FOOD FOR THOUGHT: ADDRESSING THE PROBLEM OF RACIAL DISTRUST

Danielle S. Allen, Talking to Strangers: Anxieties of Citizenship Since Board v. Board of Education (Chicago & London: U. of Chicago Press, 2004) ("A great deal of interracial distrust now is a product more of retrospection than of immediate personal experience and prevails along fossilized boundaries of difference. We still have economic policies and social patterns to frustrate yellow, green, blue, black, pink, brown and red. Yet continually this frustration--with unemployment, crime, and public education--is understood in racial terms. 'White' blames 'black' and 'black' blames 'white' and who knows what others blame one another and them slop also in the black-white muck. It takes time to build up a record of experiences and narrative to justify distrust, and our repeated fallback upon race as an explanation exposes history's gravity. Within democracies, such congealed distrust indicates political failure. At its best, democracy is full of contention and fluid disagreement but free of settled patterns of mutual disdain. Democracy depends on trustful talk among strangers and, properly conducted, should dissolve any divisions that block it." When citizenly relations are shot through with distrust, efforts to solve collective problems inevitably founder." Id. at xiii. As Ralph Ellison put it, 'This society is not likely to become free of racism, thus it is necessary for Negroes to free themselves by becoming their idea of what a free people should be." Id. at 23, citing Ralph Ellison, Working notes to Juneteeth. From the bookjacket: "'Don't talk to strangers' is the advice long given to children by parents of all classes and races. Today it has blossomed into a fundamental precept of civic education, reflecting interracial distrust, personal and political alienation, and a profound suspicion of others. In this powerful and eloquent essay, Danielle Allen ... takes this maxim back to Little Rock, rooting out the seeds of distrust to replace them with 'a citizenship of political friendship'." To label someone "Racist" is to assert, correctly or not, something about that other person, i.e., "You are a racists!" Similarly, to label someone "untrustworthy" is to assert, correctly or not, something about that other person, i.e., "You are untrustworthy!" or "You are not a person to be trusted!" However, to say, "I don't trust you!" or "I distrust you!" is make a statement about one's own self. It is a statement about one's own perceptions, rather than a statement about the other. I think it was Jack London who quipped, "There are two types of people in the world. Those you trust, and those you don't." On reflection, one realizes that he has not divided the world into two types of people--trustworthy and not tructworthy. Rather he has divided one's perception: I trust and I distrust. Perhaps some of the heat of the social and political rhetoric could be lessened were we to talk about our own racial distrusts rather than about the other person's alleged racism.).

FOOD FOR THOUGHT: 'EQUALITY' SHOULD NOT BE JUST A WORD

Danielle Allen, Our Declaration: A Reading of the Declaration of Independence in Defense of Equality (New York: Liveright, 2014) ("What exactly does the Declaration have to say about equality? First of all, the text focuses on political equality. In the twentieth century we came to understand political equality as meaning primarily formal civic rights: the rights to vote, serve on juries, and run for elected office. These political rights are, of course, fundamental, but civic rights are only a part of the story about political equality. The Declaration has much more to say." "As it moves from its opening salvo for divorce to its closing recommitment of the colonists to one another, the Declaration first sets it sights on achieving freedom from domination for the polity as a whole, and for individual citizens. It lays out egalitarian access to the instrument of government as crucial to the pursuit of happiness. There we find the familiar emphasis on civic rights. Then the Declaration moves on to argue for an egalitaratian cultivation of collective intelligence as well as for an associational egalitarianism that establishes norms and practices of genuine reciprocity as the baseline for decent interactions with one's fellow citizens. Finally, the Declaration shows us the egalitarianism of co-creation and co-ownership of a shared world, an expectation for inclusive participation that fosters in each citizens the self-understanding that she, too, he, too, helps to make, and is responsible for, this world in which we live together. That rich and expansive notion of political equality is the ground of independence, personal and political." Id. at 275-276.).

JANE GARDAM

Jane Gardam, Crusoe's Daughter (New York: Europa Editions, 1985, 2012).

Jane Gardam, God on the Rocks (New York: Europa Editions, 1978, 2010) ("'But--Latin. Margaret, you know the verb exquire? To search out? To elucidate?' 'Yes.' 'Well, when I'm dead could you put in on my tombstone?' 'Yes.' 'With a non in front of it?' 'Yes. Why?' 'Because there's a lot it's not wise to fuss over. To prize out. Extract. It is best to just look and be.'" Id. at 193-194.).

Jane Gardam, The Hollow Land (New York: Europa Editions, 2015).

Jane Gardam, Last Friends (New York: Europa Editions, 2013) ("In the train he sat down at once in Herman's reserved seat. 'That,' said Herman, 'is not legal.' 'Justice,' said Fiscal-Smith,' has nothing to do with Law.'" Id. at 23.).

Jane Gardam, A Long Way from Verona (New York: Europa Editions, 1971, 2013) (From the book cover: "Jessica has always known that her destiny would be shaped by her refusal to conform, her compulsion to tell the absolute truth, and her dedication to observing the strange wartime world that surrounds her. What she doesn't know, however, is that the experiences and ideas that set her apart will also lead her to a new and wholly unexpected life. Told with grace and inimitable wit, A Long Way from Verona is a wise and vivid portrait of adolescent discovery and impending adulthood.").

Jane Gardam, The Man in the Wooden Hat (New York: Europa Editions, 2009) ("Directed by Ross, Eddie began to specialise in Bomb Damage Claims, then in General Building Disputes. Almost at once Ross had him in good suits flying about the world on the way to becoming the Czar (as the saying is now) of the Construction Industry. In the Far East, there began the skyscraper boom. . . . But there was no great jealously. The Construction Industry is not glamorous like Slander and Libel or Crime. It is supposed to be easy, unlike Shipping or Chancery. Indeed, it comes dangerously close to Engineering, ever despised in England. It is often referred to as Sewers and Drains. . . ." Id. at 20-21.).

Jane Gardam, Old Filth (New York: Europa Editions, 2004, 2006) ("He thought he needed a Gospel tonight, and turned up one of Christ's ding-dongs with the lawyers." "He wondered, the pages shaking as he turned to them, why Christ had so hated lawyers when He'd have been such a brilliant one Himself. Christ, when you considered it, was simply putting a Case. He may well have been enjoying the lawyers' examination of him. Pilate's was his most respectable interrogation. Pilate had not been a lawyer, but another excellent lawyer manqué. Pilate and Christ had understood each other." Id. at 255.).

Jane Gardam, The People on Privilege Hill and Other Stories (New York: Europa Editions, 2008).

RELIGION, RACE, POLITICS, AND LAW

Robert Wuthnow, Rough Country: How Texas Became America's Most Powerful Bible-Belt State (Princeton & Oxford: Princeton U. Press, 2014) (From the bookjacket: "Tracing the intersection of religion, race and power in Texas from Reconstruction through the rise of the Religious Right and the failed presidential bid of Governor Rick Perry, Rough Country illuminates American history since the Civil War in new ways, demonstrating that Texas's story is also America's. In particular, Robert Wuthnow shows how distinctions between 'us' and 'them' are perpetuated and why they are so often shaped by religion and politics." "Early settlers called Texas a rough country. Surviving there necessitated defining evil, fighting it, and building institutions in the hope of advancing civilization. Religion played a decisive role. Today, more evangelical Protestants live in Texas than in any other state. They have influenced every presidential election for fifty years, mobilized powerful efforts against abortion and same-sex-marriage, and been a driving force in the Tea Party movement. And religion has always been complicated by race and ethnicity.""Drawing from memoirs, newspapers, and history, voting records, and surveys, Rough Country tells the stories of ordinary men and women who struggled with the conditions they faced, conformed to the customs they knew, and on occasion emerged as powerful national leaders. We see the lasting imprint of slavery, public executions, Jim Crow segregation, and resentment against the federal government. We also observe courageous efforts to care for the sick, combat lynching, provide for the poor, welcome new immigrants and uphold liberty of conscience." "A monumental and magisterial history, Rough Country is as much about the rest of America as it is about Texas.").

FOOD FOR THOUGHT ON MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR. DAY

James H. Cone, The Cross and The Lynching Tree (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2011) ("The cross and the lynching tree are separated by nearly 2,000 years. One is the  universal symbol of Christian faith; the other is the quintessential symbol of black oppression in America. Though both are symbols of death, one represents a message of hope and salvation, while the other signifies the negation of that message by white supremacy. Despite the obvious similarities between Jesus' death on a cross and the death of thousands of black men and women strung up to die on a lamppost or tree, relatively few people, apart from black poets, novelists, and other reality-seeking artists, have explored the symbolic connecctions. Yet, I believe this is a challenge we must face. What is at stake is the credibility and promise of the Christian gospel and the hope that we may heal the wounds of racial violence that continues to divide our churches and our society." Id. at xiii-xiv.).

WHAT IS 'LIBERALISM'?

Edmund Fawcett, Liberalism: The Life of an Idea (Princeton & Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2014). From the book's jacket: 

"Liberalism dominates today's politics just as it decisively shaped the past two hundred years of American and European history. Yet there is striking disagreement about what liberalism really means and how it arose. In this engrossing history of liberalism--the first in English for many decades--veteran political observer Edmund Fawcett traces the ideals, successes, and failures of this central political tradition through the lives and ideas of a rich cast of European and American thinkers and politicians, from the early nineteenth century to today.

"Using a broad idea of liberalism, the book discusses celebrated thinkers from Constant and Mill to Berlin, Hayek, and Rawls, as well as more neglected figures. Its twentieth-century politicians include, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Lyndon Johnson, and Willy Brandt, but also Hoover, Reagan, and Kohl. The story tracks political liberalism from its beginnings in the 1830s to its long, grudging compromise with democracy, through a golden age after 1945 to the present mood of challenge an doubt.

"Focusing on the United States, Britain, France, and Germany, the book traces how the distinct traditions of these countries converged on the practice of liberal democracy. Although liberalism has many currents, Fawcett suggests that they are held together by shared commitments: resistance to power, faith in social progress, respect for people's chosen enterprises and beliefs, and acceptance that interests and faiths will always conflict.

"An enlightening account of a vulnerable but critically important political creed, Liberalism will be a revelation for readers who think they already know--for good or ill--what liberalism is."

DIALOGUES ON THE 'BHAGAVAD GITA'

Richard H. Davis, The Bhagavad Gita: A Biography (Lives of Great Religious Books) (Princeton & Oxford: Princeton U. Press, 2015) ("Like many great religious works, the Bhagavad Gita has outlived its own time and place of composition. The work has lived a vivid and contentious existence over the centuries since, though readings and recitations, translations and commentaries that have reinscribed this classical Indian work into many new currents and disputes. Medieval Brahman scholars and Krishna devotees, British colonial scholars, German romantics, globe-trotting Hindu gurus, Indian anticolonial freedom fighters, Western students, and spiritual seekers have all engaged in new dialogues with the Gita." Id. at 6. Also see, generally, Wendy Doniger, "War and Peace in the Bhagavad Gita," New York Review of Books, 12/4/2014.).

THE SECRET PURPOSE OF ART

Jed Pearl, ed., Art in America 1945-1970: Writings from the Age of Abstract Expressionism, Pop Art, and Minimalism (New York: Library of America, 2014) (From "Excerpts from an Unfinished Manuscript Titles 'Art'": "If you examine all existing tapestries of the fifteen century, you will find that they are all beautiful and perfect in every aspect of craft, composition and art. How do you account that today in ten thousand paintings you hardly find one palatable? There must be an explanation. It is because the epoch itself was better, stricter and the craft itself was more rigorous and exclusive, and men were inspired not by 'art' but by a religious fervor or craft fervor. All this is to show that instead of trying for greater so-called 'freedom of expression' or destruction of the world around and of themselves, so-called 'artists' should try to devote themselves to a detached subject and to their own craft, try to convey a message and not to produce a pretty decoration. The purpose of life in society, art and civilization, is: the greater order, discipline, control and inhibitions to produce and organize culture, a culture that functions in concert, like an organism. In Zen, the archer must reach such technical and spiritual perfection as to identify himself to such an extent with the target, that the target becomes himself. Perfection means that the arrow, sent out by the archer, hits the archer himself, square in the solar-plexus, this realizing the perfect Sunburst, because self-immolation is the ultimate aim of archery, and of itself. The Greeks knew it and so did the Egyptians. Hence the secret of Egyptian and Greek statuary is that every male figure of a divinity or warrior is always wide-open, defenseless, ready for the great Ritual Immolation, the secret purpose of all arts, of all endeavor! This heroic task is not for the feeble-minded, soft, scheming, pettyfoggers, doubledealers and scavengers. The artist's job is a Hector's task and nothing less. Those who are not equipped with Hector's heart, aim and perspicacity, should keep their profane hands off the domain of art." Id. at 316, 320-321.).

FOOD FOOD THOUGHT: MULTITASKING IS THE OPPOSITE OF MINDFUL PRESENCE

Nicholas Carr, The Glass Cage: Automation and Us (New York: Norton, 2014) ("Most of us assume . . . that automation is benign, that it raises us to higher callings but doesn't otherwise alter the way we behave or think. That's a fallacy. It's an expression of what scholars of automation have come to call the 'substitution myth.' A labor-saving device doesn't just provide a substitute for some isolated component of a job It alters the character of the entire task, including the roles, attitudes, and skills of the people who take part in it. As Raja Parasuraman explained in a 2000 journal article, 'Automation does not simply supplant human activity but rather changes it, often in ways unintended and unanticipated by the designers." Automation remakes both work and the worker." Id. at 67. "'Paying attention to the computer and to the patient requires multitasking,' observes [Beth] Lown, and multitasking 'is the opposite of mindful presence.'" Id. at 103. Also see Daniel Menaker, "Our Tools, Ourselves," NYT Book Review, Sunday, 11/9/2014.).

FOOD FOR THOUGHT: IS AMERICA BEYOND REPAIR?

Bob Herbert, Losing Our Way: An Intimate Portrait of a Troubled America (New York: Doubleday, 2014) ("The twenty-first century has not been kind to the middle class in America. The economic nightmare that descended . . . was part of an epic change in the lives of individuals and families across the country. Millions of hardworking men and women who had believed they were solidly anchored economically found themselves cast into a financial abyss, struggling with joblessness, home foreclosures, and personal bankruptcy. Some were astonished to find themselves turning to food banks and homeless shelters. The hard times would eventually spread like a blight across the country, wiping out saving, crushing home values and upending carefully nurtured career plans. For much of the population, the very notion of economic security evaporated." "[] The years that had been unkind to the middle class were positively brutal to the working class and the poor. The United States was no longer a place of widely shared prosperity and limitless optimism. It was a country that had lost it way." Id. at 1-2. Also see Adrian Nicole LeBlanc, "Country at a Crossroads," NYT Book Review, Sunday, 11/9/2014.). 

A HISTORICAL NOTE TO REMEMBER AS AMERICA'S POLITICAL CENTER CEASES TO HOLD

John Merriman, Massacre: The Life and Death of the Paris Commune (New York: Basic Books, 2014) (From the bookjacket: "In Massacre, renowned historian John Merriman recounts the sixty-four days that changed the face of European politics forever. He introduces a cast of inimitable characters--from les petroleuses) women accused of being incendiaries) to the painter Gustave Courbet--whose ideas of justice and equality helped fuel a revolution. Incredibly progressive, the Commune initiated a number of significant social reforms, including the recognition of women's unions, calling for compulsory primary education, and schools for girls. Their utopia, however, was brought to a chaotic and bloody end on May 22 [1871], when 130,000 government troops from Versailles poured through an unguarded opening in the western wall and executed captured Connunards en masses as mush of Paris burned." Also, see Adam Gopnik, "Fires in Paris: Why Do People Still Fight About the Paris Commune?," The New Yorker, 12 22 & 29, 2014.).

John Merriman, Police Stories: Building the French State, 1815-1851 (Oxford & New York: Oxford U. Press, 2006).

POETRY AND SUFFERING

Stig Dagerman, A Burnt Child: A Novel, introduction by Per Olov Enquist, translated from the Swedish by Benjamin Mier-Cruz (Minneapolis: U. of Minnesota Press, 2013) ("The worst thing about hitting animals is that you can never ask them for forgiveness. And you can never get forgiveness. Though, in the end, forgiveness is the only thing you need." Id. at 105.).

Stig Dagerman, German Autumn, foreword by Mark Kurlansky, translated from the Swedish by Robin Fulton Macpherson (Minneapolis: U. of Minnesota Press, 2011) (This is a collection of writings about the aftermath of the Second World War in Germany. From "The Art of Sinking": "Sink a little! Try to sink a little! When it comes to the art of sinking then there are worse and better artists. In Germany there are bad practitioners who keep themselves alive only by the thought that since they have so little to live for they have even less to die for. But there are surprisingly many who are willing to accept anything merely to survive." Id. at 43, 43. From the essay "Literature and Suffering": "What is the distance between literature and suffering? Does it depend on the nature of the suffering, on its closeness or on its strength? Is the distance less between poetry and the suffering caused by the reflection of the fire than the distance between poetry and the suffering arising from the fire itself? There are examples to hand that show there is more or less immediate connection between poetry and remote or closed suffering. Perhaps we can say that simply to suffer with others is a form of poetry, which feels a powerful longing for words. Immediate open suffering distinguishes itself from the indirect kind by, among other things, not longing for words, at least not at the moment it occurs. Open suffering is shy, restrained, taciturn." Id. at 111, 111.).

Stig Dagerman, Island of the Doomed, preface by Alice McDermott, translated from the Swedish by Steven Hartman (Boston: A Verba Mundi Book/David R. Godine, 2013) ("But above all it's through your severe eye slits, captain, that we can see you're proud of being an empty suit of armour; an empty suit of armour can't be afraid, for instance, it can wander through any forest you like without being worried, without being afraid that a snake might wriggle up through the heather and wrap itself around its leg. You think it's an advantage, an enormous advantage not to be able to feel afraid, and in your emptiness you are laughing away at all the many people who are terrified at the prospect of dying of hunger, dying of thirst, dying of loneliness, dying of paralysis, dying of wounds, but if you pause and think about it then maybe it's not as much of an advantage as you think. Your lack of fear isn't in fact due to your store of courage, but rather to your inability to feel anything at all, to your not being able to feel anything because you haven't had anything to feel with for for the last four hundred years, and your memories of the time when the armour was bristling with life just fill you with ridicule and sterile defiance." " That's why it's right to say to you what someone once said to somebody else: I say unto you the man who fears not life shall not love life, the man who does not harbor fear, neither shall he harbor courage, the man who fears not death shall not be enabled to die with dignity, the man who fears not himself, neither shall he love another. But let's not talk about that, captain, you can't be opened up with words, you can only be opened up with a tin opener or a five-inch nail, and when you have  been opened up, people will only wonder why they bothered." Id. at 249-250.).

Stig Dagerman, Sleet, foreword by Mark Kurlansky, translated from the Swedish by Robin Fulton Macpherson (Minneapolis: U. of Minnesota Press, 2011) (From "The Stockholm Car": "When you're the child of a small family farmer, your back grows crooked already at an early age from you trying to bear as much on it as the grown-ups. It's only fitting that we bear their burdens, seeing as we already wear their outgrown clothes and speak their castoff words. Our haunches burn from the strain of trying to keep pace with their long strides. It's not easy walking in these grown-up shoes, no sir. But it's what we've got to do, 'cause being children is a choice we've never really had." Id. at 119, 119.).

A SERIOUS MAN?

Howard Jacobson, J: A Novel (London & New York: Hogarth, 2014) ("A life was owned by the person who lived it, he believed. What happened didn't always happen because you wanted it to, but what you made of it was your responsibility. Help there was little and gods there were none. We are the authors of our own consequences, if not always of our own actions." "The credo of a serious man. You could be too serious, he didn't doubt that. But his birthright was his birthright. No one can make me, he thought, feeling the spray on his cheeks." Id. at 342. "'You have an unfortunate tendency to overwrite, her supervisor said when he had read the whole report. 'May I suggest you read fewer novels.'" Id. at 17. "'It's a great intellectual privilege to work in a library,' she reminded him. 'The Argentinian writer Borges was a librarian. The English poet Philip Larkin was a librarian.' Kevern hadn't heard of either of them. 'All human life is here,' she went on. 'The best of it and the worst of it, mainly the worst. Books do that, they bring out the bad in readers if there's bad already in them.' 'And if there isn't?' She smiled at him and stroked her pigtail. 'Then they bring out the good. As in me, I hope. I've been able to read a lot here." Id. at 211-212.).

WHAT STORIES WILL THE NEW YEAR BRING?

Rebecca Solnit, The Faraway Nearby (New York: Viking, 2013) ("What's your story? It's all in the telling. Stories are compasses and architecture; we navigate by them, we build our sanctuaries and our prisons out of them, and to be without a story is to be lost in the vastness of a world that spreads in all directions like arctic tundra or sea ice. To love someone is to put yourself in their place, we say, which is to put yourself in their story, or figure out how to tell yourself their story." "Which means that a place is a story, and stories are geography, and empathy is first of all an act of imagination, a storyteller's art. and then a way of traveling from here to there, What is it like to be the old man silenced by a stroke, the young man facing the executioner, the woman walking across the border, the child on the roller coaster, the person you've only read about, or the one next to you in bed?" "We tell ourselves stories in order to live, or to justify taking lives, even our own, by violence or by numbness and the failure to live; tell ourselves stories that save us and stories that are the quicksand in which we thrash and the well in which we drown, stories of justification, of accursedness, of luck and star-crossed love, or versions clad in the cynicism that is at times a very elegant garment. Sometimes the story collapses, and it demands that we recognize we've been lost, or terrible, or ridiculous, or just stuck; sometimes change arrives like an ambulance or a supply drop. Not a few stories are sinking ships, and may of us go down with these ships even when the lifeboats are bobbing all around us." Id. at 3-4. I fear I am out of stories. No new stories, and tired of my old ones.).

WHAT WILL THE NEW YEAR BRING? REALISTIC PERSPECTIVE! BOOKS WORTH REREADING!

Richard Flanagan, The Narrow Road To the Deep North: A Novel (New York: Knopf, 2014) ("[H]e had beside their bed, as he always did, no matter where he was, a book, having returned to the habit or reading in his middle age. A good book, he had concluded, leaves you wanting to reread the book. A great book compels you to reread your own soul. Such books were for him rare and, as he aged, rarer. Still he searched . . ." Id. at 22. "Darky Gardiner did not have many beliefs. He did not believe he was unique or that he had some sort of destiny. In this own heart he felt all such ideas were a complete nonsense, and that death could find him at any moment, as it was note finding so many others. Life wasn't about ideas. Life was a bit about luck. Mostly though, it was a stacked deck. Life was only about getting the next footstep right." Id. at 169-170. "In the end all that was left was the heat and the clouds of rain, and insects and birds and animals and vegetation that neither knew note cared. Humans are only one of many things, and all these things long to live, and the highest form of living is freedom: a man to be a man, a cloud to be a could, bamboo to be bamboo." Id. at 227. Also see Michael Gorra, "Bridge to Nowhere," New York Times Book Review, Sunday, 8/31/2014.).