Francis Fukuyama: 'Identity: The Demand for Dignity and the Politics of Resentment' (2018)

Francis Fukuyama: Identity: The Demand for Dignity and the Politics of Resentment. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2018.

On this centenary of the end of the First World War, Identity is relevant to an understanding of that conflict and today's world.

"The great struggles in American political history -- over slavery and segregation, workers' rights, women's equality -- were ultimately demands that the political system expand the circle of individuals it recognized as having equal rights." (p. 22)

With identity politics in the 21st century, however, "desire for equal recognition can easily slide . . . into a demand for recognition of the group's superiority" -- for example, among nations, tribes, religious sects and ethnic groups. (p. 22)  

"Individuals come to believe that they have a true or authentic identity hiding within themselves that is somehow at odds with the role they are assigned by their surrounding society. The modern concept of identity places a supreme value on authenticity . . . (p. [25])

The "Arab Spring" begins in Tunisia on December 17, 2010. (p. [42])

Various uprisings sparked by desire for dignity. (pp. 44-48). Scapegoating used by rulers to divide opposition. 

"The desire for the state to recognize one's basic dignity has been at the core of democratic movements since the French Revolution." (p. 49)

Gemeinschaft (village) to Gesellschaft (urban) demographic shift over time, especially since 1900. "The dislocation . . . laid the basis for an ideology of nationalism based on an intense nostalgia for an imagined past of strong community in which the divisions and confusions of a pluralist society did not exist." (p. 65)

Deterioration of "middle-class status may then explain the rise of populist nationalism in many parts of the world in the second decade of the twenty-first century." In the USA, "the working class, defined as people with a high school education and less, has not been doing well over the past generation." (p. 87)

". . . resentful citizens fearing loss of middle-class status point an accusatory finger upward to the elites . . . but also downward to the poor, whom they feel are undeserving and . . . unfairly favored." (p. 88).

"White nationalism has a long history in Europe, where it is called fascism." (p. 121) Ethno-nationalism, ethnic cleansing. Anti-immigrant sentiment is back on the rise due to refugee crises, especially since the Arab Spring, blaming the refugees rather than the causes. 

"National identity begins with a shared belief in the legitimacy of the country's political system, whether that system is democratic or not . . . [It] also extends into the realm of culture and values. . . what it takes to become a genuine member of the community." (p. 126). Diversity. Resilience. Resistance to complete homogenization. (p. 127) 

"National identities can be built around liberal and democratic political values, and the common experiences that provide connective tissue around which diverse communities can thrive." (p. 128)

"Citizenship is a two-way street: it endows citizens with rights that are protected by the state, but it also enjoins duties on them, above all, the duty of loyalty to the country's principles and laws." (p. 148)

Results of the American Civil War. XIII, XIV and XV Amendments. "Identity has to be related to substantive ideas such as constitutionalism, rule of law, and human equality." (p. 171)

A thoughtful book.

Today's Rune: Strength. 

John Binder: 'UFORIA' (1981, 1985)

John Binder's UFOria, a low budget gem made in 1981 but not released until 1985, somehow fell through the cracks of mass consciousness. 

I was lucky enough to see the film many years ago on video, and never forgot it. It hasn't to date been released on DVD or Blu-ray, nor has it been chosen for salvation by the Criterion Collection, but it sticks with me. In fact, rather magically, I was able to see it again recently! 

UFOria makes up in dialogue, good-natured satire and an excellent cast of characters what it lacks in budgeted technical virtuosity. All the actors fit their characters seamlessly, whether they have a lot of lines or just a choice few. These include Cindy "I am gonna be Noah" Williams (Laverne & Shirley), Fred "get the net, boys" Ward (Henry & June), Harry Dean "I believe I'll have a drink" Stanton (Big Love, Twin Peaks: The Return) and Hank "just for playsure" Worden (Twin Peaks).  The whole script is quotable -- I could still remember many of UFOria's juiciest lines years after last watching it. And: the soundtrack is perfectly attuned to the characters. 

Today's Rune: Fertility. 

Yi T'aejun, 'Dust and Other Stories' (2018), Part I

Yi T'aejun, Dust and Other Stories. Translated by Janet Poole. New York: Columbia University Press, 2018.

Fascinating glimpse into Korean life, bridging the period between Imperial Japanese dominance (1910-1945) and the Korean War (1950-1953). Publications by Yi T'aejun (1904-circa 1956) were banned in South Korea until 1988. 

Banned books are often the best ones to read, naturally.

From "The Broker's Office:" "Is this world only good to you if you have money?" (p. 58)

"When government officials buy, even country bumpkins notice something's up, don't they?" (p. 59)

From "A Tale of Rabbits:" "His library was not large, but Hyŏn could not help but feel awe whenever he leisurely perused his bookshelves. He could appreciate the saying, 'To see a thousand years at one glance.' Every day new books appear." (p. 88)

"The Hunt:" "At midnight they had a simple but tasty snack of pheasant and buckwheat with a cold radish soup that made their teeth tingle. and then they stayed up past two o'clock sharing stories of goblins that had appeared on midnight trips to eat noodles or go fishing, or on the way home from visiting girls in nearby villages." (p. 100)

"Evening Sun:" "A stone pagoda stood to the right-hand side as he came out of the station, which bore the contours of a Korean house. . . The cracked and crumbling pagoda was yellowed and bumpy, like the spine of some beast extracted from a layer of earth tens of thousands of years old rather than something made from stone. Surrounded by mountains and stretching out quietly, the streets seemed too fragmented for a town." (p. 109)

"'What kind of feeling could there be without fear?'" (p. 114) 

"'I try not to feel too alone. When you think about it, is there anyone who isn't alone?'" (p. 119)

"The scene evoked the same kind of eternal nihilism as the Five Burial Mounds. On closer inspection there were small hills, woods, twisting roads, winding streams, small villages in the folds of each mountain, rice paddies, and dry fields, and above them all floated the clouds, which cast shadows on the villages and the streams . . . but at a casual glance there was merely the green earth and the misty air, and nothing else." (p. 123)

"Although they stood up quickly, it was already dusk as they walked back down the path. Maehŏn accompanied her to the stations and sent his precious companion away in the dark on the evening train." (p. 125)

"Yi dynasty white porcelain . . . vessels from eternity that provide quiet comfort and refreshment and never exhaust." (p. 128)

Today's Rune: Partnership. 

Allen Ginsberg: 'The Best Minds of My Generation' (2017). Finale

Allen Ginsberg, The Best Minds of My Generation: A Literary History of the Beats, edited by Bill Morgan. New York: Grove Press, 2017. Foreword by Anne Waldman.

On Gregory Corso. "He's dealt with truth,  god, love, hate, hope, beauty, so it's actually very interesting. He's taken what he would call the biggies, the big themes, and dealt with them in one or two lines each. Appreciation, but nonattachment, not getting addicted." (p. 341)

William Blake. "The Eye Altering Alters All" [circa 1803.] (p. 347)

William Carlos Williams, 1953: "For man and poet must keep pace with his world." (p. [359])

Ginsberg: "I was high on grass and so it was triply awesome or doubly awesome, the realization that the mind could be spaced out and then come back and focus. . . an aspect of the notion of a gap or jump from one phase of consciousness to another, one unconscious daydreaming to a real place, a focus on the external phenomenal world." (pp. 364-365)

". . . I started looking . . . to ordinary-mind observations for visionary perceptions." (p. 366)

William Carlos Williams: "'. . . make a coordinate point where others can see, compare their perceptions with your perceptions.'" (p. 367)

Ginsberg: "We'd burn all night on the jackpine peak, seen from Denver in the summer dark . . ." (p. 372)

"Old love and remembrance -- I resign
All cities, all jazz, all echoes of Time . . ." p. 381)

"As in movies, the poignancy or charge or visionary aspect or satori or sunyata or mental electric comes from setting up one pole of thought form or word or picture and then setting up another pole. Then the mind has to fill in the space between by connecting them. . . like an electric charge between the two poles . . . One minute it's somebody talking, the next minute it's a tombstone." (pp. 388-389) 

"Naturally there's going to be a little brain pop." (pp. [390]-391)

". . . the constant awareness of setting something down which other people will read." (p. 393)

"Howl." "The precursors to this were things like Apollinaire's poem "Zone." The parallel texts . . . in addition to . . . "Zone . . . were Christopher Smart's "Rejoice in the Lamb," which has the same construction."  (p. 395)

Surrealistic method. "Hop up your image with some totally opposite zonk. You zonk the image with something so weird that people will ask, 'How'd you get to that?'" (p. 396)

Can you dig? 

Today's Rune: Possessions.

Allen Ginsberg: 'The Best Minds of My Generation' (2017). Part III

Allen Ginsberg, The Best Minds of My Generation: A Literary History of the Beats, edited by Bill Morgan. New York: Grove Press, 2017. Foreword by Anne Waldman.

Early 1950s. "Kerouac was really a solitary genius, innovating and going forward into as yet unrecognized and unmapped areas of composition all by himself, with the courage necessary to do it . . . He had no support, not only from 'society' but also from his friends, his wife, his mother, or anyone." (p. 225) 

"It was my impression that very few people had a grasp of the phantom, or samsaric, or elusory nature of existence. They didn't have any idea of alternative modes of consciousness . . ." (p. 238)

"Jazz was a kind of speech that went round the world and influenced every country. The only art form, the only cultural push, that came out of America that transformed the political structure of the world through the Beatles and the Rolling Stones and rock'n'roll and . . . youth culture." (p. 243)

"[Walt] Whitman thought . . . that unless the nation were made up of comrades democracy couldn't work." (p. 246)

"Kerouac saw new jazz as a clarion of a new consciousness. It wasn't only bepop, it was the whole notion of American blues and black music." (p. 247)

"Nobody had looked on jazz musicians with that kind of insight, except other jazz musicians." (p. 249) 

". . . archetypal recollections were the very angelic bricks of their own lives, the foundation of their lives. Their early childhood thrills and symbols were the basis of all adult judgment and opinions and trips to the moon. . . a whole hidden memory life . . ." (p. 252)

"Jack's in there writing all by himself, for himself, for his own ear or for some universal consciousness, just for pure art." (p. 259)

Herman Melville poetry. (p. [260])

Sketching: "'like a painter but with words . . .'" (p. [264]) 

Little notebooks: "sketching to total mind's eye." (p. 266)

Gregory Corso. "Tailoring" poems, writing. (p. 278)

Corso: jazz, poetry. Charlie Bird Parker and Miles Davis and "Don't Shoot the Warthog." (p. 294)

From "Hello:"

"Do I wear the cloth of a man who has failed?
Am I the looney man?
In the great serenade of things,
     am I the most cancelled passage?" (p. 299). 

Today's Rune: Joy. 

Georgia O'Keeffe: 'The Flag' (1918)

Last year in October, while checking out a First World War art exhibition at the Frist Art Museum in Nashville, I was fascinated to learn that Georgia O'Keeffe (1887-1986) had opposed intervention, that she had a brother who died as a result of the war, and that she painted The Flag early in 1918 to indicate her revulsion. 

Since then, I've come across additional details about The Flag and Georgia's brother. Alexius (Alexis) Wyckoff "Tex" O'Keeffe (1892-1930) was an officer in the 32nd Division of the US Army, stationed, along with thousands of other soldiers from his home state of Wisconsin, as well as thousands from Michigan, at Camp MacArthur, in the vicinity of Waco, Texas, starting in 1917. 

Fred A. Gildersleeve, Officers, 32nd Division, Camp MacArthur, Waco, Tex., Dec. 23, 1917. Library of Congress. 

The 32nd Division saw heavy combat on the Western Front in 1918, and Tex was badly wounded by poison gas, not enough to kill him outright (as some accounts erroneously suggest), but enough to cause him to die in his thirties, more than a decade after the war's end, finally taken out by Influenza.

When "Tex" was sent to Waco in 1917, Georgia was teaching at the West Texas State Normal School in Canyon, about twenty miles south of Amarillo in the Panhandle; she was the head of the one-person art department. By October of 1917, she "seethed with impatience over the conformity and pettiness of the Canyon community." (Hunter Drohojowska-Philp, Full Bloom: The Art and Life of Georgia O'Keeffe, New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2004, p. 144).

Georgia came down with a case of the Spanish Influenza early in 1918, and took refuge with a friend at Waring, Texas (about forty-four miles north northwest of San Antonio); she painted The Flag in San Antonio.

Not surprisingly, Georgia's teaching career at the West Texas State Normal School ended in 1918.

The Flag was not shown in public until 1968, during the American War in Vietnam, the year of the Prague Spring and the Paris uprising -- in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Its permanent home is at the Milwaukee Art Museum. For more information, here is a link.

Today's Rune: Signals. 

David Lynch: Mulholland Drive (2001)

David Lynch: Mulholland Drive / Mulholland Dr. (2001). Starring Naomi Watts, Laura Elena Martínez Herring/Harring (Countess von Bismarck-Schönhausen) and Justin Theroux. 

After having seen everything David Lynch at least once, it's easier to go back and reconsider Mulholland Drive.

In short, what a cool, weird film!  Watts is also in Twin Peaks: The Return (2017), and Harring has since enjoyed a strong turn as a lawyer in the FX series The Shield (2006), among other things.  

What is Mulholland Drive?  Are we delving into alternate realities, psychological realms, dreams, feeling-driven memory distortions, alternate state consciousness, hallucinatory experiences, floating through the bardo, a limbo-like state, or a blend of such elements with off-kilter surrealism?  You tell me. The final response will be: "Silencio."

Today's Rune: Possessions. 

Donald J. Raleigh: 'Soviet Baby Boomers' (2012), Part V

Donald J. Raleigh, Soviet Baby Boomers: An Oral History of Russia's Cold War Generation (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012).

The Afghanistan War (1979-1989), according to Aleksandr Konstantinov: "'an absurd stupidity.'" (page 263) Olga Martynkina: "'terrible and unnecessary.'" (ibid.)  Gennady Ivanov: '"Besides heroism, it gave us nothing but cripples and drug addicts.'" (page 265)

"Diluted state repression remained an element . . . mostly because it constrained people's choices by switching on their self-censorship. Few Baby Boomers had direct run-ins with the KGBm but all felt its presence." (page 265)

Glasnost. Aleksandr Babushkin: '"You have to understand that any cultured person, intellectual, is able to distinguish between true and false information.'" (page 286)  

Perestroika. Olga Gorelik: "'it gave freedom to several strata of the population, to the intelligenstia, for example. But, on the other hand, it created complicated economic problems. Not everyone can restructure themselves, namely our generation.'" (page 288)

"For some [Soviet] Baby Boomers glasnost meant fulfilling a life-long dream of traveling abroad . . ." (page 295) 

Collapse of Soviet Union. "[b]y 1994, 67 percent of the population had no savings or extra cash . . . murders, suicides, and divorces reached extreme levels . . . Between 1992 and 1997 life expectancy for men fell from 67 to 57 years and for women from 76 to 70 . . . (page [312])

"The emergence of fifteen independent states from the ruins of the former Soviet empire . . . complicated life for the Cold War generation." (page 317)

Religion and Philosophy. Resurgence of Orthodox Church. New Age. Osho (Rajneesh). Buddhism. Scientology. Transcendental Meditation. (page 322)

Robber Barons. Oligarchs. Crime "five times higher" (page 323). "Privatization" gave "rise to a class of rich businessmen, as well as to a cohort of entrepreneurs who had accumulated massive fortunes . . .oligarchs, who acquired enormous holdings through insider trading . . . The resulting social inequality and effrontery of the new rich fed disillusionment with market economics and the democratic political system. Retirees looked back upon the Soviet days with nostalgia." (page 327)

Yelena Kolosova on Boris Yeltsin:  "'He was a massive man who drank, and therefore could be trusted.'" (page 329)

21st century. Vladimir Putin. Chechnya. "Russian liberals and others backing a free market system believed political freedoms remained as important as a strong leader; however, Russian Communists, nationalists, and supporters of Putin's umbrella organization, Unity, stressed the need for an authoritarian order in the country." A blueprint for Donald J. Trump in the USA: "Either Russia, will be great, Putin pronounced, or it will not be at all."  However, unlike Trump among Americans, Putin enjoyed "the backing of almost 75 percent of the [Russian] population." (page 334)

Lyudmila Gorokhova on Putin: "'Although he's not handsome, he has a great deal of charm. . . His range of interests is indisputably wide, and he's intelligent.'" (page 336)

A Russian doctor: "'I believe today's youth are awful. . . the wars contribute a lot. We see many Afghan vets, and many more after the wars in Chechnya. Military action has a very negative effect on people. As a rule, they become apathetic and depressed." There is "widespread alcoholism." (page 343)

Youth are adrift and slack in the mind; what happened to intellectual curiosity?  Vladimir Kirsanov: "'In the past, we had to get hold of information on our own by reading books, and by researching something, and this always makes the brain work more actively, but now information is absorbed passively. This is the main thing that distinguishes the two generations. Today's students don't like to read.'" (pages 344-345)

Anna Lyovina: '"The future is with people who have seen the world, analyzed things, compared, and took what they liked that was good and interesting, from wherever.'" (page 348)

A summary of the Soviet dream: pages 360-361. There was in Soviet society a double-consciousness, the projection of a public persona and the development of a private person. Raleigh doesn't use this term, but it seems equivalent: "there were two truths 'one for everyone, and the other that's inside you.'" (pages 366-367). This is how life is everywhere, to varying degrees up and down the spectrum. But would you rather live in Amsterdam, or Pyongyang?  

Today's Rune: Signals. 

Donald J. Raleigh: 'Soviet Baby Boomers' (2012), Part IV

Donald J. Raleigh, Soviet Baby Boomers: An Oral History of Russia's Cold War Generation (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012).

"The Soviet practice of sending work cohorts on vacations together made it complicated for families to travel together, giving rise to vacation romances." (page 206

Families became smaller. "At the end of the 1970s, 52 percent of Soviet families with children had only one child . . ." (page 206)

On Lithuanians: "The people . . . are very peculiar  . . ."  (page 208)

Marina Bakutina, guide-interpreter: "'I could think whatever I liked, but not say it.'" (page 209)

"The Baby Boomers also continued to have vicarious encounters with foreign cultures through movies and books . . ." Olga Kamayurova: "'I like the films they used to show at film clubs, that is, complicated, sophisticated films not for ordinary viewers . . . They showed us lots of such films, including, my heavens, Fellini and Antonioni. It was like food for us movie lovers . . . Sometimes, when they picked some sensational film, I would think . . . this is so extraordinary.'" (page 210)

When some of the Soviet Baby Boomers moved to the USA, they were appalled by the high cost of health care and education (page 217).  

Travel: "'It's better to see something once than to hear about it seven times,'" goes the Russian proverb."

Viktor D. on the late Soviet era: "'health care was free and unequivocally on a higher level than now. Education was free, including higher education and graduate school . . . People received apartments, they had confidence in tomorrow. Maybe everything was on a lower level than in America, but there was stability.'" (page 237)

The Brezhnev to Chernenko era became an embarrassing gerontocracy, "'an awful spectacle.'" (page 240) "Yelena Kolosova recalled asking, 'Who's Chernenko? He was even worse than Brezhnev, absolutely nothing more than a joke.'" (page 243)

Oddly, at the New World resort in Crimea, some Russian Baby Boomers became New Age types, or joined Osho (the Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh movement that spread worldwide, with a "Zorba the Buddha" style colony in Oregon) . (See page 246)

Ideas of existential freedom. L. G. Ionin: "'The Soviet people chose from among the available choices and understood freedom as having choices from among what was.' In this regard, for a free person, the Soviet Union was a free society. Freedom existed as a real choice, as an individual emotional experience." (page 249)

[to be continued.]

Today's Rune: Possessions. 

Donald J. Raleigh: 'Soviet Baby Boomers' (2012), Part II

Donald J. Raleigh, Soviet Baby Boomers: An Oral History of Russia's Cold War Generation (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012).

"Soviet teachers were among the strongest believers in socialist values." (page 94)

From the Young Pioneer manual: "'It will be the best, the most just and the happiest society on earth.'" (page 110)

"influence, connections, and pull -- blat in Russian." (page 118)

Soviet schools: "They instilled in their charges basic human values that would be appreciated in most societies." (page 118)

A Soviet Baby Boomer about living in the 1960s: "'We always had decent food; we went to the theatre, to the movies, to the circus, and to whatever else was of interest. We didn't differ from other average people of our time.'" (p. [120]).

Many Soviet Baby Boomers developed an "identification with a larger global youth culture;" guys in particular tinkered with space-related themes (page 121).

"Many female Baby Boomers loved theatre, ballet, dancing, reading, hanging out with friends . . . Olga Gorelik liked to read, draw, go to the movies, and spend time with her girlfriends." (page 122) 

Many enjoyed sporting events. Pioneer palaces gave people places to hang out. (pages 122-124) Kids loved to play in apartment courtyards (dvor), too. (page 125)

On social relationships, Raleigh notes: "Friendship lacks a definition that works for all times, places, and peoples, because the phenomenon is a cultural and historical one that changes over time: the type of society determines the nature of friendships." (page 126) Soviet friends provided emotional and practical support for each other, and they could counter or at least alter government and family controls (pages 126-127). A fair number of high school friends remain friends for life. (page 127)

"The Soviet Union prided itself in being the 'most reading' nation," and many continue to read heartily long after the collapse of the USSR. Friends traded books and they also utilized libraries, like many sensible people still do wherever they are available. "Reading conferred status" (page 129). During an interlude in the 1960s, Mikhail Bulgakov (Master and Margarita), Solzhenitsyn (One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich) Kafka and Kierkegaard were published (pages 130-131). Samizdat (underground writings produced in the USSR) and tamizdat (things smuggled into the country from the outside) also made the rounds (page 131) -- and made reading all the more exciting, no doubt. Eventually, photocopy machines sped up the process of underground writing production. (page 132)

Movies opened up portals to other worlds (as T. Bone Burnett, an American Baby Boomer, has put it, after growing up in conservative Fort Worth, Texas). These were real social events: "it was always something you simply had to see. . . not only so that you could take part in conversations but also because they really were worth seeing" (such as Andrei Arsenyevich Tarkovsky films) . Through cultural diffusion, in came American jazz, Western fashion and music, and exotic tastes. (page 135)

"'[B]ut it was difficult to get hold of such things. . . and we need to "get hold of" them. The meaning of the very "get hold of" is probably uniquely Russian' . . . it means acquiring something with great difficulty." (page 136)

Tape recorders became popular when they were made available -- music could be recorded and shared, especially underground material: "'forbidden fruit is always sweet.'" (page 140)

[To be continued.]

Today's Rune: Possessions.

Donald J. Raleigh: 'Soviet Baby Boomers' (2012), Part I

Donald J. Raleigh, Soviet Baby Boomers: An Oral History of Russia's Cold War Generation (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012).

An absorbing look at the world through the hearts and minds of the Soviet high school graduating class of 1967. Specifically, via two elite high schools, one in Moscow and one in Saratov, a city on the Volga River that is about 850 kilometers / 528 miles southeast of Moscow. From the perspective of "the Sputnik Generation," one also gets at the entire arc of the Soviet Union, from beginning to end, and then onward right into the Vladimir Putin era. 

Their grandparents' generation, generally speaking, experienced the First World War, Bolshevik Revolution and Russian Civil War; and their parents, the Joseph Stalin (1878-1953) era, including mass repression, the Second World War, and the Nikita Kruschev (1894-1971) "Thaw" after Stalin's death. 

The Baby Boomers benefited from the Thaw, were excited by Sputnik and Kruschev, but eventually became embittered during the Leonid Brezhnev era (1906-1982), especially toward its end; then on to Mikhail Gorbachev (born 1931), glasnost, perestroika, the breakup of the USSR, Boris Yeltsin (1931-2007) and Putin (born 1952).

Most of the interviewed boomers were the children of "third tier" elites -- those immediately below nomenklatura and second tier elites -- that is, they were children "of the mass intelligentsia -- professionals (doctors, research scientists, professors, engineers, architects, artists, teachers, librarians, etc.)," the kinds of bourgeois specialists who tend to help maintain a semblance of civil society (not only in the Soviet Union but also in 'The West'). (page 22)

Stalin, a brutish nationalist and proponent of the Cult of Personality (namely his own), turned against those with a more internationalist sensibility, and aimed, almost right up to the time of his death in 1953, "to root out 'cosmopolitanism,'" partly a code word for Jewish intellectuals, sophisticated urbanites and their "fellow travelers."  (page 32) Luckily for most, in the wake of Stalin's death came "the Thaw," which relaxed the atmosphere a bit.

As for attitudes and actions over time, Raleigh notes: "Within any historical situation, people pick their fates and live their lives both as passive objects and as active agents." (page 64)

Teachers were very important to the elite Baby Boomers: they "'had very colorful personalities' and played an enormous role in shaping their charges' worldviews' . . . 'They taught us to think, not only to learn things by heart' . . . 'Actually, all of the teachers were excellent! Except for a few individuals, they were all interesting.'" (page 91)

[To be continued.] 

Today's Rune: Signals. 

Halle Butler, 'Jillian' (2015), Part II

Halle Butler, Jillian. Chicago: Curbside Splendor, 2015.

Most often, we see things from the perspective of Jillian and Megan, but we also catch fleeting glimpses of consciousness from other characters, mostly people but also a dog (Crispy), raccoons, trees and a bird. I love this!  Also, it reminds me of Werner Herzog's Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans (2009), in which we briefly see things from the perspective of an alligator and an iguana and hear separate musings about the dreams of a pet fish.

Jillian: Characters central and peripheral. Jillian Bradley, her son Adam and dog Crispy. Elena, Susie, Carol -- church ladies. Julie, Tessa, Emma -- Adam's childhood frenemies at day care. Barb - day care teacher. 

Emily (dog seller). 

Dr. Billings, Dr. Schraeder -- at the gastroenterologist office where Jillian works with Megan. 

Randy - Megan's live-in paramour, often thinking privately about breaking up with her. 

Unnamed cop -- pulls Jillian over and orders her car impounded, inspiring Jillian to concoct a story about hitting a deer, requiring imaginary auto repairs and real pain killers. 

Mike Johnson -- County Clerk's office.

Drug representative with dolly cart -- Jillian and Megan's office.

Carrie, Janet, Jessica, Steve, Bill, Annie, Amanda, David, Will, James, Sarah, Albert, Kelly, Anthea -- various and sundry acquaintances and frenemies, objects of jealousy and competition. 

Loud Jim and unnamed guy on bus -- provide outside perspectives. 

Raccoons, trees, unnamed bird -- provide outside perspectives, sort of Zen, sort of Shinto. 

Not to worry: no deer is injured in the novel. Jillian does acquire TYLENOL® T3 with Codeine for her "accident," though. 

Megan immediately responds to Jillian's not showing up at work: "Her absence was intriguing." (page 102). This is exactly the same way I respond when someone doesn't show up at work, so I can't help but laugh every time I read this -- as with so much else in the novel.

Off the charts: a section on "Memory Palaces" and, earlier, Megan going to a fancy grocery: "That day she thought, 'F**k it,' and went to the smaller grocery store. The store was for rich people, but f**k it, right? There were delights there." 

(page [109]. "F**k" is spelled out in the original, but as I'm not sure what the censorship policies are for blog posts, here I've added asterisks to protect the eyes of delicate readers and keep Puritans at bay).

Jillian's snack choices (and her life choices in general) also inspire knowing laughs -- read and weep!

I'm truly looking forward to Halle Butler's The New Me: A Novel (Penguin Books, 2019) and wish I could read it immediately: "because life just keeps grinding on, right?" (Jillian, page [109]).

Today's Rune: Initiation. 

Jon Meacham's 'The Soul of America: The Battle for Our Better Angels' (2018), Part I

Jon Meacham, The Soul of America: The Battle for Our Better Angels. New York: Random House, 2018.

A thoughtful overview and discussion that helps put crazy times in perspective. Well-documented. 

In the introduction, Meacham brings up Richard Hofstadter's concept of "the paranoid style in American politics," a phenomenon even more widespread in 2018 than it was in 1963. There is always grand conspiracy, the End Times approach! "Time is forever running out." (page 17)

Just a few days ago, I came across a perfect example of the paranoid style in American society: TV evangelist Jim Bakker (born January 2, 1940), now broadcasting from Branson, Missouri. 

Jim continues to shriek about the End Times, but meanwhile, audience, send lots of money, buy containers of dried food, buy books and recordings. 

It doesn't add up. Bakker claims that Christians are persecuted and suppressed in the USA, even while he continues broadcasting away, one of legions of dedicated channels that spotlight tax-free Trump-supporting Christian evangelicals. 

Bakker's show is a perfect combination of paranoid, crazy, greedy and delusional, and somehow it's also crudely entertaining.

In The Soul of America, Meacham provides plenty of excellent quotations. Here's a snippet of Ike Eisenhower: "you do not lead by hitting people over the head. Any damn fool can do that, but it's usually called 'assault' - not 'leadership' . . . I'll tell you what leadership is. It's persuasion -- and conciliation -- and education -- and patience. It's long, slow, tough work." (page 39). 

From Robert Penn Warren: "a crazy man is a large-scale menace only in a crazy society." (page 53).  That's Trump in a tiny American nutshell.

One of the most perceptive of American thinkers that Meacham cites is Frederick Douglass (1818-1895), who comes across as more 21st century than 19th century in his outlook. Douglass' analysis of Robert E. Lee and Abraham Lincoln within an American context is brilliant. 

The current president, thinking Douglass still among the living, claimed early last year that "Frederick Douglass is an example of somebody who's done an amazing job and is being recognized more and more, I notice."

Early on Douglass came to understand the value of reading and learning -- a good role model for all. Meacham gets it, too, even if a man named Trump never will. 

Today's Rune: Wholeness.