Book News, Good and Bad

Let's start with the good news.

It's been announced (I stumbled over it in Amazon.com, but it's discussed at length at the blog of National Book Critics Circle Board of Directors) that the Library of America will be publishing in October two volumes of the literary journalism and criticism of Edmund Wilson, perhaps the last century's finest all-around man of letters.

The first volume ("Literary Essays Reviews of the 1920s and 1930s") will contain The Shores of Light (Wilson's collection of literary journalism from the 1920s) as well as Axel's Castle, his pioneering book on Symbolism that helped make somewhat accessible to an Anglophone readership such formidable writers as James Joyce, Marcel Proust and Gertrude Stein. The second volume ("Literary Essays and Reviews of the 1930s and 1940s") will contain The Triple Thinkers, The Wound and the Bow and his collection of literary journalism from the 1940s, Classics and Commercials.

I can't tell you how welcome, or how overdue, these two volumes are. The fact is that the Library of America, which came into being in 1982, a decade after Wilson's death, was pretty much Wilson's idea. He dreamed of having an American equivalent of France's Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, where what the French call the œuvres complètes of classic American writers would be permanently available on good paper in elegant but affordable bindings, without all the pseudo-scholarly trappings of the editions of the Modern Language Association (and about which he wrote so scathingly in his 1968 New York Review of Books essay, "The Fruits of the MLA").

The Library of America is Edmund Wilson's vision come to life -- although I shudder to think what he would have said if he could have known that such a collection would eventually come to include not just unassailably canonical authors such as Henry James and Walt Whitman, but such (in his eyes) ephemeral writers as Dashiell Hammett and George S. Kaufman (not to mention science-fiction writers such as Phillip K. Dick). It's a shame that it's taken a quarter-century to include Wilson in the collection he envisioned, but I'm glad it's happening now, and I can only hope that more volumes of Wilson (including To The Finland Station and Patriotic Gore, among others) will follow in short order.

Okay, that's the good news. The bad news is pretty bad.

Last week saw the end of The Gotham Book Mart, a New York instutition since 1920 whose devotees included the likes of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis and J.D. Salinger. Along with the closing of Coliseum Books not long ago, that means that two of the most civilized and reader-friendly bookstores in Manhattan are now gone.

Like Coliseum, The Gotham Book Mart had moved from its traditional location (in the middle of the diamond district at 16 E. 46th Street) to a new location a block away, and never really recovered from the effects of the dislocation. The entire inventory was auctioned off and purchased by the landlord of the building for $400,000.

So another New York institution bites the dust. People looking for that rare edition of William Butler Yeats will have to look elsewhere -- possibly online, instead of asking a clerk who actually knows what he's talking about. The James Joyce Society (founded 60 years ago and whose first member was T.S. Eliot) will will have to find another place to meet and pore over the pages of Finnegans Wake.

And the cultural life of the city gets a little more impoverished.

Tom Moran

Yet Another Sign of the Times

Noticed something interesting and revealing on the New York Public Library website today.

The New York Public Library has 64 copies of the DVD version of the film "The Black Dahlia" in its system. There are 210 holds on those copies.

They also have a total of 107 copies of James Ellroy's original novel "The Black Dahlia" in the library system. There are 0 holds on those copies.

Tom Moran

Giuliani Shoots Himself in the Fetus

Did Rudy Giuliani just blow his chances of getting the Republican nomination for president in 2008?

Giuliani is gambling that his image as the hero of 9/11 will more than make up for his heterodox (for a Republican, anyway) views on abortion and gun control. He seems to think that being a tough guy will more than make up for his deviation from conservative orthodoxy -- and it might, in a general election. But before that he has to win Iowa and New Hampshire, and the voters in those two states are hard-right true believers. Those 200,000 voters are unlikely to be willing to vote for a pro-choice, pro-gun control candidate -- no matter what he did on 9/11.

This is how Giuliani defended his position at Houston Baptist University on Friday (text from the AP):

"This is a matter of deep and profound judgment. It's a matter of morals. It's a matter of your interpretation of how laws should operate, your interpretation of how respect for the rights of others should operate. But in a country like ours ... I believe you have to respect their viewpoint and give them a level of choice. I would grant women the right to make that choice."

Sounds pretty reasonable, doesn't it? Almost rational, coming from a Republican. There are of course some interesting and revealing caveats in that otherwise reasonable statement. For example, he says he would give women "a level of choice" (my emphasis), and that "I would grant women [again, my emphasis] the right to make that choice." It's as if the right to choose was a personal gift of Giuliani's, something he can bestow and/or take away any time he feels like it.

But soon Giuliani was backtracking even from this position, saying on Sunday in an interview on Fox News that, "I am open and will continue to be open to ways to limit abortion."

How do you reconcile these two positions? Are they reconcilable? Women have the right to make the choice to terminate a pregnancy but Giuliani is open to ways of limiting that choice? Imagine a similar argument on, say, gun control: would he really say words to the effect of, "I am in favor of gun ownership but I'm open to the idea of taking those guns away"? Would he really get away with such an idiotic statement?

Giuliani is stuck between a rock and a hard place -- and, typically, he's trying to have it both ways. He knows that if he shifts gears and retracts his original position in the way that Mitt Romney did he will lay himself open to the charge of being an opportunist and a flip-flopper. If he holds firm to his position he risks alienating the very people who are in a position to deny him the nomination.

Abortion is "morally wrong" (Giuliani's words) but should be protected. Now that's something the voters in Iowa and New Hampshire are just dying to hear. As an article in the International Herald Tribune about his interview Sunday says:

The high stakes he faces, and the strain of having to explain the more conservative views he has adopted, were evident Sunday when Giuliani, after a 10-minute grilling in the Fox News interview about his abortion views, began to quite visibly perspire.

That's probably symbolically appropriate. In his place, I'd be sweating too -- because I would have, in all likelihood, thrown away my chances of the nomination.

Tom Moran

The Toll on the Troops

There's a saying in the news business that you should always make a point of reading the Saturday paper, because the information that the government doesn't want you to know about but which they're forced to make public is usually dumped on reporters late on Friday, which means that it will only be reported in the Saturday papers, which traditionally are the least-read edition of any newspaper.

This wise old adage is proven by a story in today's Washington Post by Thomas E. Ricks and Ann Scott Tyson. It concerns a report that the Pentagon only released yesterday.

I can understand why they would want this information published in the Saturday paper, if at all. It's a pretty scathing indictment of the American military and the effect this war is having on the minds and, if I can get metaphysical for a moment, souls of our men and women in uniform.

The first two paragraphs of the article makes the point pretty starkly:

More than one-third of U.S. soldiers in Iraq surveyed by the Army said they believe torture should be allowed if it helps gather important information about insurgents, the Pentagon disclosed yesterday. Four in 10 said they approve of such illegal abuse if it would save the life of a fellow soldier.

In addition, about two-thirds of Marines and half the Army troops surveyed said they would not report a team member for mistreating a civilian or for destroying civilian property unnecessarily. "Less than half of Soldiers and Marines believed that non-combatants should be treated with dignity and respect," the Army report stated.

Keep in mind, this is an Army report. That cannot be stressed too heavily. This isn't some hotshot blowdried reporter for a news organization or a TV network looking for a news peg to garner ratings. This is the U.S. military reporting on its own people.

Further on in the same report, the Army discusses the toll this war is taking on the men and women who fight it:

The study also found that the more often soldiers are deployed, the longer they are deployed each time; and the less time they spend at home, the more likely they are to suffer mental health problems such as combat trauma, anxiety and depression. That result is particularly notable given that the Pentagon has sent soldiers and Marines to Iraq multiple times and recently extended the tours of thousands of soldiers to 15 months from 12 months.

This is what you might call Rumsfeld's Legacy: his desire to fight this war on the cheap, with inadequate forces, has resulted in the result that the same inadequate force is being sent back to Iraq again and again, because we have no one else to send, with ther result that those soldiers are being turned into emotional basket cases, who when they return home, even if they've been unmarked on the outside, are unrecognizable to their loved ones. Although these troops are being compared to the soldiers who fought in Vietnam, what they suggest to me are the men who fought the First World War, who never got over the trauma of the trenches. This is a group of men and women who have been emotionally destroyed by their service -- and we've already seen the thanks they get when they get home, thanks to the good folks at Walter Reed.

Meanwhile, we still want the president to cut taxes, and God forbid we should be asked to sacrifice anything at all during this war. As I've said many times, we want to have our cake, eat it too and lose weight -- all at the same time.

It's a national disgrace.

Tom Moran

Let There Be (Incandescent) Light!

Will we be nostalgic for the incandescent light bulb 20 years from now? Will they go the way of 8-track tapes, the manual typewriter and the Betamax?

It certainly looks that way, according to the Wall Street Journal. If Congress has its way, the common incandescent light bulb that we've all grown up with and taken for granted will be replaced within a decade by the compact fluorescent bulb, or CFL, which is far more efficient than its 19th Century Edisonian predecessor -- and also far more expensive.

There's only one problem with this. Yes, we all agree that it would make sense from an environmental standpoint. But has anyone in Congress taken a minute to point out that fluorescent light is ugly as hell? And that the CFL looks like a colonoscopy in action? I had a light fixture in my apartment ripped out and replaced specifically because I didn't want fluorescent light in my apartment -- and now Congress is going to force me to use it?

As the Journal piece puts it:

Fluorescent bulbs have been around for years and are known to be more economical over the long run, but consumers have shown a clear preference for the softer and more easily adjusted glow of incandescent bulbs, which also carry a much cheaper sticker price. Now, there is push toward using regulation to force adoption of the more energy-efficient product.

In other words, it looks better and it's cheaper but it's going to be forced into obsolescence on the grounds on environmental purity.

I'm not crazy about this, but what is to be done? Should we all hoard incandescent light bulbs, the way people stocked up on booze before Prohibition set in? Will there be a black market in foreign light bulbs from Mexico?

I think I should just buy a shitload of candles and say the hell with it.

Tom Moran

You Had Me at "Chrestomathy"

Sad news today.

"Gilmore Girls" is no more. The CW has canceled the show. The episode of May 15th will the final one.

Those of us who enjoy snappy, well-written dialogue being delivered impeccably by hot looking babes will miss "Gilmore Girls." I remember seeing the very first episode, and when Rory Gilmore mentioned H.L. Mencken's "Chrestomathy" I was instantly hooked. How can you not like a show that makes Noam Chomsky jokes. Noam Chomsky, for Chrissake!

Lauren Graham and Alexis Bledel will go on to bigger and better things, no doubt. But I will miss the snappy pseudo-intellectual patter of "Gilmore Girls." It was smart and funny and it was about people who read books. You don't get a lot of that on network TV nowadays.

Tom Moran

Ratszapoppin! An Update

According to an item in today's New York Daily News, Yum! Brands, the company that owns the Greenwich Village KFC/Taco Bell that had a "revolting rat parade" in its eatery last February, is closing that branch of their chain for good.

"We have closed that restaurant in Greenwich Village and it will not reopen," the News quotes Peter Hearl, CEO of Yum! Brands.

It's hard to see what other decision they could have made. After those nauseating images of rats parading around that restaurant were broadcast to the world, who in their right mind would ever eat there?

Speaking of rats, the Republican presidential candidates had their first snoozefest (which they miscalled a debate) last night. The best thing that can be said about it is that it was almost as boring as the Democratic debate.

Tom Moran