Publishing a Dead Man, Against His Will

New books by long-dead authors seem to be all the rage these days. This year it's And The Hippos Were Boiled In Their Tanks, a a 63-year-old collaboration between then-unknown writers Jack Kerouac and William Burroughs. Next year it will be the last, unfinished novel by Lolita author Vladimir Nabokov.

The delay in the publication of the former book is easily explained. At the time it was written, both of its authors were a decade away from publishing the works that would bring them fame -- On The Road for Kerouac and Naked Lunch for Burroughs. And the original of one of their characters and the book's inspiration, Lucien Carr, was very much alive and desirous that a fictional account of the most traumatic event in his life (the murder by Carr of his friend and stalker David Kammerer) not be published while he was alive. Only Carr's death in 2005 made it possible to publish the long-buried manuscript.

I've read And the Hippos Were Boiled In Their Tanks, albeit with some trepidation, and all things considered I'm glad that it was finally made available. Both authors (Burroughs especially) are writing parodistically in the hardboiled style of Dashiell Hammett, and the novel is a fascinating time capsule of America in wartime, with classic French films playing on 42nd Street and men wanting to ship on any boat available in order to escape their fate. It's no masterpiece but it's a fun read, especially so when you know the real story involved (to which the novel cleaves pretty faithfully, with some details, like the murder weapon, changed). The book is a minor addition to the growing literature by and about the Beats, and it's worth a look if you're a fan of either author's more mature fiction.

The Nabokov is another story altogether. No matter what you may think of And The Hippos Were Boiled In Their Tanks, at the very least it was a finished manuscript that the authors tried to publish at the time they wrote it, and neither man ever expressed the desire that it never see the light of day. The new Nabokov, entitled The Original of Laura, is being published by his son against the expressed wishes of its author, who instructed his wife on his deathbed to burn the unfinished manuscript (or, given that it was Nabokov, index cards).

Should she, should he obey his wishes? Tom Stoppard, speaking to the BBC, says yes: "It's perfectly straightforward. Nabokov wanted it burnt, so burn it." Of course, if we followed Stoppard's logic, we would lose out on a great deal of literature: Virgil's The Aeneid, Kafka's The Trial and The Castle and Eugene O'Neill's More Stately Mansions at the very least. It's clear that both Nabokov's widow and his son have agonized over this decision, which was not taken lightly. Vera Nabokov defied her husband's wishes and let the manuscript escape the flames, but apparently could not bring herself to allow for publication. Now, 31 years after its author's death, the book is being prepared for publication by his son.

Should it be published? Or should Nabokov's wishes be respected? These are very touchy questions. The heirs of Albert Camus had to decide whether to publish his last, unfinished novel, the manuscript of which was in the car with him when he died in an auto accident in his 40s (it took his children 30 years to decide to publish The First Man). But at least, having been cut down unexpectedly in his prime, Camus had left no explicit instructions for what to do with the book in the event of his demise. Eugene O'Neill, on the other hand, knowing he would not live to finish the plays he'd envisioned as an immense cycle of American history (the overall title of which was to be A Tale of Possessors, Self-Dispossessed), methodically set about to destroy all the manuscripts of the plays that were unfinished. A version of one of the plays for some reason escaped the destruction, and More Stately Mansions, was produced on Broadway in the 1960s in a truncated version with Ingrid Bergman in the lead. It has since been published in a far longer (and theatrically unfeasible) version by Yale University Press.

Dmitri Nabokov thinks it's relatively simple: "My father told me what his most important books were. He named [The Original of] Laura as one of them. One doesn't name a book one intends to destroy." He went on to tell the BBC that: "He would have reacted in a sober and less dramatic way if he didn't see death staring him in the face. He certainly would not have wanted it destroyed. He would have finished it." Of course he would have finished it, the devil's advocate in me replies, but he didn't have time to do so -- and, rather than let an unfinished work that didn't live up to his standards go out into the world, he preferred to see it destroyed.

I'm very much of two minds about this, but in the final analysis I have to say that I would vote for publication. Even if The Original of Laura is total crap, Nabokov's reputation is secure. I mean, if it survived his awful translation of Pushkin's Eugene Onegin it'll survive anything. And when we consider some of the holocausts of literature -- from the destruction of the library at Alexandria to the well-intentioned but idiotic burning of Lord Byron's Memoirs -- perhaps it's better that, to paraphrase Mikhail Bulgakov, manuscripts shouldn't burn.

Will Hillary Get It?

They're talking about it as if it's a done deal. CNN says that Obama is "on track" to nominated Hillary Clinton Secretary of State, according to Huffington Post. The announcement will be made after Thanksgiving. Everyone seems to think it's inevitable.

Why don't I believe it?

Maybe I'm just being cynical. But I just have this feeling that the deal's going to fall through -- and that Obama's people want it to fall through.

This is what I'm thinking:

The incoming administration considers Hillary Clinton for Secretary of State. This would, if it goes through, appease all of those Hillary supporters who feel as if she was "dissed" by not being named to the ticket over the summer. The most prestigious post in the cabinet, it would be a very nice consolation prize for the woman who would be the president-elect today if she hadn't run such a miserable presidential campaign.

But in offering it to her, Obama's people know -- at least according to my slightly cynical theory they know -- that she can't, and invariably won't, accept it.

Why?

Because in order to accept the position, former president Bill Clinton will have to open up his finances (specifically, the donors to his presidential library) in order to avoid the appearance of conflict of interest. And while Clinton has given what has been called an "unprecedented" amount of disclosure, there's a difference between unprecedented and total -- and I'm guessing that total is what they're looking for.

And if Bill Clinton doesn't give total financial disclosure, which they know he can't or won't give, they can use that as an entirely plausible excuse for not giving Hillary the position. And Obama gets the best of both worlds: he gets the credit for "offering" her the position, while Bill Clinton gets the blame for seeing to it that she doesn't get it.

A little too Machiavellian, did you say? Perhaps. It's certainly possible that Hillary will get the nomination in a week or so. But until then, I'm thinking that my theory is at least plausible. And I would guess that it's at least 50/50 that it'll go down that way. I'm betting Hillary stays exactly where she is.

But if she does get it, you can bet on New York Governor David Paterson appointing Bobby Kennedy Jr. to take her place in the senate. Why that is is something I'll go into at another time.

We're In, They're Out

People have been complaining that the Obama Administration has so many Clinton veterans in it that it might as well be considered Clinton Redux. But these people, as people so often do, miss the point.

What Obama is doing by hiring so many Clinton veterans is avoiding the very mistake Bill Clinton himself made when he became president -- that is, hire too many young staffers who had never worked at the White House before, which made the beginning of the Clinton Administration a chaotic, pizza-strewn mess. In fact, when Clinton turned over the White House to George W. Bush, he congratulated him on having an administration with so many people who had worked there before -- like Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld.

Peggy Noonan, surprisingly enough, makes an interesting point:

It is obvious that Mr. Obama's people have learned from the experiences of Bill Clinton and will continue to try not to begin with a gays-in-the-military, my-wife-is-revolutionizing-health-care series of errors that will self-brand them as to the left of the mainstream. They do not want to do anything that will leave the middle-right saying "Uh-oh" and begin to push away. The great question, however, is: Do Mr. Obama and his people fully understand what will make the middle-right say "Uh-oh"?

It's clear that Peggy Noonan thinks she knows. I'm not so sure about that.

Obama's choices have been pretty much made for him -- at least for the first hundred days (an expression they use at the start of every administration but that actually means something this time). Our new president's priorities have to be, in order:

• 1) The economy
• 2) The economy
• 3) The economy

There isn't going to be any great liberal agenda coming out of this White House -- not any time soon, anyway. He's going to be working too hard to prop up the economy. This, ironically enough, might bring him into Carter-esque conflict with the more left-leaning members of his own party in Congress, who will want to use this opportunity to create or revive a lot of spending programs that we don't have the money for at this time.

And what will Republicans be doing all this time? Here Noonan again makes a sort of sense. She's speaking to some fictional Young Republicans (do they really exist?):

There is joy to be had in being out of power. You don't have to defend stupid decisions anymore. You get to criticize with complete abandon. This is the pleasurable side of what the donkey knows, which is that it's easier to knock over the barn than build it.

She has a point. After all, Republicans have shown that they have no clue how to govern, so they should be happy that they no longer have to try. After all bitching and moaning is what they do best -- and now they get to do it.

And I hope they get to do it for a very long time.

Behind the Proposition Eight Ball

I've found myself posting on the My Space blogs of a number of disappointed and/or angry gay performers (and the Facebook page of an old college friend who has a lesbian daughter) who are outraged at the success of Proposition 8 in California, which overturns gay marriage in that state.

They're shocked -- shocked! -- that voters in the enlightened state of California would do such a heinous thing as to vote against something as normal and natural and seemingly inevitable as gay marriage.

Personally, I'm shocked at their naïveté. The gay community in California seemed to believe that voting "No" on 8 was a foregone conclusion, that it would go down to a resounding defeat if it wasn't for those dastardly Mormons (a protest against the Mormon Church is scheduled for tomorrow in New York -- for all the good that's going to do) and the money they put up to push the proposition through.

They couldn't be further from the truth.

The gay and lesbian community, both in California and around the country, need to face a couple of unpleasant but undeniable facts:

First, you can get people to vote for anything on a ballot initiative. And I mean anything. Did these people really thing Proposition 8 would fail? If it was on the ballot to eliminate the First Amendment -- hell, make that the whole goddamn Bill of Rights -- you could count on it passing. In 1954, if school desegregation was on the ballot, in California or anywhere else, do you really think it would have succeeded? If you do, let me know what you're smoking because I want to try some.

What California needs is a proposition to outlaw propositions.

Second, when the idea of gay marriage is put on the ballot in almost any state of the union, it's always going to go down to defeat. Gays and lesbians are completely blind to the fact that most Americans, probably an overwhelming majority of them, are simply opposed to the notion of gay marriage. By the way, so is Barack Obama. He's said so multiple times. How many gays and lesbians voted for him?

Gay marriage cannot be settled to the satisfaction of gays and lesbians by a plebiscite. It will fail every time. The only way that the subject of gay marriage is going to be decided one way or the other is if the Supreme Court rules on it. Some day a case will come to the court and they will make a decision, either as history making as Brown v. Board of Education, or as wrongheaded as Plessy v. Ferguson, and that will, hopefully, be an end of it.

But of course it won't. Because even if the Supreme Court legalized gay marriage tomorrow, that would just energize the lunatic right in this country who would be thrilled to have another cause to line up next to their anti-abortion crusade.

History does not always go in a straight line. You win battles, you lose battles. You take a step forward, then you take a step or two back. The vote on Proposition 8 is merely a speed bump on the road to legalizing gay marriage.

I think it will happen eventually. And I think it should. But the gay and lesbian community shouldn't delude themselves that it will happen tomorrow. History more often than not doesn't work like that.

Call Me Nostradamus

Looking back at my recent blog entries, I found this prescient little gem (it's dated October 8th):

Obama will win Michigan. He'll win both Ohio and Florida. He'll win Pennsylvania and New Mexico. I also think he'll win Virginia and possibly even North Carolina -- which native son John Edwards couldn't deliver for John Kerry four years ago.If the election were to be held today Obama would get well over 300 electoral votes and McCain would get less than 200.It's not going to be a landslide on the nature of 1932 or 1964. But Obama is going to win, and he's going to win decisively.

You know, as predictions go, that's not bad. Obama won all seven of the states I said he'd win and he got over 300 electoral votes.

I really should play the lottery more often...

History is Made Tonight

I had my window open and when the networks projected that Barack Obama would be the 44th President of the United States, it was as if the entire neighborhood exploded -- I could hear cheers and screams from blocks away. It was worth voting at six in the morning to hear those excited voices. History was made tonight.

Americans chose hope over fear. The future over the past. And decency over arrogance. The Republicans and their soiled legacy of the past eight years have been repudiated and the Democrats will go on to run the country for at least the next four years. Or, to put it another way, tonight Barack Obama and the Democrats have accomplished everything this blog has been advocating ever since I started it over three years ago.

And yet what I feel tonight is a combination of relief and foreboding. I'm relieved that the Republicans are being kicked out of power. I'm relieved that we're going to have a grown-up in the White House. I'm relieved that we might be able to reverse some of the more sordid aspects of the current administration (and protect some rights that they weren't able to destroy, such as a woman's right to choose).

But on this night, when so many people are celebrating so joyously, all I can see when I look ahead is a grim fight. Even with all that's happened in the economy in the past two months, people still don't really have a clue how bad it's going to get in this country in the next two years. And that's all Barack Obama is going to get. If he has a mandate, it will be for the next two years to turn this economy around and disentangle us from two wars abroad. He's got the votes in Congress and he's got to deliver, because if he doesn't, the Republicans are quite capable of roaring back in 2010 and taking back the Congress.

So feel good tonight, all you progressives out there. You've earned it. We all have. But when you wake up tomorrow morning keep in mind that the real fight hasn't even started yet. Remember: we've got to keep this guy alive for the next eight years. And a lot of people out there in America are going to be oiling up their guns tomorrow.

A Tale of Two Film Lists

I thought I'd be nice and post something on here, even this close to the election, that's not political for a change.

Now you people who have been reading this blog for a while now (and both of you know who you are) know that I have a thing about lists. Doesn't matter what kind. You could post a list of the best left-handed Latvian baseball pitchers and I could find fault with it. But the fact is that most lists, and especially most cultural lists, are just pathetic. The people involved don't put enough thought into them, they just reel off the first things they can think of (which means the last things they've seen and/or read) and the end result is invariably lame.

Well, Empire Magazine has proven this thesis right yet again. They recently published a list of what they consider to be The 500 Greatest Movies of All Time.

Take a look at just the top 50:

1. The Godfather (Francis Ford Coppola, 1972)
2. Raiders of the Lost Ark (Steven Spielberg, 1981)
3. Star Wars Episode V: Empire Strikes Back (Irvin Kershner, 1980)
4. Shawshank Redemption (Frank Darabont, 1994)
5. Jaws (Steven Spielberg, 1975)
6. GoodFellas (Martin Scorsese, 1990)
7. Apocalypse Now (Francis Ford Coppola, 1979)
8. Singin’ in the Rain (Stanley Donen, Gene Kelly, 1952)
9. Pulp Fiction (Quentin Tarantino, 1994)
10. Fight Club (David Fincher, 1999)
11. Raging Bull (Martin Scorsese, 1980)
12. The Apartment (Billy Wilder, 1960)
13. Chinatown (Roman Polanski, 1974)
14. Once Upon a Time in the West (Sergio Leone, 1968)
15. The Dark Knight (Christopher Nolan, 2008)
16. 2001: A Space Odyssey (Stanley Kubrick, 1968)
17. Taxi Driver (Martin Scorsese, 1976)
18. Casablanca (Michael Curtiz, 1942)
19. The Godfather Part II (Francis Ford Coppola, 1974)
20. Blade Runner (Ridley Scott, 1982)
21. The Third Man (Carol Reed, 1949)
22. Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope (George Lucas, 1977)
23. Back to the Future (Robert Zemeckis, 1985)
24. The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (Peter Jackson, 2001)
25. The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (Sergio Leone, 1967)
26. Dr. Strangelove (Stanley Kubrick, 1964)
27. Some Like It Hot (Billy Wilder, 1959)
28. Citizen Kane (Orson Welles, 1941)
29. Die Hard (John McTiernan, 1988)
30. Aliens (James Cameron, 1986)
31. Gone with the Wind (Victor Fleming, 1939)
32. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (George Roy Hill, 1969)
33. Alien (Ridley Scott, 1979)
34. The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (Peter Jackson, 2003)
35. Terminator 2: Judgment Day (James Cameron, 1991)
36. Andrei Rublev (Andrei Tarkovsky, 1969)
37. A Clockwork Orange (Stanley Kubrick, 1971)
38. Heat (Michael Mann, 1995)
39. The Matrix (Andy & Larry Wachowski, 1999)
40. Vertigo (Alfred Hitchcock, 1958)
41. The 400 Blows (François Truffaut, 1959)
42. Kind Hearts and Coronets (Robert Hamer, 1949)
43. The Big Lebowski (Joel & Ethan Coen, 1998)
44. Schindler’s List (Steven Spielberg, 1993)
45. Psycho (Alfred Hitchcock, 1960)
46. On the Waterfront (Elia Kazan, 1954)
47. E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial (Steven Spielberg, 1982)
48. This Is Spinal Tap (Rob Reiner, 1984)
49. Evil Dead (Sam Raimi, 1987)
50. Seven Samurai (Akira Kurosawa, 1954)

Gives you a pretty good sense of who reads Empire Magazine, doesn't it? A bunch of retarded fanboys badly in need of girlfriends would be my guess.

Empire Magazine's list is a joke, but I recently stumbled over another list that isn't. Cahiers du Cinema (whose readers presumably aren't the same retarded fanboys who read Empire) published a list of what they call The 100 Most Beautiful Films in the World.

Here's their list:

Citizen Kane - Orson Welles
The Night of the Hunter - Charles Laughton
The Rules of the Game (La Règle du jeu) - Jean Renoir
Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (L’Aurore) - Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau
L’Atalante - Jean Vigo
M - Fritz Lang
Singin’ in the Rain - Stanley Donen & Gene Kelly
Vertigo - Alfred Hitchcock
Children of Paradise (Les Enfants du Paradis) - Marcel Carné
The Searchers - John Ford
Greed - Erich von Stroheim
Rio Bravo - Howard Hawks
To Be or Not to Be - Ernst Lubitsch
Tokyo Story - Yasujiro Ozu
Contempt (Le Mépris) - Jean-Luc Godard
Tales of Ugetsu (Ugetsu monogatari) - Kenji Mizoguchi
City Lights - Charlie Chaplin
The General - Buster Keaton
Nosferatu the Vampire - Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau
The Music Room - Satyajit Ray
Freaks - Tod Browning
Johnny Guitar - Nicholas Ray
The Mother and the Whore (La Maman et la Putain) - Jean Eustache
The Great Dictator - Charlie Chaplin
The Leopard (Le Guépard) - Luchino Visconti
Hiroshima, Mon Amour - Alain Resnais
Pandora's Box - G.W. Pabst
North by Northwest - Alfred Hitchcock
Pickpocket - Robert Bresson
Casque d’or - Jacques Becker
The Barefoot Contessa - Joseph Mankiewitz
Moonfleet - Fritz Lang
The Earrings of Madame de… - Max Ophüls
Le Plaisir - Max Ophüls
The Deer Hunter - Michael Cimino
L'Avventura - Michelangelo Antonioni
Battleship Potemkin - Sergei M. Eisenstein
Notorious - Alfred Hitchcock
Ivan the Terrible - Sergei M. Eisenstein
The Godfather - Francis Ford Coppola
Touch of Evil - Orson Welles
The Wind - Victor Sjöström
2001: A Space Odyssey - Stanley Kubrick
Fanny and Alexander - Ingmar Bergman
The Crowd - King Vidor
8 1/2 - Federico Fellini
La Jetée - Chris Marker
Pierrot le Fou - Jean-Luc Godard
Le Roman d’un tricheur - Sacha Guitry
Amarcord - Federico Fellini
La Belle et la Bête - Jean Cocteau
Some Like It Hot - Billy Wilder
Some Came Running - Vincente Minnelli
Gertrud - Carl Theodor Dreyer
King Kong - Ernst Shoedsack & Merian J. Cooper
Laura - Otto Preminger
The Seven Samurai - Akira Kurosawa
The 400 Blows - François Truffaut
La Dolce Vita - Federico Fellini
The Dead - John Huston
Trouble in Paradise - Ernst Lubitsch
It’s a Wonderful Life - Frank Capra
Monsieur Verdoux - Charlie Chaplin
The Passion of Joan of Arc - Carl Theodor Dreyer
À bout de souffle - Jean-Luc Godard
Apocalypse Now - Francis Ford Coppola
Barry Lyndon - Stanley Kubrick
La Grande Illusion - Jean Renoir
Intolerance - David Wark Griffith
Partie de campagne - Jean Renoir
Playtime - Jacques Tati
Rome, Open City - Roberto Rossellini
Senso - Luchino Visconti
Modern Times - Charlie Chaplin
Van Gogh - Maurice Pialat
An Affair to Remember - Leo McCarey
Andrei Rublev - Andrei Tarkovsky
The Scarlet Empress - Joseph von Sternberg
Sansho the Bailiff - Kenji Mizoguchi
Talk to Her - Pedro Almodóvar
The Party - Blake Edwards
Tabu - F.W. Murnau
The Bandwagon - Vincente Minnelli
A Star Is Born - George Cukor
M. Hulot’s Holiday - Jacques Tati
America, America - Elia Kazan
El - Luis Buñuel
Kiss Me Deadly - Robert Aldrich
Once Upon a Time in America - Sergio Leone
Le Jour se lève - Marcel Carné
Letter from an Unknown Woman - Max Ophüls
Lola - Jacques Demy
Manhattan - Woody Allen
Mulholland Dr. - David Lynch
Ma nuit chez Maud - Eric Rohmer
Nuit et Brouillard - Alain Resnais
The Gold Rush - Charlie Chaplin
Scarface - Howard Hawks
Bicycle Thieves - Vittorio de Sica
Napoléon - Abel Gance

Now, I'm not going to say that I agree with every film on this list (I don't), but it's intellectually respectable. Which is more than you can say about the Empire Magazine list. In fact, if you wanted to know more about film, you could do a lot worse than plow your way through ther Cahiers du Cinema list.

My John McCain Problem

I'm going to make a strange admission. Particularly strange, coming from me. You may not even believe it -- especially if you've been reading this blog for the past three-and-a-half years. But I swear to you that it's true.

I like John McCain.

I know -- isn't that weird?

Weird but true. This is the first presidential election since 1976 where I didn't loathe the Republican nominee (with the possible -- no, make that probable -- exception of 1996). I watched McCain on Saturday Night Live last night and I thought -- I like this guy. You have to admire a guy who knows he's going to lose, might even go down to a humiliating defeat, and who can make fun of his own campaign on national television.

That doesn't mean I want him to win. I want that noted for the record. But I like John McCain.

Tuesday is going to start a new era in this country. We're going to start digging out from under the mountain of debt and bullshit that the Bush Administration has poured on us, and life will start slowly getting better in this country for the majority of Americans.

But I suspect that, after the euphoria of Tuesday night, as we move into what looks almost certain to be an Obama Administration, the first people who are going to be disillusioned with Barack Obama are going to be the very liberals who worked so hard to get him into office. They're going to expect a great progressive agenda and there isn't going to be one. The New Deal Part Deux just isn't going to happen.

We'll get out of Iraq, either more or less messily. We'll start to put our fiscal house in order, with all the attendant pain that implies. We'll repair our standing in the world. But people who are expecting (or fearing) a socialist utopia in the United States are going to find out very quickly that there isn't the money to do the kind of things they want done. And they're going to blame Obama for not doing what can't be done.

In the meantime, John McCain will go back to the Senate, knowing that his dream of becoming president of the United States will never come true. And even though I'm not going to vote for him, I can't help feeling that he might, in another time and under different circumstances, have made a good president. After all, how many presidential candidates have read Edward Gibbon's The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire even once? McCain's read it twice.

McCain is a tragic figure -- undone by how own ambition and the compromises that his ambition led him to make on his way to the nomination. And I suspect he'll spend some time in the next few months wondering what could have been. Maybe we should, too.