Milosz on "The Captive Mind"

The more I read the more I become convinced that Czeslaw Milosz is one of the greatest writers of all time. No clarifiers like “greatest Eastern European writer” or “greatest Polish writer of the mid-20^th Century,” just greatest.

“The Captive Mind” was first published in the early 1950s. It casts a wide net over topics like the post-war Soviet regime’s tactics of control, how xenophobia is used to rouse a recalcitrant public to violence, the effects of hegemonic state power on the individual mind, art as tool for socio-political revolution, and so on… and so on.

So how is this 60-year-old book relevant today? Simple: it’s relevant because Milosz wrote it. Time shapes the written word like the incoming tide over sand, but this text shows no signs of erosion. The ideas are still radical, the insight still profound, and the use of language still divine. Writing about this book sometime before his death, the novelist Jerzy Kosinski is quoted on the back flap as saying: “A faultlessly perceptive analysis of the moral and historical dilemma we all face… As timely today as when it was first written.” Well, it’s 2013 now, and I can say with conviction that Jerzy Kosinski was — and still is — right.

Milosz starts off his masterpiece with a quote of warning: “Whoever says he’s 100% right is a fanatic, a thug, and the worst kind of rascal.” Basically, he’s saying, look for the person or the party or the state that claims to be absolutely right, and you’ll likely find that person or institution trying to assert control over others. That’s just the way it works.

During the Nazi occupation of Warsaw, Milosz joined up with the Polish underground. He then saw what the Soviet Union did to Ukraine, Hungary and Poland in the post-war period. Suffice it to say that Milosz has some insight into the mechanisms of totalitarian control. Milosz’ words were purified in the fires of tyranny and violence, until the written word became his weapon of choice in combating tyranny. On writing during Hitler’s occupation, Milosz puts it this way: “We had to write; it was our only defense against despair.”

In “The Captive Mind” Milosz tells the stories of other artists and writers and how they turned from freedom fighters during WWII into supporters of Soviet repression. Calling them Alpha, Beta, Gamma and Delta, Milosz tries to understand how anti-fascist intellectuals morphed into apologists for (big-C) Communist control. In every time, in every war, in every society, there are members of the “intelligentsia” who turn their backs on civil liberties in favor of the wishes of the powerful. Milosz gives some great examples of how this works, how agitators surrender their greatest weapons to the service of power. “In rebelling,” he writes, “I believe I protect the fruits of tomorrow better than my friend who keeps silent.”

Milosz writes about complex socio-political issues with historical insight, but his writing flows like poetry. He doesn’t get weighed down in meaningless linguistic games or academic discussions. His prose is alive, and his zeal for freedom is contagious.

Czeslaw Milosz in 1986.

At his core, Milosz is an evangelist of true art. Like me, he believes art represents humankind’s greatest possible achievement, the graduation point of human potential. He defends intellectual and artistic freedom furiously, because he knows that the unchained mind is the best bulwark against repression.

Some of his quotes about the meaning and value of art jumped off the page at me. Here are a few:

“Modern art reflects the disequilibrium of modern society in that it so often springs from a blind passion vainly seeking to sate itself in form, color, or sound. An artist can contemplate sensual beauty only when he loves all that surrounds him on earth. But if all he feels is loathing at the discrepancy between what he would wish the world to be and what it is in reality, then he is incapable of standing still and beholding.”

“The creative man has no choice but to trust his inner command and place everything at stake in order to express what seems to him to be true.”

“Repressed feelings poison every work, giving it a tinsel varnish which warns everybody: this is a synthetic product.”

As a writer of fiction, this following quote really struck me: “A novelist often modifies the people he has known; he concentrates his colors, selects and stresses those psychological traits which are most characteristic. When a writer strives to present reality most faithfully he becomes convinced that untruth is at times the greatest truth. The world is so rich and so complex that the more one tries not to omit any part of the truth, the more one uncovers wonders that elude the pen.”

There are far too many other topics in this book to cover in a review like this. I’ll close by saying that “The Captive Mind” has to be one of the best defenses of liberalism and free expression I’ve read in a long time. If you believe in art, free speech and the inherent value of the common person, give this book a whirl. Then tell me you’re not moved.

There's No Such Thing as Hell, but You Can Make It If You Try: A Review of Rob Bell's Book "Love Wins"

“There’s no such thing as hell, but you can make it if you try.” So says Greg Graffin, singer-songwriter of the L.A. punk band Bad Religion. Those lyrics came to mind more than once as I was reading Rob Bell’s book “Love Wins: A Book About Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived.”

This Rob Bell guy is an interesting fellow. He’s definitely a Christian, and I’d call him an evangelical Christian, because he clearly wants to spread the message of Jesus. But Bell displays a sense of skepticism and a questioning mind that is incredibly rare among evangelical Christian writers.

Basically, Bell wants to let self-identified followers of Jesus to know that it’s OK to doubt or disbelieve the conventional Christian notions of the afterlife. He doesn’t reject heaven and hell outright, he just pokes holes in the mainstream conceptions of these two “places.” 

“Somewhere along the way [Christians] were taught that the only option when it comes to Christian faith is to clearly declare that a few, committed Christians will go to heaven when they die and everyone else will not, the matter is settled at death, and that’s it.” Bell continues: “Not all Christians have believed this, and you don’t have to believe it to be a Christian. The Christian faith is big enough, wide enough, and generous enough to handle that vast a range of perspectives.”

Wait… What?

But Bell is right. Heaven and hell are concepts that have evolved over long periods of time within various Christian communities. By quoting extensively from the Bible, Bell shows that the prophets, Jesus, the Apostle Paul and others have all sorts of different perspectives on heaven and hell, none of which are perfectly clear.

Bell’s questioning continues: “Have billions of people been created only to spend eternity in conscious punishment and torment, suffering infinitely for the finite sins they committed in the few years they spent on earth?”  

See, I’ve never believed in hell, neither fire, nor brimstone. I grew up in the Episcopalian Church, and I honestly cannot remember ever sitting in the pew hearing Father Ken preach about damnation and torture. There was a lot about the Sermon on the Mount, and a lot about grace and forgiveness, but not eternal punishment. Later, when my parents moved into a Baptist church, and even later into non-denominational evangelical churches, I heard more and more about this notion that most people I knew would end up being tortured for eternity. Death, darkness, misery, fire, gnashing of teeth…  stuck forever in a world like the cover of a Cannibal Corpse album.

For a long time I’ve believed that if a specific faith cannot survive without the element of eternal punishment for nonbelievers, then that faith is misguided. I’ve got plenty of rational reasons not to believe what I was taught in Sunday school. But on an emotional — let’s even call it spiritual, level — I’m sickened by the idea of a god and his followers forever rejoicing while nonbelievers are damned to perpetual misery. If my only problem with Christianity was that it requires damnation for its opponents, that alone would be enough for me to reject the faith entirely. I don’t respond well to threats. (Of course, there’s no evidence of an afterlife, no evidence that consciousness extends past death and the deterioration of the brain, so my point isn’t much of a point.)

Bell also rejects the idea of hell as a place of eternal damnation: “Telling a story in which billions of people spend forever somewhere in the universe trapped in a black hole of endless torment and misery with no way out isn’t a very good story.” Preach it, brother! “Telling a story about a God who inflicts unrelenting punishment on people  because they didn’t do or say or believe the correct things in a brief window of time called life isn’t a good story.” Bell, who is prone to repeating himself, tells readers many times to reject the image of god as vengeful arbiter of damnation. That god, if he existed, would not be deserving of praise or admiration, but scorn.

Milan Kundera and the Art of the Novel

Kundera is a master novelist. In my mind, few other writers take the novel as an art form to such depths. Basically, there are novels, and then there are Kundera novels.

His language so poetic, his words so perfectly woven together, his characters so complicated and knowable, his themes so deep that his novels defy analysis. As someone who writes essays on books, it’s a bit intimidating, like writing an essay on the Sistine Chapel. You’re fucked before your fingers even touch the keyboard.

But here I go anyway…

What is this book about? Art, specifically the art of the novel, erotica, how others will remember (or forget) us after we’re dead, suicide, Hemingway, and on and on. Kundera uses narrative elements (rising tension, interconnected story lines, character development, back story) but the end result is something I’m not sure I can call a “story.” It’s more of a discussion, a slip into some deep poetic trance. It’s a philosophical text without the bullshit academic ornamentation.

Speaking through one of his characters, Kundera offers some thoughts on the novel as a relevant art form. This quote, I believe, sums up what he is trying to do with Immortality: “The present era grabs everything that was ever written in order to transform it into films, TV programs, or cartoons. What is essential in a novel is precisely what can only be expressed in a novel, and so every adaptation contains nothing but the nonessential. If a person is still crazy enough to write novels nowadays and wants to protect them, he has to write them in such a way that they cannot be adapted, in other words, in such a way that they cannot be retold.”

If this was his goal, he achieved it masterfully. The end result is a novel that should silence all those poor, helpless souls who say things like “I just can’t get into novels... They’re just stories somebody made up... I only read nonfiction... blah, blah, blah...” Those ignorant fools who go through life missing out on humankind’s highest artistic heights are simply wrong, and this novel is proof.

Like another Kundera novel I’ve read and loved, The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Immortality is translated from Czech. I don’t know much about the Czech language or novel translation, but there’s something marvelous about Kundera’s native tongue when it is translated into English. Kundera’s description is full of intense emotion and power. Like this: “It is the most beautiful part of sleep, the most delightful moment of the day: thanks to the radio I can savor drowsing and waking, that marvelous swinging between wakefulness and sleep which in itself is enough to keep us from regretting our birth.” I too love that part of the day between sleep and wakefulness, so maybe that’s why this sentence stuck out to me. But Kundera is such a talented artist that he could write about hanging sheet rock and I’d love it.

This novel is also laugh-out-loud funny. In one scene Goethe and Hemingway (both dead and speaking together in some sort of anonymous afterlife) are having a conversation about their lives on earth. Goethe says: “To be mortal is the most basic human experience, and yet man has never been able to accept it, grasp it, and behave accordingly.” When Hemingway dissents, Goethe counters: “Don’t make a fool of yourself, Ernest… You know perfectly well that at this moment we are but a frivolous fantasy of a novelist who lets us say things we would probably never say on our own.” This is one of many examples of Kundera inserting himself into this novel. At times he refers to himself by name and uses his own first-person narration. This is very rare in literature, the novelistic equivalent of the Wizard of Oz voluntarily pulling up the curtain and introducing himself to Dorothy and her fellow travelers. Under most circumstances, this tactic would be distracting at best, but more likely iridiculous. Not with Kundera, of course. Somehow he pulls it off.

And then there are sentences like this: “I knew that if I didn’t go with him on his tire-slashing expedition he would never find anyone else and would remain isolated in his eccentricity as if in exile.” Wow. Who the fuck writes like this? No one but Kundera.

Kundera’s insight into love, sexuality and relationships is impressive. This man must’ve had quite the romantic life, or else an incredible imagination, or both. Regardless of his own between-the-sheets experiences, he really knows how to write hot sex. I’m just being honest: Kundera pulls off erotica with ease.

If you’ve read to this point, you still probably have no idea what the novel is “about.” I just finished it, and I can’t nail it down. It’s art, beautiful art. That’s all. Read it and tell me this man isn’t a genius.

The Communal Cacophony of Crass

A Review of "The Story of Crass" by George Berger

Crass is not your average punk band. Come to think of it, they’re not really a “band” in any conventional sense. Come to think of it, they’re not really anything in any conventional sense. What with their all black clothing, their album covers and broadsides that would offend pretty much anyone with a belief system, the Dial House commune that is such an inseparable part of their story and music, their fear-inducing logo. 

And then there’s Crass’ self-imposed isolation from the mainstream capitalist economy, their D.I.Y., anti-authoritarian, pacifist, feminist ethic whose echoes can be heard in a slew of punk bands, protest movements and, more recently, Occupy Wall Street. With all this material, George Berger’s “The Story of Crass” almost writes itself.

The difficulty of telling Crass’ story lies in the complexity of the individuals involved, and in Crass’ refusal to be categorized. It’s hard to analyze a group that eschews all labels. Even my classification of Crass as a “seminal British punk band” is contradictory. In my mind Crass is probably the most polarizing and most misunderstood “punk” group of all time. “Nobody, it seemed, was neutral about Crass,” writes George Berger in his chronicle of Crass, “and the people that didn’t love what they were doing hated them…”

“You can’t just tolerate Crass,” the book quotes music journalist Paul Du Noyer, “you must either reject them outright or else prepare to get every idea in your head radically shook up – they probably won’t ‘convert’ you but they’ll sure as hell confuse you, and often that can be the healthiest effect of all.” I agree that getting “every idea in your head radically shook up” is healthy. But it’s neither comfortable nor easy. The average person doesn’t want to have their beliefs questioned and the average bloke doesn’t spin a record because he wants to fuck with his own assumptions about punk, music, sex, gender roles, libertarian ideals and government. This is one of the many reasons almost everyone chooses to “reject them outright.” It’s easier to condemn that try to understand something, especially something as complicated as Crass. Of course, this is one of the reasons they’re so fucking interesting to me.

Crass was simultaneously punk as fuck and not punk. They drew as much inspiration from experimental composers like John Cage and free jazz than from other punk bands. A journalist wrote of a 1979 Crass show: “It’s sharp music of fiction and friction that requires too much concentration to fully appreciate.” Berger writes: “Crass, drawing on both the wide artistic and cultural experience of their members and the spirit of the times, had metamorphosed from a bunch of lads out on the glorified piss to a serious multi-age, multi-gender, multi-media assault on conformity and narrow minds.” Their records, stage presence and messages had a “dada-esque intention to confuse.”

The mainstream understanding of British punk is usually focused on the Clash and the Sex Pistols. The Clash is also complicated, and I’ll leave that for another essay. Sure, the Pistols were great, but let’s be honest: it was a gimmick. The Sex Pistols were insecure prigs begging for a spotlight, any spotlight. Johnny Rotten had a great stage presence, and, yeah, he pissed off the status quo by screaming about being an anarchist and an antichrist, but in the end it was more about showmanship and fashion than anything else. (Stepping off soap box…) But Crass was in a whole different category. They took seriously the punk ethic of D.I.Y. self-sufficiency. They didn’t just yell “Fuck the system!” they bent it over and fucked it. Again and again. Where other bands, media and the culture at large saw the raw energy of punk and tried to make a buck off it, Crass tried to operate outside of the monetary system. When they first started putting out records they spent more on the vinyl and the revolutionary inserts and collage artwork that they lost money on every record they sold. Think of the worst example of a band or artist “selling out,” however you define that term. Got it pictured in your mind? Okay… Crass is the polar opposite.

Camus on Liberty and Art

Since my teenage years I’ve been intrigued by the raw power and urgency of Camus’ words, his poetic sensitivity and his dedication to personal and social liberation. I remember reading The Stranger as a 15-year-old and being amazed that a novel could dig down so deep into the human soul. As soon as I was done reading the book, I flipped back to the first page and began reading it again. It was the first any only time I’ve ever done that with a book. Maybe it had something to do with my teenage fascination with self-destruction, but I like to think it was more than that.

It took me until now to get around to reading a collection of Camus’ essays titled Resistance, Rebellion and Death. (Such a subtle title, right?) It’s clear to me now that Camus is not only one of the greatest modern novelists, but also one of the 20^th Century’s greatest essayists.

Camus is a man of tremendous intellectual curiosity and moral intelligence. He’s also a true lover of freedom. But he understands that freedom does not come easily, and, once obtained it is constantly vulnerable to threats: “Like all freedom, it is a perpetual risk, an exhausting adventure…” And unlike many so-called libertarians, Camus also understands that “The freedom of each finds its limits in that of others…”

It’s hard to describe the conviction with which Camus writes of liberty. The only writer/philosophers who have expressed a love of liberty with such passion are perhaps Thomas Paine, Martin Luther King and Frederick Douglass.

Camus decries all forms of censorship in every circumstance. Whatever the ends may be, the means cannot include censorship and limits on free expression, even temporarily. Echoing Voltaire, Camus lays out his support for free speech absolutism: “Those who applaud [free speech] only when it justifies their privileges and shout nothing but censorship when it threatens them are not on our side.” Again: “… if you want the happiness of the people, let them speak out and tell what kind of happiness they want and what kind they don’t want!”

Camus is a firm believer in “objective truth,” and a firm believer that those who attempt to destroy truth through oppression and censorship should be called out. It infuriates Camus that men of power, and those who they control, subvert language and art for malicious intent. He makes a distinction between “true art” and the use of artistic methods put to use in the service of tyranny. But Camus is an artistic optimist, a man convinced true art is a force for good in the world: “No great work has ever been based on hatred or contempt. On the contrary, there is no single true work of art that has not in the end added to the inner freedom of each person who has known and loved it.”

To Camus, art is more than just paint on canvas or words strung together: “The aim of art, the aim of a life can only be to increase the sum of freedom and responsibility to be found in every man and in the world.” Art, “by virtue of that free essence I have tried to define, unites whereas tyranny separates. It is not surprising, therefore, that art should be the enemy marked out by every form of oppression.”

Another positive note: “I am tired of criticism, of disparagement, of spitefulness – of nihilism, in short. It is essential to condemn what must be condemned, but swiftly and firmly. On the other hand, one should praise at length what still deserves to be praised. After all, that is why I am an artist, because even the work that negates still affirms something and does homage to the wretched and magnificent life that is ours.”

Well said, sir.

A significant amount of this book is dedicated to the subject of capital punishment. Camus’ argument against execution of individuals by the State is probably the best I’ve read on the topic. It’s a rational and moral argument, not a stuffy, lawyerly one, and I challenge any supporters of capital punishment to read his essay and think about it.

“[Capital punishment] is to the body politic what cancer is to the individual body, with this difference: no one has ever spoken of the necessity of cancer.” Executing a convicted murderer does not serve justice, Camus argues: “this new murder, far from making amends for the harm done to the social body, adds a new blot to the first one.” I won’t lay out his entire argument because he does so with a poetic wit I simply don’t possess. But for anyone interested in criminal justice, this essay is a must-read.

While all the essays in this book are notable and interesting, a couple of them really stuck out. Camus’ essay “The Liberation of Paris” is a beautiful homage to French Resistance writer René Leynaud. Camus praises Leynaud, a devout Christian, for pouring his talents and beliefs into the most meaningful struggle of the time. “Truth,” Camus writes, “needs witnesses.” For Camus, the act of documenting hatred and oppression serves society’s larger goals of decreasing hatred and oppression. The essay is a great foray into the French Resistance and the broader issue of the responsibility of artists and intellectuals to oppose tyranny.

In a brief essay titled “The Unbeliever and Christians” Camus argues (quite convincingly, in my opinion) that Christian doctrine is not necessary in order to understand evil or the ways to reduce it.

His essay on Algeria is politically incisive and moving. It is further proof (as if any were needed) that Camus’ work is relevant today. He describes the moral and political faults of imperialism without neglecting the gritty realities of violence and terrorism. And his discussion of the French-Algeria situation in the 1950s has many parallels in the United States-Afghanistan debacle of today.

Only the coldest of hearts could read this collection of essays and not be moved. This book now has a permanent spot on my bookshelf, and it serves as another example of why Albert Camus is one of my favorite writers. 

Consciousness, Love and Literature in David Lodge's Novel "Thinks..."

The novel “Thinks…” aims high, and on all fronts, it succeeds brilliantly. It’s a philosophical discussion, an analysis of consciousness, sex, the basis of morality, the human spirit, but it’s also a hilarious, witty page-turner. I’m frankly amazed at what author David Lodge accomplishes in this book and how hard he makes it to put this book down.

The novel is set in 1997 at a fictional University of Glouchester. The aptly named protagonist Ralph Messenger is a scientist who studies consciousness with the ultimate goal of using a scientific understanding of consciousness to produce artificial intelligence. He’s an atheist, a materialist, an opportunist. He’s also very smart, kind of an asshole, a driven man, but one who is susceptible to the whims inherent in his personality. He’s married and likes ladies a lot, which of course adds all sorts of drama to this tale.

The other main character, Helen, is the polar opposite. She’s a recently widowed novelist who tries to understand the world through literature, language and story: "Of course one can argue that there's a basic human need for narrative: it's one of our fundamental tools for making sense of experience - has been, back as far as you can go in history.” Ralph likes her immediately, and they have many fascinating discussions about science and literature. Helen maintains: “Literature is a written record of human consciousness, arguably the richest we have.” After attending a philosophy conference, Helen, the champion of literature and story as a way of knowing, makes a great critique of highfalutin philosopher talk. "Where was the pleasure of reading in all this? Where was personal discovery, self-development?" This is how she as a novelist tries to understand the world, a means of consciousness that stands in opposition to the scientific and philosophical materialists. Helen was raised Catholic, and initially feels hesitant about the idea of having an affair with Ralph. Things start to get complicated as they start the affair, but they always maintain really interesting discussions. One of the biggest strengths of this novel is the realness of Helen’s voice. Lodge is a master at crafting characters and making them feel absolutely real.

In this novel, Lodge plays with literature like he plays with science. He throws these two forces up against each other, just like a great philosopher. And then he dissects these ideas through character development, plot and place, drawing the reader an exciting philosophical debate.

The points of view in this novel correspond perfectly with its themes. The reader transitions from Ralph’s first-person to Helen’s first-person narration to an omniscient third-person narrator, a cycle that is repeated through the entire novel. Portions of the book are made up of reading assignments that Helen has given her students. One such assignment is to write a story about a woman who was raised in a closed room with no colors except black, white and the shades of gray in between, and what happens when she goes out into the world and sees a red rose. The students’ responses are a really interesting blend of scientific writing and fiction, showing that the two forces can be combined to attempt to answer questions about consciousness. Some other portions are made up of emails or of Ralph’s recitation to a voice recorder. It all plays well with the theme that different people experience the same event in completely different ways. One can never fully know what another person is thinking. And Lodge does a great job of demonstrating that through differing points of view.

This book is, among many things, a foray into the undercurrents of sexual desires. It's a peek into the minds of sexual beings, and an analysis of the things people think about, their innermost sexual fantasies. The reader gets to see how Helen acts around Ralph through a scene written in limited third-person. Then the reader gets to hear Helen’s take on the scene through her first-person narration. What the reader sees happening, and what the reader hears Helen saying, are two very different things, as they should be. She pretends not to want him, but clearly does when she’s vetting to her journal.

This is more than just a novel about sex. It's about vulnerability. In the end, a whole lot of crap that has been simmering over the course of the novel all explodes. Ralph’s sordid affair with Helen goes awry. His work at the University is thrown in jeopardy when police discover someone in his office is downloading child pornography. And his health catches the better of him. It seems, for someone who had it all figured out on paper, that the world is turning on him. Ralph doesn't have a forced, corny, made-for-television epiphany, but he is, like any great character, changed.

“Thinks…” is an analysis of love, pain, science, deceit, god and morality, but it’s also just a damned good read. This book gets an official recommendation, and it would make a great beach read this summer, if you’re looking for some solid writing that is also mentally intriguing.

Jean Baudrillard is Kind of a Douche

Jean Baudrillard is an armchair philosopher. He lives in a fantasy world of his own linguistic creation. And that world seldom contains anything of value to the rest of us. I just finished reading Baudrillard's "Simulacra and Simulation," and I'm exhausted. I’ve decided that it's not philosophy, but literary masturbation.

I don’t know how much of the opaque and pretentious language in this slim book stems from Baudrillard’s construction and how much is due to the translator. I imagine it’s a combination of both. That said, almost every sentence in this book is structured to be deliberately convoluted. Baudrillard is incredibly intelligent, but he is simply incapable of being precise or clear-spoken. Most of his ideas are shrouded beneath walls of torturous prose. There are points to be made and concepts to be understood, but Baudrillard purposefully makes them nearly impossible to discern. If prose is a trail and words trailmarkers, Baudrillard takes his readers on the furthest possible trail over the mountain and then ditches them in the woods before they get there. His ideas are fascinating, but the process of reading his ramblings in order to arrive at those ideas is long and arduous. The rewards (ideas you can take with you, new ways of thinking about things, images, phrases you'll remember) are there, but this book is so packed with diversions and nonsense that it reaches the point of not being worth reading at all.

Much of this work is barely more than linguistic shuffling. He doesn't “theorize the postmodern,” he just playfully inverts language to create something that seems profound. But it’s actually quite meaningless. By taking two polar opposites ideas and throwing them together, Baudrillard may seem to be making a point. But it’s just a nonsensical game of language. And since he doesn’t bother with using the building blocks of language to create an idea, every third word is italicized for emphasis. There's no reason to write a fucking sentence that is a page long with eighteen commas, three dashes, two semicolons and two sets of parentheses. This book is a punctuation nightmare, and it's irritating. Baudrillard plays with his readers, but then doesn't come through for them in the end. And this all can't be blamed on the translator. French and English are similar in a lot of ways, and even in the French this must suck ass to read.

He is able to get his act together and make a few “points,” if they can be called that. One of the most interesting being: every power structure and ideology is reinforced by, and actually defined by, the backlash against it. “It is always a process of proving the real through the imaginary, proving truth through scandal, proving the law through transgression…” For example, neoconservative social policy is solidified by its counter-ideology: liberalism, civil rights, human rights. He states: “Power can stage its own murder to rediscover a glimmer of existence and legitimacy.” This was proven in post-September 11 America. Go-it-alone, gangster foreign policy got a real shot in the arm. Indeed, it gained in legitimacy because it now had an enemy, a symbol, a stark, unforgettable counterforce. The best example of ideology crystallizing in the face of countervailing forces is one that Baudrillard mentions, but not nearly enough: religion. Christianity, Islam and other religions survive through martyr complexes. Religion is nothing if it is not in danger from some other person, group or intangible force. It is nothing unless it is contrasted against a counter-ideology. It is kept alive only by the presence of its opposite.

But just when he makes a point, he attempts to shock his readers into agreement. It doesn't work for me. He throws linguistic jabs all over the place with the skill of a right-wing extremist. He makes countless assertions that are flatly ridiculous.

Baudrillard then spends an entire chapter blasting cinema and television as essentially worthless media. Films have “no value as conscious awareness, but only as nostalgia for a lost referential.” He criticizes films for not portraying history according to his liking. But film is art, and Baudrillard seems unable to grasp the concept of audio-visual entertainment as an art form. He comes across as a cranky old man bemoaning media he doesn’t understand. The entire chapter is a compilation of highfalutin nonsense.

Baudrillard seems unable to criticize a specific work of cinema, literature, philosophy or even a historical event. Examples, facts, studies or any other basic objective criteria don’t enter into his analyses. Instead he falls back on tired and vague rhetoric of “capital,” “power” and “the hyperreal,” words garbled together so frequently as to become meaningless.

Statements frequently start with phrases like the following: “One would have us believe that…” “What no one wants to understand is…” Who constitutes this amorphous opposition? Everyone except Baudrillard?

When he does quit his nonsensical beat-off sessions and attempts to make a coherent “argument,” he fails miserably. For example, he maintains that nuclear proliferation, "does not increase the risk of either an atomic clash or an accident," because, "all those who have acquired it since will be deterred from using it by the very fact of possessing it." There's an assumption here that leads to an erroneous conclusion. That assumption is that all individuals and groups act in their own self-interest. Radical religious nuts don't act in their own self-interest, but in accordance with a bizarre set of irrational mandates written down in ancient texts. What happens when extremists who don't care whether they live or die get a nuclear weapon? There's also the assumption that political elites will somehow act rationally and consider the well-being of others before taking nuclear action. The Cuban Missile Crisis (just two decades before the original publication of this work) was not a joke. We almost saw nuclear war. And it could, and probably will, happen in the future.

Baudrillard's dead, but I wish when he was alive he smoked a few more joints. Because he seems like a kind of guy you could talk to if he just mellowed out and got over himself.

Warning: Milosz May Expand Consciousness

Review of "Visions from San Francisco Bay" by Czeslaw Milosz (1982 translation)

"I am here. Those three words contain all that can be said - you begin with those words and you return to them." What a great way to start off this work of art.

Published in English in 1982, and originally published in Polish in 1969, Milosz’s ideas and his language are incredibly fresh. He gives the words of Socrates a poet's touch: "If I am not wise, why must I pretend to be?... And when the air is filled with the clamor of analysis and conclusion, would it be entirely useless to admit you do not understand?"

Milosz admits his intent early on in this collection of essays and literary ramblings: "seize naked experience, which eludes all accepted ideas." He writes with strong conviction: "I am brave and undaunted in the certainty of having something important to say to the world, something no one else will be called to say." This is bold, but true. He admits he does not "try" to write, he merely acts according to his will, his history. "The only thing we can do is try to communicate with one another." Milosz is such a lover of experience, which is what really attracts me to his work. Language is nothing but a corollary of action. “I devoured books, but I saw them as information about actual events and adventures.” He admits to being “an admirer of words,” but only inasmuch as those words shed light on experience. And he has no patience for what he calls “self-sufficient words,” empty poetry that reeks of falsehood. He craves “a language I can feel and understand.” Milosz is also a populist poet. He looks at the ordinary and sees profound beauty. “For me the commonplace deserves to be praised…”

Milosz is profoundly seeped in a sense of place. It is his belief that all our ideas have their origin in our idea of place. A psychology, therefore, that is “not based on our conceptions of the physical universe, must be subjective and erroneous.” It may come as no surprise, then, the Milosz has a few qualms with religion. God, to Milosz, is a linguistic phantom, a name given to nothingness. God has no essence, therefore the language of religion is “hollow” and full of “mere figures of speech.” Since God has no essence, and humankind must be grounded in a sense of place, religious symbols become of the utmost important to religious people. Churches, flags, cross necklaces, communion cups, robes, etc., are tangible things people can hold onto, objects they can attribute to god, who does not exist in any physical sense. For Milosz, we cannot think or imagine anything without place as a reference. We are nothing if not interacting with our environment. We situate ourselves according to place: horizontal and vertical. Horizontal place is demonstrated by narrative, the forward motion of people and things along a straight line of time. The story of evolution, of Jesus' life, of creating a work of art, is just progressive action, a horizontal movement from Point A to Point B. We also place ourselves in "vertical space." Earth is one level, with Heaven above and Hell below. And everyone moves up or down. The culmination of a life is nothing more than a shift one step up or one step down. And only in compartmentalizing these levels that we can see ourselves in the course of history. Of course, the actual place of Heaven and Hell don't matter (and Milosz, like me, doesn't believe in them), they are simply mental constructs. But they root us in place.

While Milosz is precise in his philosophical qualms with god, he also has an emotional and moral aversion to religion, which he views as a divisive and antisocial institution. “The division of people into believers and non-believers has always made me somewhat uneasy, because it assumes a qualitative leap…” There is no way to divide up the world into the damned and the saved without a qualitative assessment. If one man is doomed and the other will take his stand next to god, which man is more valuable? This qualitative difference means true believers have, at the center of their religious worldview, a desire to convert the heathen, to bring them into the fold, to save them. Milosz doesn’t temper his stinging critique of Catholicism, the religion of his Polish homeland. “Catholicism is the most anthropocentric of religions…” And Catholic doctrine enforces a sin-guilt complex in which sin is “universalized, changing into a sense of undifferentiated guilt.”

He is so enthralled with nature and with man’s place in that process, that he cannot understand fundamentalists who ignore reality in favor of irrational doctrine. Why do people deny evolution? “We reacted with anger and offended dignity when it was learned that man, too, belongs to the chain of universal transformation… a justified reaction to painful knowledge.”

On America: "America was not slowly and gradually put into words over the centuries... the changes were so great, twenty years much the equal of two hundred elsewhere, that the slate was always being wiped clean." "this continent possesses something like a spirit which malevolently undoes any attempts to subdue it." He writes beautifully of his migration from the tumults of Eastern Europe to the relative calm of the Bay Area. “Anything which allays life’s inherent savagery seems fragile to me, constantly threatened by the chaos that I suspect is the normal state of things. Yet another day, well oiled, working well, what a marvel.” In "On Virtue," Milosz writes: "American virtue, primarily that of rural America, is nourished by naivete, ignorance and ordinary dullness." This is true today, evidenced by the rise of reactionary anti-immigrant groups and politicians, racist anger at America's first black president, and a sharp right wing economic turn. America, he argues in the closing chapter, is the Bible played out in history. The Bible is full of hatred, bigotry, slavery and opression. America has gone through these things. The Bible is filled with beauty, purity, hope and charity. America is filled with these too. Wars. Achievements. Just as the Bile has good and bad in it, so does America. But, for all his critiques, Milosz still loves America as a place. "I am certain only of my amazement. Amazement that something like America exists, and that humanity still exists, though it should have exterminated itself long ago or perished from starvation, from epidemics, or from the poisons it excretes."

While the essays in the first half of the book focus on the natural aesthetic, humanity’s relation to its environment, and how specific people and places interact, he broadens his scope in the latter part of the book. Censorship, the relation between the person and the automobile, Catholic dogma and economics, the latter being a noticeable strong point.

The economic individual does not relate to the economy based on his own philosophical generalizations, but seeks only the satisfaction of his needs. (pg. 109) Individuals, while differing in their “needs,” seek out food, water, sex, drugs and recreation through the economy. And the reason the Western economy is hierarchical rather than participatory, is the corporate creation of false needs and the adoption of these falsehoods by the vast majority of the working population. Since economics is based on meeting need, economic expansion necessitates the creation of more needs. Once that process begins, the entire idea of a "need" vaporizes. They are no longer real “needs,” but illusions of need. And it is possible for an entire global economy to be based on an illusion of need. I know he’s a “socialist,” by name, but Milosz’s analysis of economic systems is very reminiscent of Adam Smith, and I mean the true Adam Smith, not the Adam Smith as adopted by those Chicago economists. This is not to say Milosz’s a capitalist, but I would argue that there is a bit of a free marketeer in him. Smith’s classical ideas of the market are so far removed from what is commonly referred to as capitalism today. Reading Milosz is eye-opening because we've moved so far rightward since Milosz's day. 21st Century America is run by vampiric corporatocracy even more so than it was when Milosz wrote this forty years ago.

The market, he writes, is, "an extension of the struggle for existence and nature's cruelty in human society." But he's wary of accepting oversimplified Marxist rhetoric as good social policy. He detests the power-hungry left-wing zealots who proclaim they have the answer to all of society's ills and could cure us all if only we would all think exactly as they do. "American capitalism is the only answer." "Marxism is the only way." Milosz would reject both assertions. An economy is a complex thing, and cannot be nailed down by ideology. It's this practicalism in Milosz that makes him so attractive as a thinker. "I am fed up with dividing people into those few who know and the dull masses who don't realize what is useful for them." This is a multi-front attack on religion, right-wing capitalism and socialist powergrabbers. "I have no desire to be one of the elect dragging the masses by force to Utopia." This is exactly how I feel, and Milosz has, of course, said it so much better than I could have.

Milosz blasts the US economy as being based on the development of false need: "The myths of advertising are in themselves contradictory. They create needs in order to stimulate ceaseless competition, which requires self-repression." And Milosz believes in self-expression. This is how he arrives at his rejection of "capitalism," the word he uses to denote a vague sense of unease he has about the American economy. He doesn't define "capitalism" and certainly doesn't lay out an economic plan, let alone one that might work. So, while I agree with his aversion to a hyper-market economy, I also question if Milosz isn't holding onto economic dreams that could never possibly be realized. But Milosz is an idealist, not an idealogue. There's a huge difference. Milosz is a practical philosopher, he has no vested interest in any rigid school of thought. "All the frameworks that permit the daily practice of virtue are very fragile, it is easy to destroy them, as I saw for myself while obsering ideologically planned regimes at close range." Milosz desires a participatory economy where individuals can work together and share the fruits of their labor. It's beautiful, but even Milosz knows it was not possible then, and it is even less possible now. Revolutionary movements in America are quickly co-opted by the stronger system of big business. Milosz calls this the "profotability of protest." And it "does not preclude the sincerity of certain hostile feelings, but still, it does turn intellectual fashions into theatre..." Milosz, like many of his time and place, grew disillusioned with the protest movement.

So how does a socialist survive in a hyper-capitalized market economy? This is where Milosz gets really interesting. He thinks of himself as living two lives. One is "time sold," meaning work, labor, throw in your Marxist term. This life is "unreal, boring, burdensome." The other is "real time." This life is "real, interesting and rich."

And "if you want to be free, the first step must be the realization that any of your reflections on daily life, on man, are not independent, since the material at your disposal, the material of your perceptions and ideas, is not your own as you believe." For Milosz, there is a communal language, and art is always a social activity. Art does not exist in and of itself, only when thinking beings experience it. "The true reolutionaries," therefore, "were the poets and the artists even the most etheral and least bloodthirsty of them, because they cleared the way; that is, they acted as the organizers of the collective imagination in a new dimension..." He sounds a bit hippie-inspired here, and Milosz maintains an almost Leninist view of the vanguard. But there is some truth to the assertion that art is revolutionary. It stirs people to action, it opens their minds to different ways living. And Milosz is just talented and bright enough to ride that line between respect for the virtue of art and it's excess, the deification of man. His neo-Marxism is kept in check by a love for the freedom of the individual and a revulsion to oppression in all its forms.

The closest he gets to preaching is here: "If we can leave our humanity aside for a moment and put our human sense of values out of mind, we must admit that the world is neither good nor evil, that such categories do not apply to the life of a butterfly or crab."

Milosz even weighs in on the legalization of marijuana. While tobacco and alcohol kill millions, marijuana is "a rather innocent substance." The state wages war against marijuana, in some sense, because those who smoke it tend to "question the established order." The use of this medicinal drug is widespread among all ethnic groups, ages and class. And Milosz says that the war against marijuana has had a reverse effect: since "everyone smokes marijuana," and smoking marijuana is a crime, many people are learning what it means to be a criminal. And being a criminal brings awareness: "to be a criminal means to look at society from the bottom, from underground..." In this sense, criminalizing harmless activities stokes rebellion in otherwise law-abiding citizens. And criminals reject authority. So, Milosz argues, turning citizens into criminals is a sure-fired way to destroy a society. It is not in the state's interest to make its subjects all criminals. Because criminals break laws and governments.

Milosz doesn't end the book without talking about some literature. He takes on Henry Miller, no gloves. Miller "rejected literature as a collection of inherited patterns, in order to stand unique, to say a Mass to himself, to present the image of himself as a perfect male..." Wow. As a Henry Miller fan, I have to say I know where Milosz is coming from, and I respect that opinion. Miller's "violent gestures, vulgarities, and floods of invective were clearly directed against some enemy, though his yammerings made it impossible to decide who or what that enemy was. The twentieth century? America? New York?" Basically, Miller is a poseur extraordinaire. He's that guy at the bar with tribal tatto on his bicep knocking jager-bombs and telling lewd jokes. And Milosz is right, Miller is that guy. But that guy can be kind of hilarious. And that's why Miller's extremes will always at least be a fun trip, at least for me.

But, still, Milosz's categorization of Miller is just spot on: "Miller was one of the first prophets of withdrawal into the purely personal dimension, what we could call the sexual-mystical dimension, and as well one of the first in daily practice to withdraw from the round of 'getting and spending' to a primitively furnished cabin in Big Sur." That is a beautifully executed verbal attack done with wit and sharp skill. Milosz is indeed a writer among writers.

His detest for Miller stems from his idea of a "humanistic tradition" in art, and specifically fiction. Writing must aim to bring people together, to find understanding, to mend broken people, but Miller's writing is an attack on all tradition. Milosz argues that "there is something known as the humanistic tradition" and that art created outside of that tradition can never be fully-realized. It's a bold statement, and it shows Milosz as a linguistic and literary traditionalist. There are rules, and Milosz believes they are there for a good reason. When someone like Henry Miller defies all rules, and does so with a spiteful grin, the result can never be as good. I hear him.

I don't know if I totally believe him, but I hear him loud and clear. Milosz is perhaps one of the greatest literary theorists in history.

Mike Davis' Urban Sociology in "Dead Cities"

Davis is a documentarian of corporate excess, a biographer of big capital’s attack on the public sphere. Dead cities, especially in the American West, where Davis takes his aim, can be found everywhere. From the nuclear testing grounds of Utah and Nevada to the streets of Compton, the poor and underprivileged are stuck digging out a meager existence among the graveyard of urban society. He writes extensively about how capital hijacks public projects to subsidize private gain. It’s a cycle of shamming the public that anyone with a brain already knows of, but Davis gets into the details. He really shows capital at its worst. Davis documents examples of predatory capitalism instilling fear and the only solution to fear: a product. Public land, public transportation, public health and the public environment are all up for sale if you've got enough money. Poisoned families, displaced natives, unsanitary waterways, crime, degraded public space all mark the trail of big business’ money-grabbing crusade across the American West. And Davis is right there, where the capital meets the road, taking notes.

He is at his best when analyzing what he calls “urban ecology.” In his essay “Dead Cities: A Natural History,” he writes: “The ability of a city’s physical structure to organize and encode a stable social order depends on its capacity to master and manipulate nature.” He chronicles the massive extent society must manipulate the natural world in order to keep a modern American city functioning.

Even though he rails against the sorrows of urban living for page after page, this is a 400-something page document, Davis retains a respect for the urban environment. Urban movements, he points out again and again, have shaped history in profound ways. “The real engine room of the sixties, both politically and culturally, was not the college campus but the urban ghetto.” He has a kind of love-hate, or maybe I should say hate-love, relationship with American cities. They’re cesspools of violence and revolutionary breeding grounds, shrines to corporate excess and centers of artistic expression, environmental terrors and opportunities for green growth, and they are all these things at the same time. It’s this dichotomy that fascinates Davis. The cities of the American West, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Phoenix and others, are sprawling and destructive. But they don’t have to be that way. Human beings cannot live in harmony with nature, but they can live in relative disharmony as long as individuals and governments commit to change.

Where I agree with Davis most is in his analysis of how hierarchical religious institutions co-opt working class angst. It’s by no means a new idea, but it is increasingly evident that powerful religious institutions are defenders of the status quo. Some churches, synagogues, etc., might make tiny moves in a progressive direction, but for the most part, they have the same purpose as accumulated capital and unchecked government: control. In his essay “Pentecostal Earthquake” Davis dissects several evangelical and Pentecostal revivals in California, spanning the 1920s to the 1990s. He documents the way self-appointed apostles have hijacked working class movements, especially Latino immigrants, and roped them into bizarre religious diversions. Pentecostal revivalism has sprouted up “with a particular intensity wherever the emotional fuel is supplied by poverty and injustice,” including, “Appalachian valleys, big-city ghettos, migrant labor camps, black townships in South Africa…”

As far as I know, Davis is the only academic who, in the course of an argument, analyzes John Carpenter's 1988 film “They Live,” which is about a bunch of alien yuppies who have taken over L.A. and forced the working class into poverty and bondage. Amazing violence ensues as people rise up in guerrilla warfare and slaughter their captors. This pop-culture savvy insight is great. But, in that same piece, “Hollywood’s Dark Shadow,” Davis strays into pretension. He lists off works of art and artists and films and filmmakers like he’s trying to pick up a PhD candidate at an academic cocktail hour. “Usually considered a Thomas Hart Benton regionalist, Sheets for a brief moment was a hard-eyed unpuritanical Otto Dix.” Seriously? This is a sentence educated people read and pretend to know what it means so they don’t feel dumb. But the sentence makes no damned point unless you research for hours to find out what Davis is talking about. Sometimes I just want Davis to say what the hell he’s saying instead of weighing us down in endless names and references. I get it, Davis is well read. Fine, but he’s supposed to be writing. When he points to works of art, film and philosophy in one paragraph, referring to the work of ten people without a passing bit of context, I’m lost. And when he does slow down to describe a place, he writes a lot of lame clichés. Davis could use a writing workshop or five. There are many pages in this book filled with ineffective, drab, insider mumbo jumbo that represents a lot of what I hate about academic sociology. Davis is frequently just a blabbermouth. It’s hard to get through. But it is, however, somehow worth it in the end. Davis is like that crazy uncle you tolerate because you know he’s going to offer you another beer as soon as he’s done ranting.

LA is a screwed up city and Davis spends a good 150 pages of this book explaining why. For example, their pathetic light rail line cost $290 million per mile because it was concocted to fail, and it ended up collapsing in Hollywood, literally swallowing a city corner.

But Davis goes too far in some of his discussion of the 1992 riot in Los Angeles, and inner city violence in general. “The 1992 riot and its possible progenies must likewise be understood as insurrections against an intolerable political-economic order.” Okay, this is technically true. Davis takes pages and pages to list the legitimate political and economic grievances against the established order, filling this documentation with emotionally-charged language designed to highlight his point that people in LA are being harmed by the authorities. But he completely writes off the extreme, coordinated and in some cases bigoted attacks during the riots as legitimate means of social change. Yes, Mr. Davis, the established order is dedicated to squeezing the lower class. But corporatists are even more dedicated to dividing the working classes to into racial, ethnic or gang groups so they’ll just fight each other all the time. And Davis promotes this chaotic cycle. He comes absurdly close to flat-out saying that the 1992 riot was not only inevitable, but good social policy. I’m sorry, smashing windows and stealing microwaves isn’t a good way to fight inner city decay. Looting isn’t a good way to change a city’s economy. I agree with so much of his criticism of the rich elite, but Davis’ hatred for certain wealthy sectors of California society blinds him from the excesses of some violent, hateful rioters who turn on their own neighborhoods when they commit unjustified acts of violence. It also blinds him to his own immovable and rigid biases. Especially when he’s talking about inner cities, Davis becomes less of an educator and more of a raving evangelist for his own narrow views. And I’m not a fan of doctrinaire evangelists no matter where they fall on the political spectrum.
In all the chapters on LA, Davis writes irresponsibly about the solution to an unequal and unjust society. He condones random acts of violence, theft, property damage, arson, etc., on behalf of underprivileged people as plausible alternatives to a fractured economic system. In way too much of this book, Davis comes across as an angry fifteen-year-old (albeit one with good research skills) who just wants to smash windows for no other purpose than to see the glass break. And I understand this. Davis is such a good researcher and he makes so many great points. There is so much wrong with a city like Los Angeles, and cities all across America. And the corrupt nexus of unchecked corporate tyranny, pliant local governments and runaway law enforcement is a web I also want to untangle. But problems must be rectified constructively. And all Davis lauds in his essays is destruction. An armchair sociologist, he can’t be bothered with promoting solutions, especially ones that involve cooperating with businesses and government. And because of his excesses, irresponsibility and refusal to question his own assumptions, Davis isn’t the best messenger for some of the good arguments he makes.

His data, fact-finding are overall agitative stance are great. But people with actual ideas, here and now, need to take Davis’ information and run with it, because he refuses to.

More info on the book...