayings do not make you a philosopher. And some of these philosophers’ “maxims” do not inspire trust. Chilon may have said “Remain calm,” but he also said “When speaking, do not gesticulate; for that is a sign of madness.” And I see you did not quote Bias, who said “men should love their friends as if they would one day hate them, since the majority of men are bad.”

Frog: Well that is because the story of Bias made me sad.

Toad: But Frog, that was the best one. Remember how he died: in a trial, Bias

had been pleading on behalf of some client. When he finished his speech, he leaned his head on his grandson’s chest. Opposing counsel made his speech, and when the judges voted and issued a verdict in favor of the man Bias was representing, the court was dismissed and Bias was found dead in his grandson’s arms.

This is not a sad story. Bias won his case.

Frog: But Toad, it can never be a good thing when Bias wins the case.

[Toad heaves a heavy sigh.]

Frog: Toad, you are also missing how funny these stories are.

Toad: I did not think they were funny.

Frog: The Lives shows that the ancient Greeks did not just invent philosophy, they also invested philosophy with its superior sense of humor.

Toad: Frog, this must be a dream. I have never heard a funny philosophy joke.

Frog: Have you not seen the spoofs philosophers have written of each others’ styles of reasoning? Here is one—John Rawls’ “proof” of a proposition P:

It would be nice to have a deductive argument that P from self-evident premises. Unfortunately I am unable to provide one. So I will have to rest content with the following intuitive considerations in its support: P.

Toad: Maybe, Frog, you are right. But if so, then just as it is true, in general, that today’s leaders are mere dwarfs before the greats of the past, so also it is true that philosophical humor has been in decline since 500 BC. Anacharsis was funnier than any of those “proofs.” Here, if you do not mind my repeating it, is the story of his visit to Solon:

On arriving at Solon’s house Anacharsis told one of his servants to announce that he had come and wished to see Solon and, if possible, to become his guest-friend. And the servant, when he conveyed the message, was ordered by Solon to tell Anarcharsis that men generally make guests only of persons from their own country. In response Anacharsis said that he was now in Solon’s own country and had a right to be entertained as a guest. And Solon, struck by his quick-wittedness, admitted him and made him his greatest friend.

Toad: Frog, do you get the joke? Anacharsis was standing at Solon’s door, so in a sense he was now “from Solon’s own country.” And  he came up with this riposte on the spot.

Frog: I am surprised you chose that story. About Anarcharsis we are also told that, “When asked which are the safest vessels he said, ‘Those in dry dock.’” That is much funnier. But Anarcharsis’s jokes prove nothing about Greek humor on average. He was exceptional. Look, he also invented the anchor and the potter’s wheel.

Toad: Ugh. [He pauses.] I have just remembered the story of Anarcharsis and the oracle. Frog, I guess you are right; he was not like the others.

Frog: I very much like stories about the oracle. Can you tell that one again?

Toad: Anacharsis asked the oracle if anyone was wiser than he. (This is the philosopher’s “mirror mirror on the wall.”) The oracle replied that Myson was.

Frog: Oh yes, that does indeed make Anacharsis stand out, for it is unusual for philosophers to obsessively rank themselves against each other. But this Myson, who was wiser than Anacharsis, I do not remember him.

Toad: The sketch of his life in the Lives contains nothing memorable.

Frog: That is too bad. I guess his great accomplishments had been lost by the time the Lives was written.

Toad: I myself think that in reality he was not so wise, and that this was one of the oracle’s little jokes. Certainly some of these sages, far from being wise, were quite wicked. Do not forget Periander:

In a fit of anger, he killed his wife, either throwing a footstool at her, or with a kick, when she was pregnant, having trusted the false accusations of concubines.

[Now is it Frog’s turn to sigh.]

Toad: He then had the concubines burned alive.

Frog: Yes Toad, I remember Periander. He is also reported to be the first to have had a bodyguard.

[There is a pause. Frog looks away from Toad, off into the distance.]

Toad: Oh Frog, I did not mean to make you sad. Look, you are right, there are miracles and wonder in these stories. Epimenides! He “stepped out of the road at midday and fell asleep in a cave for fifty-seven years”! He then awoke and lived many more years, and was “regarded as the man most loved by the gods.” Among his accomplishments was ending a plague in Athens. “He claimed to have come back to life many times.” Is he not a light shining in the darkness?

Frog, smiling: Yes Toad, indeed he is.

Toad: I will try not to lose heart. I see that in Book 2 we will learn about Socrates, and Phaedo, and Glaucon, and others.

Frog: Good! Now come Toad, the sun is shining; let us walk so that it may shine on the backs of our knees.1

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This piece was previously published in 2023.

The ramp went down, and the sound was like a furnace.
Blinded by smoke, we pushed into the water,
And everywhere the air was sick with bullets
Sinking their dull and wolfish roots in me
As if I were a rotted corpse. I fell,
And I was drowning in a sea of blood.
Then, two hands bore me up the beach, and jabbed
My arm with morphine, and I did not see his face.
At the reunions, all the strangers who
Were brothers on that day would strip their sleeves,
And I would ask my question, but he’s dead,
Or else we’re both anonymous, forever.
I see him now in everyone, as if
Absorbed into the body of the remnant.

Have Mercy on the Children Who Were Chosen

Have mercy on the children who were chosen;
For what was given can be given back.
Have mercy on the family of spare parts
Assembled by a judge with stamp and pen.

We look with longing on the accidents:
On fumbling teenagers who lose their heads,
On babies kept in panic and despair,
On fate; on flesh and blood with flesh and blood.

See also: “With complete disregard for his own safety”.

More poetry on Mostly Aesthetics: American Independence in Verse; Interviews With Vampires.

A different version of “Omaha Beach” appeared at The Society for Classical Poets.

“Have Mercy on the Children Who Were Chosen” originally appeared in Poems for Persons of Interest; thanks to and .

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Bertrand Russell was once asked how he would justify his atheism, if he found himself before the pearly gates. “Not enough evidence, God!,” was his answer. It’s a common thought: if God exists, why hasn’t he compelled all but the most stiff-necked among us to believe in him, with more miracles, and more awesome revelations attesting to his mighty power? The is the “problem of divine hiddenness.”

One answer, discussed by Peter van Inwagen, denies that God wants us to believe he exists—or anyway, holds that it’s “at best misleading” to say that that’s what God wants. Hence, if God’s methods are poor methods for achieving that goal, that’s no indictment. Van Inwagen elaborates, with an analogy:

I want my wife to believe in my existence. Well if I say this I say something true, but it’s not a thing I would ever say outside a philosophical example. What I want is for my wife and me to stand in a certain complex set of relations that as a matter of fact have her believing in my existence as an essential component or logical consequence. If my marriage were destroyed...she’d probably still believe in my existence, but that by itself would be of no value to me. And God does not place any particular value on anyone’s believing in his existence—not simpliciter, not by itself. What he values is a complex of which belief in his existence is a logical consequence.

“Certain complex set of relations”—that’s a very van Inwagen phrase, and the complex in question is complex indeed, but it includes, and this is why the marriage example is so fitting, loving God. The kind of things God might do, to encourage us to love him, and believe in him “as a logical consequence,” are quite different from the kinds of things he might do, to secure belief without love.

An illustration of these points may be found in William Alston’s account of coming to the faith. Alston’s story, he notes, is

conspicuous for the absence of any presentation of arguments, any account of trains of reasoning leading up to an intellectual assent to this or that doctrine.

This, despite the fact that Alston is a professional philosopher, in whom one might expect “trains of reasoning” to be a core part of any change in view, especially one as momentous as this. Becoming Christian, for him, was not a movement of the mind. But what then was it, and what brought it about?

He finds it hard to articulate, blandly report that

Something happened, which I still find it difficult to put my finger on.

One preliminary was his acquiring the intellectual courage to dismiss skeptical debunkings of religious belief. The Freudians had said that religion was irrational wish-fulfillment, fit only for children. And Alston had been in this grip of this. But then he stepped back: wish-fulfillment is one possible explanation of religious belief, yes, but not the only one; such belief could also be a rational response to “a transcendent dimension of reality”; and why should he ignore that possibility “from fear of being branded as childish in some quarters?” Interestingly, he reports no further mulling this over, before psychoanalytic theories lost their power. He looked the adversary in the face, and the question “answered itself as soon as it was posed.”

But more important was his “opening himself up where he was closed.” This is a good image, but of what? Paul’s letter to the Romans talks of “the love of God” being “poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit,” and maybe that was what Alston “opened himself” to, but he could hardly have thought of it that way, before he believed. Instead he describes allowing himself to be “drawn into a community, into a way of life”: the practices of the church he was attending. No contradiction there, but it may still seem backwards: should not faith start, somehow, with God? Maybe yes and maybe no, but for Alston the “way of life” did produce actual belief:

I found God as a reality in my life through finding a community of faith and being drawn into it.

Alston uses another metaphor to explain this process: it was like “learning to hear things in music that one had been missing,” an interesting echo of something Roger White wrote about possible paths to faith. Attending church in the hope of coming to believe in God might seem an irrational way to influence your beliefs—even if you end up believing the truth. But there may be facts which are best, or even only, known by way of “going through the motions” appropriate to knowing them, before you have that knowledge. This may not work, and there may be nothing to know:

I don’t understand much about art, especially contemporary visual art...to me it mostly looks like a bunch of crap...[But] I have often wondered if there is something that I’m missing out on...I have tried to take on the artistic viewpoint in much the way that Pascal recommends attending Mass. I’ve gone to art galleries and stared at canvases covered with buckets of splattered paint, hoping to turn into one of those people who finds them profound.

Nothing happened in that case, but, Roger says, it was not a mistake to try. Maybe today’s art is bunk, but in other cases “utterly irresponsible belief manipulation can result in enlightenment.” Middle-aged and in his fifties, William Alston, through his church attendance but before his full conversion, now

found myself, incredibly, with a quite different orientation to the people around me. I began, for the first time in my life, to get a glimmer of what love means.

Returning to the hiddenness of God, maybe indirect routes to belief in him, of the sort Alston reports, are common and for some people even necessary, because they are so well-suited to produce belief in the company of love.

See also: On “Fear of Religion.”

Sources:

• Peter van Inwagen, The Hiddenness of God.

• William Alston, A Philosopher’s Way Back to the Faith.

• Roger White, You just believe that because....

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The bass guitar line of David Bowie’s “Sound and Vision” wiggles and leaps with uncontained joy. It’s a happy piece of music. The word “happy” is most at home applied to people, as in “Jones is a happy guy,” but here it has been spread beyond its home use. Such meaning spread is attested elsewhere. We say that someone is wearing a happy expression on their face, or that their crumpled posture makes for a sad slouch. Here “happy” and “sad” have been spread to their effects: a happy expression is one characteristic of people who are feeling happy; it is an expression which is a natural one for someone showing their happiness in their face to wear. Similarly, a sad slouch is a natural one for someone showing their sadness in their posture to pose in.

Can emotion terms, when applied to music, get their meaning by a similar mechanism? Focus on melodies, which “move through musical space,” some ascending step-wise from C to G, some leaping down from G to B. Appearance Emotionalism says that a happy melody is one that moves in a way that is a natural way for someone showing their happiness in their behavior to move. Same for anger, sadness, and so on.

Variation 1 of Bach’s Goldberg Variations, especially in Glenn Gould’s 1956 recording, is joyful, exuberant. Appearance Emotionalism says it moves in a way a person full of joy would move, if they showed their joy in their motion. I’ve always found this explanation convincing. In the first half the melody runs, climbs, leaps, and zig-zags effortlessly, before racing home.

I said that in “happy expression on their face” the meaning of “happy” had been spread to an effect, but that’s misleading. I can wear a happy face without its being an effect of my feeling happy, and not every face that is an effect of my happiness, is a happy face. My happiness might cause me to frown, if I am trying to hide it; and, as everyone who lives among humans knows, one can put on a happy face even when all inside is darkness and turmoil.

Nevertheless, if understood in a looser, or generic, sense, it is true that happy expressions are caused by happy feelings. A happy expression is a natural one for someone showing their happiness in their face to wear. If someone is wearing such an expression because they are showing their happiness in their face, then, in that case, the expression is caused by their happiness.

The philosopher Alan Tormey, in a book on expression, wrote that

there is a surface to expressive behavior that may become detached. The child who pretends, the actor who portrays, the mime who imitates, and the hypocrite who feigns, all attempt, in different ways, to strip the surface of expressive behavior from the character it normally reveals.

Emotion adjectives can be used to describe those surfaces, even when they have become detached from the inner feelings that, in normal cases, cause them.

Could Appearance Emotionalism be right? One might worry about idiosyncratic modes of expression. Imagine a community that carefully trains its members to show their happiness in a very slow step-step-skip gait. To them, walking that way when happy is second-nature; it requires no thought or deliberation. The first time we see it we are baffled, but after living among them for a few years we “see happiness” in this walk just as much as you ever saw it in a smile. Must Appearance Emotionalism then say, falsely, that a melody that moves through musical space in that step-step-skip motion is a happy one?

I’m not sure that community is so much as possible; nor, if it is, that the implication is false. What emotions are in a piece of music, may be relative to the ways of expressing emotion familiar to the listener, or the composer. But Appearance Emotionalism need not even grant that much. In its original form, it says that a happy melody must share a natural way for showing happiness: one that is built in to human nature. Learned means of showing are, therefore, excluded.

A harder objection is that no melody in fact moves in a way in which a human can move. Whatever exactly “musical space” is, “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” does not move through it, in just the way any person moves through physical space. But then Appearance Emotionalism entails that no piece of music is happy, the wrong result.

The theory may be saved by the distinction, between more and less precise ways of doing something. If I raise my hand, I do so in some perfectly precise way: at a rate, for example, of two inches per second. You might raise your hand, and do so a bit faster—a slightly different way. But ways can be less precise, and there is a less precise way of raising that our hand-raisings share. I raised mine slowly; so did you.

Similarly, maybe no human can move in the precise way that the melody of “Twinkle Twinkle” moves, not least because they move through different spaces, which themselves are quite different (musical space is not continuous). Still, “Twinkle Twinkle” begins with a leap, and I can also begin my afternoon jaunt with a leap.

Stephen Davies, one of the main defenders of Appearance Emotionalism and the man who gave it that name, mentions Saint Bernards.

Saint Bernards have sad faces. Certainly, that’s not because they are natural faces for dogs to wear when sad: Saint Bernards are not beset by an epidemic of sorrow. So, if Appearance Emotionalism is right, they must be natural faces for humans showing their sadness in their face to wear. But how can that be? No one ever mistakes a Saint Bernard for a human. The answer (again) is the distinction between more and less precise ways. No human wears their face in the precise way a Saint Bernard does; physiology makes that impossible. But there is a less precise way of wearing one’s face—which includes a certain droopiness to one’s features—that humans and Saint Bernards can both exemplify.

An earlier version of this essay was published in April, 2023.

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1. Jesus fasted forty days in the desert, and was tempted by Satan. Paradise Regained is John Milton’s re-telling of those temptations, with expansions and inventions. In Milton’s version, Jesus is openly unmoved by the temptations, he is absolutely immune: fitting, theologically, but it makes Paradise Regained a dramatic poem with very little drama. The original, in the Gospel of Luke, is short, curt, more mysterious and more interesting.

2. Two moments do draw attention. First, in Book III, after several failures, Satan turns to praise, attempting an indirect temptation to worldly glory:

I see thou know’st what is of use to know,
What best to say canst say, to do canst do;
Thy actions to thy words accord, thy words
To thy large heart give utterance due, thy heart
Contains of good, wise, just, the perfect shape.

Equipped with such goodness, why does Jesus not go and exercise it?

These godlike virtues wherefore dost thou hide?
Affecting private life, or more obscure
In savage wilderness, wherefore deprive
All earth her wonder at thy acts, thyself
The fame and glory...

Jesus’s reply is surprising, for its dim view of those he’s tasked to save:

For what is glory, but the blaze of fame,
The people’s praise, if always praise unmixed?
And what the people but a herd confused,
A miscellaneous rabble, who extol
Things vulgar....

Such misanthropy! Where is man made in God’s image? Where is man made a little lower than the angels?

Also interesting is Satan’s follow-up, he seems to have caught Jesus in a slip:

Think not so slight of glory; therein least
Resembling thy great Father: he seeks glory,
And for his glory all things made...

I expected Jesus to respond that his Father seeks love, not glory (the Greatest Commandment: to “love the Lord you God with all your heart”)—or seeks glory only as an act of love—but he does not. In fact the word “love” appears only once in the poem, and it is Satan who uses it. (He says he is still able to love, “or at least contemplate and admire / What I see excellent.”) Instead, Jesus rebuts Satan thus: God has done so much,

what could he less expect
Than glory and benediction,

and anyway, if men did not “return” glory to God, they

would likeliest render
Contempt instead, dishonour, obloquy.

In sum: glory is better than the alternative. This is not much of a reply? What am I missing?

3. The other interesting moment is the poem’s shift, from Satan’s futile and therefore boring attempts to tempt Jesus, to Satan’s (apparent) confusion over who Jesus is, for there is drama in Satan’s distress at his ignorance:

Since neither wealth, nor honour, arms nor arts,
Kingdom nor empire pleases thee, nor aught
By me proposed in life contemplative,
Or active, tended on by glory, or fame,
What dost thou in this world?

This is the exalted analogue of that hilarious scene in Office Space, where the Bobs, exasperated, ask Tom Smykowski “what would you say...you do here?” And then—Satan’s (false) warning, that if Jesus rejects the easy and certain, but worthless rewards that Satan offers, the greater good he aims for is not guaranteed, the only guarantee is suffering—these may be the most powerful lines in the poem:

if I read aught in heaven,
Or heaven write aught of fate, by what the stars
Voluminous, or single characters,
In their conjunction met, give me to spell,
Sorrows, and labours, opposition, hate
Attends thee, scorns, reproaches, injuries,
Violence and stripes, and lastly cruel death,
A kingdom they portend thee, but what kingdom,
Real or allegoric I discern not.

See also: Book Review: Paradise Lost; Late Milton.

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The nature of evil is a philosophical problem, and what have we come up with? Luke Russell, in Evil: A Very Short Introduction, says an act is evil if it is “extremely harmful for at least one” victim, and a person is evil if he is disposed to perform evil acts. On this view, evil stands to harm, as hot—or scorching—stands to warm. But this can’t be correct, can it? Evil acts don’t just have more of what makes something wrong, they have something extra, right? (Daniel Haybron: “we cannot get from bad to evil by adding any number of ‘verys’”.)

Russell’s theory of evil uses a thin moral range—harm is the central concept—but his discussions of evil use stronger stuff: those who perpetrate evil are moral monsters; they are morally depraved. This list could be extended: being depraved exists in a circle of similar notions, like being perverted, or corrupted. Russell also says that we are rightly horrified by evil. This is easily explained, by the fact that monsters are horrifying—thus their frequent appearances in horror movies. Of course evil does not inspire the same horror as a viewing of Alien: horror comes in many forms. Horror is an intense dread or dismay, and is an apt response to any “monster,” that is, something so deformed as to be alien, or almost so. Since evil is moral monstrosity, it is apt to cause a specifically moral kind of horror.

In any regard, since one could be disposed to perform extremely harmful acts, without being monstrous or depraved—the disposition could have some other ground—Russell’s theory is false.

Other theories try to do more justice to these features of evil, while still corralling evil in the dry idiom of analytic philosophy. One says that a person is evil if they are “insensitive” to factors that count against doing harm, or doing wrong. A perpetrator of genocide to whom his victim’s suffering means nothing, meets this definition. Another theory says that someone is evil if they are “the mirror image of the morally virtuous person,” this perhaps capturing the idea that evil is the opposite of good. Russell dismisses both of these. Against the first, an evil man may be a little bit sensitive to his victim’s suffering—just not sensitive enough to stay his hand. Against the second, the mirror of perfect virtue is perfect vice, so the theory requires an evil person to lack all virtue and goodness—to never love his children, or hope for the preservation of the wild places of the earth. But evil is not so demanding.

Insofar as these theories fail, it’s because they fail to capture the ideas that inspire them. A moral monster’s character is deformed in the extreme; more, it is deformed in virtue of being depraved. Deformity and depravity, while Very Bad Things, do not entail insensitivity to suffering, nor need they make one a “mirror image” of the morally virtuous. Russell emphasizes the variety of psychologies that can issue in evil: sadistic delight in suffering is a sign of evil, but not essential to it; the same goes for malicious intent, or defiance of morality. This makes sense, for there are many ways of being deformed, even in the extreme.

Can we simply say, as I just did, that to be evil is to be a moral monster, deformed by depravity? Maybe there are counterexamples (please send them!), but some will object for another reason. Philosophers have long operated under a demand that notions like “moral monster,” or “depraved,” themselves be defined, using simpler and more securely understood notions, before one could regard the result as a definition of evil. But similar demands have lately been put to rest in other parts of philosophy (I’m thinking of knowledge-first epistemology); maybe this one should be here, as well. This is not to say that the key notions, monstrous and depraved, cannot or need not be further elaborated—just that their elaborations need not take the form of definitions.

Russell’s theory lacks the virtue of truth, but he also claims for it another: neutrality. The theory is expressed in terms accepted by all, and so if it is true, Christians (etc) and atheists alike can agree on who is evil and why.1 I’ve never been drawn to the idea that if God is dead, everything is permitted: without God there could still be good, bad, right, and wrong. But it’s worth wondering whether a neutral theory of evil could be true; and whether, and if so how, secular conceptions of moral monstrosity and depravity could produce a theory of evil all parties could regard as adequate.

See also: Interviews With Vampires, a series of poems about evil.

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Is your work underappreciated? Are you throwing pearls before swine? Take heart:

At the time of Shakespeare’s death few would have supposed that one day he would be thought the greatest of English playwrites. Francis Beaumont, John Fletcher, and Ben Jonson were all more popular and esteemed.

But also remember when Bob Dylan sang,

Well, I rapped upon a house
With the U.S. flag upon display
I said, “Could you help me out
I got some friends down the way”
The man says, “Get out of here
I’ll tear you limb from limb”
I said, “You know they refused Jesus, too”
He said, “You’re not him.”

Shakespeare’s contributions to the English language need no review, but even knowing this, I found these lists surprising:

Among the words first found in Shakespeare are abstemious, antipathy, critical, excellent, eventful, barefaced, assassination, lonely, leapfrog, indistinguishable, well-read, zany, and countless others (including countless). [But...]

His real gift was as a phrasemaker [...]: one fell swoop, vanish into thin air, ... play fast and loose...be in a pickle, budge an inch, the milk of human kindness...If we take the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations as our guide, then Shakespeare produced roughly one-tenth of all the most quotable utterances written or spoken in English since its inception.

One can revere great writers too much, or credit them too little. Alexander Pope was the most misguided Shakespeare/meh partisan. “Edit” means “prepare for publication,” and also “change or correct,” and when Pope edited a set of Shakespeare’s works, he also edited the works themselves:

Where, for instance, Shakespeare wrote about taking arms against a sea of troubles, he [Pope] changed sea to siege to avoid a mixed metaphor.

That’s bold.

2. An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice and its Influence on General Virtue and Happiness, by William Godwin (1st edition, 1793).

Less well-known in many circles than his wife Mary Wollstonecraft, or his daughter Mary Shelley, Godwin was a proto-anarchist:

It were earnestly to be desired that each man was wise enough to govern himself without the intervention of any compulsory restraint; and, since government even in its best state is an evil, the object principally to be aimed at is, that we should have as little of it as the general peace of human society will permit.

He had a way with words. Some argue that, because we do not protest or revolt against them, we “implicitly consent” to laws and government actions. Godwin retorted,

If I walk quietly to the gallows, this does not imply my consent to be hanged.

He thought promising an indefensible practice. What could justify sticking to your word, when an otherwise morally superior option might come along? That would be

to disarm my future wisdom by my past folly.

On the subject of free speech Godwin was for the free exchange of opinions in the marketplace of ideas, and against the government favoring some ideas over others. Like Milton, Godwin held that

The contest between truth and falsehood is of itself too unequal [that is, in truth’s favor], for the former to stand in need of support from any political ally.

One might doubt that truth has such an advantage, but also hope that the case for free speech does not require it.

This is not a book about death, but Godwin does make this dry observation:

Death has hitherto been the common lot of men, and I expect at some time or other to submit to it.

3. The Revolutionary Samuel Adams, by Stacy Schiff.

I am not one to denigrate the ideals or accomplishments of those who led the American Revolution. But the most famous among them had serious and, to some, unforgivable flaws. Even the best had a full tank of self-love, collecting their papers and reputation and freeze-drying them for future reconstitution and consumption. But Samuel Adams, “the only downwardly mobile of the Founding Fathers,” was content to burn his letters and disappear form history.

Still, Adams had other features that might blunt your admiration. He would not let truth stand in the way of his propaganda campaign for colonial rights and (eventually) independence. When some of Massachusetts Governor Thomas Hutchinson’s letters were secretly leaked back home (by Benjamin Franklin no less), they ended up in Adams’ hands, and Adams “turned [these] half a dozen harmless letters into a great crime.” He made out that Hutchinson had urged Great Britain to further abuse Massachusetts, including by way of a military occupation. When Adams was done, “Hutchinson’s reputation lay in tatters”:

never had an American annotator achieved such extravagant results with so shabby a remnant of truth.

Adams’ critics called his committee on correspondence a “proto-terrorist cell”; they might have complained that his belief in the Cause was so firm he was willing to force his compatriots to be free.

Nevertheless, Adams comes off rather well in this book, and may inspire the middle-aged late-bloomer:

Here comes Samuel Adams then, a graying widower, inexpensively and unremarkably dressed, familiar with nearly everyone who crosses his path. He is all loose ends and blighted promise. He has held off his father’s creditors, but his house is in disrepair. He has run the malt business into the ground. Charges of financial impropriety cling to him; a potential prosecution stubbornly follows him around. He could be embarrassed by his brushes with bailiffs but, cheery and congenial, has elected not to be. He has time to talk. Suffused in and affirmed by his faith, he offers up religious wisdom for any occasion. He carries himself with the serenity of someone on intimate terms with another world. He is devoted to his children, whom he arranges to have inoculated this spring against smallpox. He is a favorite of his friends’ children. If you look closely you notice that a quiver has crept into his hands. He appears to be shambling his way to obscurity. His fortunes will not improve but events are about to meet him halfway; the House of Commons is on course to blast him from his aimlessness. Hutchinson would gripe that—having miraculously escaped the wreckage of his tax-collecting—Adam’s improbably ascendancy began now, in 1764. Soon he will preside over Boston by, as one woman deemed it, falsehoods and subterfuges. He is forty-one years old.

From the precipice of obscurity Adams became the man who named the Boston Massacre, organized the Boston Tea Party, and stage-managed public opinion about every major political event in Boston in the lead up to the war.

Adams had a pulsing, Old Testament writing style, much different and far better than his cousin John’s stuffy pretentious latinate prose. Samuel Adams was not a poet, but he was not insensitive to poetry: he’d “carried a couplet” about marriage “in his head ever since his youth”:

Sure is the knot religion ties
And love well-bounded never dies.

Earlier versions of these notes were published in 2023.

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America 250 at Mostly Aesthetics, Part 8: ‘Tis time to part.

In early 1776, Common Sense went viral in the colonies, turning heads and tipping the scales toward independence. At four dozen pages, it’s too long to go viral today, even with a Premium account, but plenty of 280-character segments have the sting to have potential.

The British and the Loyalists saw good in the British form and practice of government. Might the radicals be missing something? Paine demurs: British admiration is “more from national pride than reason,” and their judgment is worthless, for they are like

a man, who is attached to a prostitute:

he is “unfitted to choose or judge of a wife,” and likewise “any prepossession in favour of a rotten constitution of government will disable us from discerning a good one.”

Opponents of independence said that America had flourished under Britain, before the crisis; but

we may as well assert that because a child has thrived upon milk, that it is never to have meat.

What about the French and Indian War? Did not Britain protect us from invasion, and foreign attack? Yes, but from vicious motives:

she did not protect us from our enemies on our account, but from her enemies on her own account.

Do we not owe Britain some loyalty, as our mother country? But that phrase is propaganda, to gain

an unfair bias on the credulous weakness of our minds.

Anyway, some betrayals can never be forgiven:

Your future connection with Britain, whom you can neither love nor honour, will be forced and unnatural, and being formed only on the plan of present convenience, will in a little time fall into a relapse more wretched than the first.

Indeed, anyone who can so “love and honor” Britain, has

the heart of a coward, and the spirit of a sycophant.

Delays, and dalliances with reconciliation, only put onto others, the work we should do ourselves:

let us come to a final separation, and not leave the next generation to be cutting throats.

These clips are great, but to feel the full distillation of the pamphlet’s power, it must be filtered and transposed into blank verse. Here it is, for the Fourth of July, 2026.

Common Sense: Addressed to the Inhabitants of America
Philadelphia, January 1776

In these pages I offer nothing more
Than simple facts, plain arguments, and common sense.
The struggle for America has now
Become a test of arms; all plans proposed
Before last April are but almanacs
Of years gone by; and reconciliation
Has passed away like an agreeable
Dream. Britain is no mother country. Even brutes
Do not devour their young, nor savages
Make war upon their families. No one
Again can love or serve a power that
Brought fire and sword into his land; no more
Can you forgive the murders of Great Britain
Than can a man forgive the ravisher
Of his wife. Hark and listen, hear the dark
Blood of the slain cry out: ’tis time to part.
O ye that love mankind, who dare oppose
Tyranny, stand forth! Freedom hath been hunted
Round the globe—Europe regards her like
A stranger—England warns her to depart.
O! Receive the fugitive, prepare
This new world an asylum for mankind.

Read more of America 250 on Mostly Aesthetics:

• Part 1: Words and Feelings.

• Part 2: Lincoln as Writer.

• Part 3: The Great American Novel.

• Part 4: Editorial on Harpers Ferry.

• Part 5: Omaha Beach.

• Part 6: Patriotism defended.

• Part 7: America the beautiful.

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America 250 on Mostly Aesthetics, part 7: America the beautiful.

Spencer Case claims that patriotism is “partly aesthetic,” in Why it’s OK to be Patriotic (see part I). Just as the lover admires what’s good in his country, he also strives to know, enjoy, and appreciate his country’s beauty. Spencer quotes George Orwell, loving England for its

solid breakfasts and gloomy Sundays, smoky towns and winding roads, green fields and red pillar boxes.

Ah, solid breakfasts! On the cover of Spencer’s book are the flags of many nations, the book is ecumenical, and the examples are literally all over the map—a good thing. So the book does not consider what is beautiful about America. But Spencer is an American patriot, as am I, and here and now is the time and place to shine a light on the beauty of this country. And so, I thought, well, I’ll write up something myself. But it’s hard! Purple mountains, amber waves of grain, yes, yes, but we don’t want the clichés, we want the subtle beauties, a statement of the American aesthetic that only a patriot could produce. So I asked Spencer if he would have a go. I was hoping for a few sentences. Here is what he sent.

What is the American aesthetic? The question sounds like the setup for a joke. It must be as brash as a billboard advertisement, as saccharine as a 64-ounce Big Gulp of Coke Cola, as unoriginal as a cliché line in a Hollywood action movie. That’s what a critic of American aesthetics might say, and there’s some truth to the charge. But what this critic might miss is that the garish exterior encloses an earnest, searching core.

A nation devoted to free enterprise and technological innovation might be expected to make a casualty of beauty. We don’t generally think of the light bulb or the elevator as objects of beauty. But they support novel kinds of beauty. Without them the skylines of Chicago and New York couldn’t exist. And some distinctly American innovations have opened our eyes to otherworldly beauty: the James Webb telescope’s images of the distant cosmos, or the mesmerizing Juno probe photos of Jupiter, revealing a maze of world-sized swirling storms, or the thrill of a Kennedy Space Center launch. Not least, there’s the automobile, not an American invention, but one improved and popularized in America, bringing with it the personal freedom of the road trip.

As with the patriots of other countries, I can’t help reading national values and aesthetics into the landscape of national territory. I’m primarily thinking not of the landmarks, the national parks, the skylines of Chicago and New York, but the liminal spaces between these popular destinations. When I was a graduate student, I drove regularly from Idaho to Colorado. This required crossing Wyoming, which I did between 60 and 70 times over a decade. At first, I found the drive tedious passing through places like Wamsutter and Buford, famous for having a population of exactly one (best of luck in the next mayoral election). And the wind, cold, and hail could be hazardous. But I came to find beauty in it. The landscape was vast and empty. So was the sky. Purple thunderstorms flickering with lightning were diminutive over peaks on the horizon, while the rest of the sky was an unthreatening blue, the summer shrugging off the gloom.

There’s one place I almost always stopped for gas: Little America, which bills itself as the largest truck stop in the world. For what seemed like hundreds of miles in either direction, billboards count down the distance and advertise its 50-cent ice cream cones and amenities. Almost there. Another 50 miles. Now 25. You’re almost there! One Mile Left! The exaggerated pride was mildly infectious, and maybe not insincere. I can’t speak to the water pressure or heat of the showers, but they really did have 50 cent ice cream cones. Quality services, promises kept, a satisfying stop on a journey: isn’t there a beauty to these things? Maybe Little America lives up to its name. Further down I-70, between Laramie and Cheyenne, a rest stop atop a mountain features a giant bust of Abraham Lincoln, surveilling with malice toward none, the unfolding of the union into the twentieth and twenty-first century.

And that century brought artistic innovations as well as technological ones: the syncopated rhythm of jazz, the effervescent phrases of Louis Armstrong’s trumpet. Or the dancing of Frankie Manning—the Ambassador of Lindy Hop, a dance itself named for Charles Lindbergh’s ‘hop’ across the Atlantic—who carried that tradition to its most energetic peaks and then transmitted it into new generations. He is a beloved figure among swing enthusiasts and an unsung titan of American culture outside that circle. Spiritual and material strivings are juxtaposed, even intertwined: God and mammon in uneasy alliance, individualistic and sometimes too boastful, but not complacent and certainly not static, like a jazz solo.

A final image: in 2017, I finally made a trip in which Wyoming was the destination to observe a total solar eclipse whose umbra passed over the Big Sky state. For a few days, the state’s population more than doubled as outsiders flocked in cars, trucks and campers to observe this unauthorized foray of night into day. Something wonderful, even sublime, keeps us looking up to a new frontier.

Spencer Case is a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the Center for the Philosophy of Freedom at the University of Arizona, and a veteran of the US Army. He writes about war ethics, moral realism, and political philosophy, and podcasts at Microdigressions.

Read more of America 250 on Mostly Aesthetics:

• Part 1: Words and Feelings.

• Part 2: Lincoln as Writer.

• Part 3: The Great American Novel.

• Part 4: Editorial on Harpers Ferry.

• Part 5: Omaha Beach.

• Part 6: Patriotism defended.

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America 250 on Mostly Aesthetics part 6: patriotism defended

Patriotism gets some side-eye from many, and—in elite clubs and back-room meetings—patriotic Americans get more. But patriotism can be defended, and is given a worthy defense, in Spencer Case’s soon-to-appear book Why It’s OK to be Patriotic. I got a sneak peak, and some access to the man himself. (Spencer is a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the Center for the Philosophy of Freedom, at the University of Arizona; his website is spencercasephilosophy.com.)

1. Patriotic love.

Patriotism is “love for one’s country and compatriots as such.” As such: I love my wife, who is my compatriot, but my love for her is not an instance of patriotism. This definition of patriotism is simple, but love itself is confusing, even for the philosopher.

What do you love about America? Some will answer with the values the nation professes: among them, liberty, equality, democracy, justice. But America is not unique in these ideals, nor, some think, does it live up to them better than others. If a patriot learns of a place that does it better, he will love America still, but how can this be? If those values ground your love, shouldn’t you switch your allegiance, if a superior option comes along? Spencer asks,

If patriots simply love abstract values such as democracy or justice, why couldn’t they “trade up” to countries that better instantiate those features?

Certainly if I value flashiness in a car, I’ll buy a flashier model, if I can afford it. But when people move countries, and profess justice as their reason, they are not much regarded as patriots, of the countries they abandoned.

Spencer answers his question by suggesting that what we love, when we love our country for its values, is more specific, than a bare four-item list:

Patriots don’t just love their countries’ values in the abstract; they love particular elaborations of those values—shaped by specific histories, constitutional structures, and cultural inheritances.

America may be unique in its elaborations of its values, even if many countries share the values elaborated. By “elaborations” Spencer means, at least, ways of trading off values when they conflict:

Most democratic countries share overlapping values but weigh them differently when they come into tension. Americans weigh gun ownership rights heavily and allow citizens to “sit it out” during elections, whereas Australia forbids most private gun ownership and requires all citizens to vote. It’s not that the US values freedom and Australia doesn’t, or that Australia values civic participation and the US doesn’t, or that Australia values safety and public order and America doesn’t. Rather, each country has come to different arrangements for how to realize the optimal balance between these values.

Maybe America’s way of trading off values is better than Australia’s (many certainly say so!); or maybe no way is ideal, each country’s way is a mix of good and bad, or is best suited to its ways of living, and there’s no saying which is, abstractly, “better.” Either way, the patriot is safe, from the danger that Australia might have more of what he loves about America.

Spencer also suggests that the threat of “trading up” misunderstands how love responds to the thing loved:

A country’s values...need not be optimal in order for it to be a worthy object of patriotic love.

Even in, per impossible, Australia’s safeguarding of liberty were superior to America’s, America’s is good enough, to justify patriotic love: just as it’s okay to admire a great person, though they be not a god.

This all seems right. But more might be said. In Spencer’s discussion, loving America for its freedom is giving a justification, or a motive, for one’s love. But that is not all it can be, and maybe it need not be even that. Love itself brings an impulse to admire the thing you love, and to attend carefully to its features, with an interest in finding in it features that are admirable. If you love America for its freedom, then you admire America for its freedom, and this admiration is an expression of your love, not a cause or a reason for it. If that’s so, the existence of other free countries need not undercut your love, as freedom is not the basis for it.

2. Is patriotism bad?

Patriotism can be a force for evil, when it causes zealotry, or the demonization of “enemy” countries. Spencer describes the murder of a German immigrant by American citizens during World War I. The mob acted out of anti-German hysteria. It “paraded Prager through the streets of Collinsville, Illinois, barefoot and wrapped in an American flag. The mob forced him to sing patriotic songs,” then lynched him. Prager was not just murdered on the basis of his nationality—horrible enough; he was made a spectacle, in a disgusting display he was made to parrot expressions of American patriotism before his death, a humiliation that was motivated by a dark form of patriotism itself. There are too many examples: the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II; the persecution of “communist sympathizers” during the Cold War.

But a considered judgment about patriotism must weight its bad effects against its good. Those goods may be “mundane,” day-to-day, not headline news, and so easily ignorable; but if they are small by some measure, they are also many, and should not be ignored. Spencer includes among these the facts that

Patriotism fortifies people against temptations to take bribes, cheat in an election, or refuse to accept the results of an election, judicial decision, or other political process when these are unfavorable.

We take these things for granted (maybe less than we used to), but they are the acts of a patriotic people. Spencer mentions one instance of this that was indeed newsworthy:

The Republican politicians who resisted Donald Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 presidential election, most notably Vice President Mike Pence and Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, didn’t seem to be acting out of self-interest alone. Both men were under pressure to go along with the scheme: Pence from a mob that physically threatened him, Raffensperger from anonymous threats he and his wife received, and both men from the president and their electoral base. Patriotism seems to have been an important part of why they ultimately did not succumb to these formidable pressures.

What else is good about patriotism? In general, since patriotism is a kind of love, and surely is “relevantly similar to other forms of love,” then “it, too, should make the world better on the whole.” And while love can be “twisted” or vicious, it’s wrong to to think it cannot be a virtue, or a cause of justice:

The good father isn’t someone who puts his children ahead of morality; rather, he does right by his family because he loves them. Likewise, the patriot is one who puts country ahead of self without putting either before right.

For example,

Those who love their own countries can more easily have empathy for the patriots of other countries. They can understand why it’s so important that their country be treated with dignity on the world stage, and why many react with outrage at perceived slights to their country’s dignity.

Also, love of country (when virtuous) is wanting what’s best for one’s country, and an unjust country is worse for being unjust:

[Patriots] have special reason to be concerned with their country’s moral standing as well as its prosperity.

3. When Patriotism erodes

After the Nazi victories of 1940, France was occupied and by an alien and evil regime. Most of the French (correctly) regarded its rule as illegitimate, and offered the minimum compliance needed to avoid punishment, and no more. Many took opportunities, where they could, to cheat, undermine, and generally oppose that regime, both materially and symbolically. When I studied this recently, the details of what they did, and how they thought, were a disturbing echo of the way many Americans think and act today (maybe different Americans, over the last few presidential terms). This decline is many things, and has many causes, but one thing it is, is an erosion of patriotism, which is a harm to the nation. Spencer’s articulation of this stood out to me:

A flourishing country requires citizens who are willing to sacrifice on its behalf, capable of restraining their passions when the common good demands it, and willing to see their political rivals as compatriots committed to the same shared goods, not enemies. Post-patriotic politics, if it can be called “politics” at all, is a zero-sum struggle for power: every election feels like a coup, every loss like a foreign occupation.

4. Beauty.

Finally, Spencer writes this about patriotism, a thought I’d not considered before:

Patriotism, like other forms of love, is partly aesthetic.

He elaborates,

Countries have distinctive landscapes, ways of speaking, architecture, culinary styles, and artistic traditions that create unique aesthetic experiences and contribute to an overall national character.

Spencer gives a few examples in the book, but none from America, so I asked him to try his hand at a statement of the American aesthetic, that only a patriot (and maybe, only he) could produce. It will appear next, in “Love of Country, II.”

Read more of America 250 on Mostly Aesthetics:

• Part 1: Words and Feelings.

• Part 2: Lincoln as Writer.

• Part 3: The Great American Novel.

• Part 4: Editorial on Harpers Ferry.

• Part 5: Omaha Beach.

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This is my evaluation of Thales’ case for tenure. First a word about our connection. I have interacted with him several times, but always in a professional capacity, engaged in abstract thought while strolling the agora. I have never bathed at his house, nor held the head of the sacrificial heifer while he cut its throat, and the black blood drained away its life. I do not know him well. I believe, therefore, that I can be objective in my assessment.

To cut to the chase, Thales is widely regarded as the wisest man of his age, and the case for tenuring him is strong. Your department is lucky to have him. His most significant contribution is his argument that everything is ultimately made of water. It has made a big splash; in the most recent issue of Miletian Metaphysics well over half the articles are devoted to discussing it. Also worth mentioning is his treatment of the question which is older, night or day? Thales has argued, and I quote, “Night is older, by one day.” Now I myself received tenure for arguing the opposite, in a treatise that so far has over 200 citations on Google Scholar. I have always thought that the “night is older” view was completely indefensible, a sign of a mind deranged by the angry gods. Thales, to his credit, has convinced me that it needs to be taken seriously. His arguments are certainly the best I’ve seen, though they do suffer from serious flaws. My intuition tells me that night is by definition the darkness that follows day; an alleged “first night” is therefore metaphysically impossible. Probably, Thales is confusing epistemic with metaphysical possibility, a bit embarrassing this many years after Saul Kripke’s groundbreaking work. This is what happens when graduate programs abandon the core curriculum. (Note to administrators: philosophers always disagree, so this should not be taken as indicating doubts about his case.) His contributions are all the more impressive given that Thales came to philosophy late, after a career in politics—or else, he is proof that philosophical talent is in-born, and cannot be cultivated in the weak-minded, whatever the more progressive pedagogues in my profession would have you believe.

Some context for the administrators relying on this letter in their deliberations will not be out of place. You have noticed, when reading Thales’ CV, that he has published nothing. Please note that this is not unusual in his field. Many prominent philosophers have written nothing; some superstars have written only a few fragments. Philosophy is young, and does not yet fit the mold of either a “book” discipline or a “journal article” discipline. Think of it more as a “reputation” discipline: if a lot of philosophers think you’re great, that’s all it takes to be great. In fact, as things are, actually publishing something can diminish your standing in the profession, as your stellar “potentially” is transformed into a somewhat lackluster “actuality.” I expect philosophy will grow out of all this by 500 BCE or so, as more refereed journals are established, the publish-or-perish arms-race begins, and philosophers shift from addressing “big questions” to producing narrowly-argued small-moves in the literature, in a boring and repetitive style, that can make it past “referee 2.” Until then people like Thales need to be “grandfathered” in.

It may also be useful to categorize Thales’ research. Philosophers are standardly divided into three kinds, as follows:

some are called natural philosophers because they investigate nature; others are called moralists because they discuss morals; those who occupy themselves in verbal hairsplitting are called dialecticians.

Thales falls into the first group.

If I have one reservation about this case, it is that Thales’ extracurricular activities may interfere with his future research trajectory. His political punditry may have saved Miletus from the Persians, but it surely takes up a great deal of time and energy. His innovations in time-measurement have also been influential; using a 365-day calendar has become industry standard. But that work does not qualify as philosophy, and so cannot be counted in his favor here.

So much for my evaluation of Thales’ research. About his teaching and service I can write less, as I have not been in a position to observe either. I have heard that he is a loner, and may not be an asset to a graduate program that prizes a close and welcoming community. He is also known to report students to the discipline committee, when they email him begging that their B+s be upgraded to As; and to use LLMs to grade student work, while barring his teaching assistants from doing the same.

In your request letter you asked if Thales would receive promotion here. I expect it would be a “slam dunk” case, which is significant, as we are more in need of hairsplitting dialecticians than natural philosophers. I wouldn’t be surprised if he were soon inundated with outside offers. Retention in the face of richer schools’ outrageous salaries should not be hard, as he is known to be independently wealthy from speculating in the olive oil market.

You asked that I compare Thales to his peers, to aid in your evaluation. Is he among the top ten in his field, among whom I am unable to draw further distinctions? Does he remind me of myself, when I was younger, and less experienced? Do I expect the work in his file to be among the very small fraction of today’s philosophy that will still be read in two thousand years’ time? In fact in Thales’ case such comparisons are impossible, as he is the first philosopher.

If I can be of any more assistance, please don’t hesitate to contact me. I may be found, daily, praying for new ideas in the acropolis.1

An earlier version of this essay was published January, 2023.

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America 250 on Mostly Aesthetics, Part 5: Omaha Beach

General Eisenhower wrote this to his wife, during the war:

I have never believed in revenge, but I have the strongest possible belief in justice, and the need to impose it on evil-doers.

Everything is always complicated—granted; but this war was a war against evil, and America was fighting for justice, and whatever else is true, that is something Americans may be proud of today.

There is “poetry in the raw” commemorating the Americans who fought in that war, hidden in government-issued documents, especially the awards for heroism and valor, like the Medal of Honor, or the Distinguished Service Cross. These four are from D-Day; there are more.

Stanley Appleby

disembarked from his craft some fifty yards from the beach under a hail of artillery shells and machine gun fire. A large number of casualties were sustained and, but for Technician Fourth Grade Appleby’s prompt and courageous action, would have perished in the surf. With complete disregard for his own safety, he on numerous occasions waded into the surf to lead them ashore and immediately administered aid.

George Bowen,

disregarding his own safety, stopped in his efforts to reach the shore, waded through the mined and fire-swept water to go to a wounded man who was drowning and dragged the man to shore.

Later, some men were wounded trying to take a machine gun nest “high on the slopes of a cliff”; Bowen

crossed an uncharted minefield and moved through vicious enemy fire to within fifteen yards of the enemy’s machine gun nest to render first aid to the stricken men.

Theodore Wilk

voluntarily left his position of safety and advanced boldly to a position from which he placed well-aimed fire upon an enemy pillbox. With utter disregard for his safety, he crawled closer through intense automatic weapons and small arms fire and, while delivering accurate fire which silenced the enemy, he was seriously wounded by sniper fire. Despite his wounds, he refused medical aid and pushed inland with his comrades.

Victor Peterson’s landing craft

was subjected to devastating fire from heavy shore emplacements causing numerous casualties to men on board. Voluntarily and with complete disregard for his own personal safety, Private First Class Peterson plunged into the fire-swept water and, assisted by a comrade, carried a heavy piece of vital communications equipment toward shore. When his companion was instantly killed by machine gun fire, Private First Class Peterson courageously and single-handedly dragged the heavy equipment through the mine-infested water. Midway to the beach, he was mortally wounded. With great determination, he continued forward and safely delivered the equipment upon the beach. Refusing medical attention, he made frequent trips into the water, through heavy artillery, mortar and small arms fire, and rescued wounded comrades until he collapsed upon the beach.

See also: Part 1; Part 2; Part 3; Part 4.

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      Yet do I fear thy nature;
It is too full of the milk of human kindness
To catch the nearest way.

“Milk of human kindness” is burned in our brains, because it’s such a delightful surprise: a wild way to think about kindness that’s also just right. A sentence may have many virtues, and too few have any, but this kind of surprise may be the one I prize most. Even better, is the next thought in Lady Macbeth’s speech:

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	Thou wouldst be great,
Art not without ambition, but without
The illness should attend it.

“The illness”: she means ruthlessness, which is a vice, and so indeed an “illness” of the soul or spirit, but how is it that Lady Macbeth, with open eyes, recognizes it as such, while also urging that it “should” attend ambition (not itself a vice), and lamenting that, in her husband, it does not?

The density of great but sideways thoughts is extraordinary in Bob Dylan’s writing. About being washed-up in the 1980’s, he wrote:

The mirror had swung around and I could see the future—an old actor fumbling in garbage cans outside the theater of past triumphs.

And he said this in a 1966 interview:

All I did was write and sing, paint little pictures on paper, dissolve myself into situations where I was invisible.

In my day job, and for my night work too, I often have to read prose that avoids surprise like a disease. How wonderful, and rejuvenating, then, to be reminded that some writers lives for such moments. Michael Chabon must cultivate a writing environment where they may fruit and bud. His novel The Final Solution is both a warm-hearted and coldly serious book, about the last days of Sherlock Holmes, and also, obliquely, about the Holocaust; but many moments are there just to make you smile. One woman suffered from “gephyrophobia,” the “morbid fear of crossing bridges”:

When a car, bus, or train in which she was riding hung suspended over some river, she would sink deeply into her seat, eyes closed, breath coming through her nostrils in short whistling gusts, moaning softly, holding herself perfectly still with the brimming cup of her fear clutched between her palms as if she dared not spill a drip.

When two characters visit London in July 1944—a month after D-Day—Chabon jolts us by comparing the taking up of arms against evil, with the natural expression of American ebullience:

To Mr. Panicker the thing that chiefly struck him, and had done over the year leading up to 6 June, was the startling Americanness of London: American airmen and sailors, officers, and food soldiers, American military vehicles in the streets, American films in the cinemas, and an atmosphere of loud, raffish swagger, a smell of hair tonic, a cacophony of sprung vowels that might, as Mr. Panicker was prepared to concede, be entirely the product of his own imagination but which nevertheless animated the city for him in a way that he found at once appalling and irresistible, an air of riotous, brutal good humor, as if the invasion of Europe itself, now proceeding in bloody stages across northern France, were only the inevitable exploding forth of a buildup of jazzy slang and the uncontainable urge to buck and wing.

There are moments of surprising beauty:

At the stilling of the centrifuge the porch, the farmstead, this vale in the lee of a hillside, the immense bowl of tedious green country around them seemed to fill with a thick and gummy mass of silence.

But the most powerful and insane parts of the book are Chabon’s attempt to capture the mind and spirit of a man, who gloried above all else in intellect and knowledge...

Some old men finished their lives as little more than the sum total of their memories, others as nothing but a pair of grasping pincers, or a set of bitter axioms proven. It would please him well enough to amount to no more in the end than a single great organ of detection, reaching into blankness for a clue.

...but is losing both, where a mind reduced to uninterpreted experience might be thought worse than death:

He felt—with all his body, as one felt the force of gravity of inertia—the inevitability of his failure. The conquest of his mind by age was not a mere blunting or slowing down but an erasure, as of a desert capital by a drifting millennium of sand. Time had bleached away the ornate pattern of his intellect, leaving a blank white scrap.

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Brown’s address to the court, after he was sentenced to die, is one of the great American speeches, and I commend it to you:

This court acknowledges, as I suppose, the validity of the law of God. I see a book kissed here with I suppose to be the Bible, or at least the New Testament. That teaches me that all things whatsoever I would that men should do to me, I should do even so to them. It teaches me, further, to “remember them that are in bonds, as bound with them.” I endeavored to act up to that instruction.

(This poem is part of the series Interviews With Vampires, and part 4 of ‘America 250 on Mostly Aesthetics.’)

Editorial on Harpers Ferry: October 1859

Bankrupt in fortune and in character,
An outlaw and an outcast, bent on murder
And spoliation, John Brown, with his raid,
Has only put ideas into action.
From the stump, Mister Lincoln prophesizes
That our America cannot endure,
And his America is full of souls
Fertile enough with Brown’s insanity
To germinate yet more disturbances.
They pinch and peck, these Black Republicans,
To fray and decompose a government
Woven in glory, won in war by men
Of honor, patriotic men who held
Black men as slaves, and were no less respected
For doing it. They knew, that wisdom lives
In local institutions, worn by time,
Whose iron roots secure the social order,
Whose easy rules promote the common good.
Bold innovation is for fools and madmen:
The rope slides smoothest where the wood is scarred.
In airy clouds, Republican ideals
May spin and sparkle, but their tendency
On hard soil is a hard and ghastly fact,
And now we see revealed their naked object:
To stir the southern slaves into rebellion,
Who, armed, will desolate the southern land
And southern lives, and wash their feet in blood.

American Independence in Verse is on sale until July 4; details here.

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America 250 on Mostly Aesthetics, Part 3: The Great American Novel

As a writer, Abraham Lincoln is classical, balanced, controlled...until he sticks in the knife. Unequaled among Americans, he does have a mirror-image, or counterpart, in Herman Melville, who’s style is as Romantic, lop-sided, and ebullient as Lincoln’s is not. Like all doubles, both have sliced their fingers on the sharp edge of evil, and both wink and laugh with us on the page and behind the scenes.

Melville met the already-famous Nathaniel Hawthorne after Moby-Dick had been conceived, and mostly written. The friendship changed both man and novel. In a revision that was more of a transfiguration, Moby-Dick became grandiose, epic, Shakespearian; a before-its-time Modernist story of the human condition, and an allegory of the American nation, set in international waters. Nathaniel Hawthorne was known to be retiring, shy, and quiet, but it seems he was not so around Herman Melville. Melville wrote of him,

in spite of all the Indian-summer sunlight on the hither side of Hawthorne’s soul, the other side—like the dark half of the physical sphere—is shrouded in a blackness, ten times black.…You may be witched by his sunlight,—transported by the bright gildings in the skies he builds over you;—but there is the blackness of darkness beyond; and even his bright gildings but fringe, and play upon the edges of thunder-clouds.

Melville wrote Moby-Dick in Western Massachusetts, far from the ocean, but with a view of the state’s tallest mountain from his writing desk:

I look out of my window in the morning when I rise, as I would out of a port-hole of a ship in the Atlantic. My room seems a ship’s cabin; & at nights when I wake up & hear the wind shrieking, I almost fancy there is too much sail on the house, & I had better go on the roof & rig in the chimney.

He wrote in a kind of manic madness. His family was afraid of him, and afraid to disturb him:

The calm, the coolness, the silent grass-growing mood in which a man ought always to compose,—that, I fear, can seldom be mine. Dollars damn me; and the malicious Devil is forever grinning in upon me, holding the door ajar.

What did writing this novel take from him? Andrew Delbanco called it Melville’s “vampire book”: each day he bled on the page, he was barely human at the end. Delbanco gets this from Melville himself. In Pierre, Melville’s follow-up, semi-autobiographical, and disastrously-received novel, Pierre works at writing a book “from eight o’clock in the morning till half-past four in the evening”:

Is there then all this work to one book, which shall be read in a very few hours; and, far more frequently, utterly skipped in one second; and which, in the end, whatever it be, must undoubtedly go to the worms?

Not so; that which now absorbs the time and the life of Pierre, is not the book, but the primitive elementalising of the strange stuff, which in the act of attempting that book, has upheaved and upgushed in his soul. Two books are being writ; of which the world shall only see one, and that the bungled one. The larger book, and the infinitely better, is for Pierre’s own private shelf. That it is, whose unfathomable cravings drink his blood; the other only demands his ink.

Melville’s literary reputation was in decline, even as he was creating “the most ambitious book ever conceived by an American writer” (Delbanco). Moby-Dick would be poorly received, and forgotten until the 1920s:

Though I wrote the Gospels in this century, I should die in the gutter.

When the book appeared, he wrote to a female acquaintance:

Don’t you buy it—don’t you read it, when it does come out, because it is by no means the sort of book for you. It is not a piece of fine feminine Spitalfields silk—but is of the horrible texture of a fabric that should be woven of ships’ cables & hausers. A Polar wind blows through it, & birds of prey hover over it.

See also: Part 1; Part 2.

(Delbanco quotations from Melville: His Work and World.)

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