Sunday Night Journal, July 30, 2017
07/31/2017
I am beginning to accept the fact that there are simply too many books for me to read and too many recordings for me to hear in the amount of time I have left to live, even stretching my potential longevity as far as it can be stretched. I'm finding this surprisingly difficult. It was always true, and would have been true even if I had continued to pursue both at something like the rate I was doing it before I devoted the better part of forty years to job and family. But I had in the back of my mind that when I retired I would finally be able to do all the writing and reading and listening that I'd been putting off.
Well, even apart from the fact that I'm only about two-thirds retired, it isn't working out that way. Life still makes a number of demands that I hadn't really considered. I don't mean to sound whiny, because I am thankful every day that I don't have to go off to a job that will, including the commute, occupy at least ten hours of the day. Still, a reckoning with reality must be made, priorities must be set.
I'm saying all this as preface to an admission. I have just done something which as far as I can remember I have never done before, and of which I am somewhat ashamed. I have chosen to skim a book that I chose to read. I suppose I have skimmed a book before--my freshman biology textbook in college, for instance, when I was desperately trying to absorb enough information to avoid failing a final exam. But I don't think I've ever done it with what I am tempted to call a real book, and one that I wanted to read. Now I have.
The book is William F. Buckley's God and Man at Yale. As anyone who's ever been anywhere near the conservative movement knows, this was Buckley's first book, written when he was a recent graduate of Yale. I've always had the impression that it's considered a conservative classic. It's been sitting on my shelf for some years, and I decided to check it off my list.
It's a disappointment. If it were not by the man whose initials all conservatives and many liberals recognize, it would probably have been mostly forgotten, and of mainly historical interest. I'm not sure what I was expecting, but the book is more specifically about Yale at that moment (the late 1940s) than I anticipated. It's a case study of the state of instruction on religion and economics at Yale--or rather, I should say, the process of secularization and liberalization (in the political sense) at Yale, because that's what Buckley is describing. As such, much of it is far too detailed to be of much interest to me. It includes a discussion of specific instructors, textbooks, events, speeches, and controversies which I would think only a historian or very dedicated Yale alumnus would care about. I wouldn't recommend it to anyone not specifically interested in Buckley or Yale or both.
That said, I am struck by how familiar Buckley's complaints sound. The process by which we arrived at the almost complete domination of leftist thought in the academy was well advanced by 1950. Buckley chastises Yale for pretending to be engaged in a disinterested search for truth but actually having an orthodoxy favoring secularism and statism. By our standards it was relatively conservative, giving lip service to Christianity and opposing communism. Buckley wanted Yale to dispense with the pose of neutrality and to openly favor what I will very loosely call Americanism (not that he puts it that way). Well, he certainly got part of that wish: the pose of neutrality is not fooling much of anyone these days. I wonder if even those who preach it belligerently on their own behalf really believe it. When cant words like "diversity" are part of the mission statement, and institutions insist fervently on their dedication to them, everyone knows what is meant. And every day brings us a new story of some notable incident involving the enforcement of this orthodoxy.
I will say of God and Man at Yale that it is well-written and well-argued, and in general pretty impressive for a 25-year-old. But it's a period piece now.
*
I referred back there at the start of this little piece to reading and listening. I used two different words for two different things. It might have been handy to have one word. But not at the cost of resorting to a construct I see often, sometimes used by people who I think should know better. I mean the word "consuming," as in "consuming art" in reference to multiple arts. How can anyone write or read that without a shudder? It makes me think of this character, the vacuum monster, from Yellow Submarine, which I had not thought of since I saw the movie ca. 1970.
When I think of something being consumed, I think of it being gone, chewed up and swallowed or otherwise used up. Years ago I read some technology writer predicting the ways--the devices and the media--by which we would "consume infotainment." The phrase comes close to physically nauseating me.
*
Last week, writing about the film Mother and Child, I meant to mention Annette Benning's performance as Karen, which was one of the best of several excellent performances in the film. And it made me think about acting in general. For much of my life I really didn't have a great deal of regard for the art of acting, for the gifts required to do it well. I just took it for granted that some people had a knack for pretending to be other people, or for creating an appealing screen persona (e.g. John Wayne), and in fact for pretending in general.
I just spent an hour looking for a remark, which I was sure was by Samuel Johnson, which disparages acting. What I recall is that he said it needed only "great plasticity of features" and...something else...I can't remember what.
Well, if Johnson said that, I don't know where. I must have read it somewhere, because I don't think I would have invented that phrase. I've searched an online version of Boswell's Life without finding it, and done a number of Google searches for the phrase and variations of it, with no luck. At the moment I'm suspecting that it wasn't Johnson who said it, but someone else of roughly the same period, and that I read it in The Oxford Book of Literary Quotations. But if so it'll take me a while to find it.
Anyway: when I first read it, I knew, of course, that it was hyperbole, but came close enough to agreeing that I thought it was pretty sharp. At at some point, maybe fifteen or so years ago, I began to appreciate just how difficult good acting must be. The thought crossed my mind during several scenes in Mother and Child when the camera is on Karen's face: for instance, the moment when she is combing her mother's hair and chatting about her day at work. She mentions that a new guy has started there, and that he seems nice.
"Karen, don't get your hopes up," is her mother's response. Karen says nothing, and there is not a great deal visible in her face, but it's enough to say everything about Karen's relationship with her mother and indeed about her life in general.
"Plasticity of features," indeed. Yes, that's required, just as an unusually high level of manual dexterity is required for playing a musical instrument well. But that's just the minimal requirement.
Of course the writer, who was also the director, must get credit for creating the exchange. He's the composer, the two women are the performers who bring it to life.
*
I'd like to know how these roses came to be here, stuck in a log on the beach. Was it a sad story or a happy one? There were several others here and there, one some distance away as if perhaps it had been tossed.
Mother and Child was quite good, Mac. I thought that I had seen it, but wasn't sure, so ended up watching it again. Like so much that I might have watched a few years ago, I don't remember much but generally start to remember major plot points as we approach them. What struck me during this second viewing was that I could not remember a dramatic film that I have seen with so many prickly characters: the Annette Bening one, the Naomi Watts one, and the girl who is going to give her baby to Kerry Washington. All three are sort of played to be unlikable, and yet in the movie people seem to like them. Nonetheless it is an enjoyable and compelling two hours.
Posted by: Stu | 07/31/2017 at 11:48 AM
I watched M&C over the weekend as well and liked it very much. Like you said though, it could've done without the sex scenes. I thought the second one was especially off-putting. But the acting was excellent, and I liked the way it cut back and forth between the three stories without set-ups or explanations.
I think the first film I watched where the subtlety of the acting really struck me was the French movie Time Out. The lead performance by Aurelien Recoing has been a sort of touchstone for me in terms of male acting that features that understated approach.
Posted by: Rob G | 07/31/2017 at 01:00 PM
I'm traveling and can only comment by laborious tapping on my phone. So just to say: glad y'all liked it.
Posted by: Mac | 07/31/2017 at 03:17 PM
You know, Mac, if you had time enough at last you'd probably break your glasses or something. And then you wouldn't be able to consume any content.
Posted by: Don | 07/31/2017 at 05:47 PM
That sounds like a book only worth skimming. I'm glad you did not waste what little time we have.
I acted in high school. And lost interest in college because of the culture surrounding theater. But I have always appreciated the art. I have only in recent years become aware than when I watch a movie one of the things I am doing which probably a lot of people don't do is appreciate the art of the people in the film.
Posted by: Daniel | 07/31/2017 at 05:48 PM
Sometimes that goes a bit too far with me: I become too conscious that I'm watching someone playing a very elaborate game of pretend.
Don: :-). That's a very painful episode, but those glasses seemed unusually fragile.
Posted by: Mac | 07/31/2017 at 09:24 PM
Before I went on the camino I was reading Making It by Norman Podhoretz. Its dreadfully boring
Posted by: Grumpy | 08/01/2017 at 03:34 AM
Not even on my maybe-someday list.
Posted by: Mac | 08/01/2017 at 07:44 AM
In reference to the two sex scenes in the movie. If I remember the correct order, the first is where the couple is interrupted by someone (perhaps her mother?) calling and continuing to speak into the answering machine. The second is Naomi Watts and Samuel L. Jackson, and while there is less nudity it is a more uncomfortable scene. I thought this one was necessary to the plot because it shows us much more about the Naomi Watts character. The first scene seemed silly and not needed, and as a matter of fact right after it did I said aloud to the room (my dog, I guess), "What was that all about?"
Posted by: Stu | 08/01/2017 at 01:47 PM
"I thought this one was necessary to the plot because it shows us much more about the Naomi Watts character."
Yes, that part I get, but I don't think it needed to be as lengthy as it is, or as graphic. I agree that the first one was largely unnecessary.
Posted by: Rob G | 08/01/2017 at 02:08 PM
What did the dog think?
AMDG
Posted by: Janet | 08/01/2017 at 02:39 PM
He turned away from the screen in embarrassment!
Posted by: Stu | 08/01/2017 at 02:47 PM
I always feel like a voyeur when I watch sex scenes in movies. I really don't think they're there to do anything but titillate. Older movies were able to get the point across about the kind of person a character was without doing those.
Posted by: Marianne | 08/01/2017 at 04:16 PM
I actually think they're both justifiable for what they reveal about the characters. But they could have been considerably less explicit.
Posted by: Mac | 08/01/2017 at 04:49 PM
When I saw Craig's 10 year program for reading about Rome, it really bowled me over because I realized how far I from being able to contemplate something like that. Of course, I never would have been disciplined enough to follow through on something like that.
When I took a class at the seminary, it really surprised me when I found I was about the only person in the class who read the assignments.
Now I'm thinking skimming will definitely be the best treatment for A Pope and a President.
AMDG
Posted by: Janet | 08/01/2017 at 08:26 PM
Sounds right to me. :-)
Posted by: Mac | 08/02/2017 at 06:29 AM
This looks interesting.
http://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/miss-prim-clear-creek/
Posted by: Mac | 08/02/2017 at 11:28 AM
Yes. It does.
AMDG
Posted by: Janet | 08/02/2017 at 02:42 PM
I've been tempted to take a look at it, but I generally avoid "light" fiction and I wonder whether for me it would be a bit of a waste of time. I guess I could start it then put it down if it doesn't appeal, but I've got so much other stuff that I sincerely want to read...
Posted by: Rob G | 08/03/2017 at 05:51 AM