Robert Pirsig’s Zen & the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

If you haven’t read ZAMM, how should I describe it to you? It’s a travelogue, a father-son story, a ghost story, a journey story, a series of essays about topics philosophical and practical—I could go on, but for me it’s one of the best books that I’ve ever read (now for the third or fourth time), which I consider to be a high compliment indeed. 

This novel (perhaps too limiting a designation) created quite a sensation at the time of its publication in 1974. It reached bestseller status quickly, and it frequently appeared on college bookstore shelves, where I first saw it. I never had it assigned as a text, but a political science professor I had (John S. Nelson) assigned it in classes & often posted quotes from it (on 5/8 cards outside of  his Schaeffer Hall office). I don’t recall when exactly I first read it, but it immediately struck me as a great read. 

This time I happened to see it in a bookstore during a recent trip to Delhi, and I instinctively popped for it. Unlike many books that have to look at me for an extended period before I pick them up & read them, I didn’t let this one sit long before I plunged into it. It had been long enough since I’d last read it that I found it fresh, and, coincidentally, it proved topical because I’ve been working with young lawyers on their writing skills. The narrator taught rhetoric and composition, and he discusses teaching this topic as a part of the book. Indeed, a passing comment from a colleague while teaching rhetoric gave rise to this designation of “quality”, which becomes the key concept in the book. While “Chautauquas” (entertaining talks) on topics like teaching, motorcycle maintenance, and Quality (it quickly rises to the level of a proper noun) create an interesting part of the book, we also have the story of the narrator and his son Chris continuing their trek from Minnesota to San Francisco on the narrator’s motorcycle. A great number of poignant meetings and confrontations, with persons past and present and between father and son (past and present) mark this aspect of the story. 

I’m going to stop here because as I write this I'm frustrated by the fact that I can’t really do justice to this book. It has too many things going on for me to do justice to it. I suppose that the best thing that I can say is that I’ve never forgotten this book and I hope to read it again.  

I Hate Writing This Blog

In our compound, a young mother worries about her 2-year-old with a slight fever back in the U.S. with his dad. Iowa Guru & I anxiously await the arrival of our quite adult & capable daughters: just two drops in an ocean of concern and love that parents hold for their children. And then I read the news flash here in India about the shootings in Connecticut (Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown). I could not bear to look at the list of names & ages on the front page of the NYT this morning; it's too horrible. 

So horrible, so awful. President Obama's comments, here in video, display the common anguish that we all must feel. But after the shock and horror, which has become all too common, we must do something. 

Garry Wills in his blog post following this outrage puts our plight in biblical terms: we have our own Moloch--the gun. His refection on the outrage in Newtown, and repeated too many times before, captures my sense of despair at the idolatry that we practice in this country towards guns (among other things). We as a nation need to repent. 

This article by Nicholas Kristoff provides some thoughtful reflection and suggests changes that should prove politically feasible. I hope that he's only one of a flood of voices that creates a groundswell of action to address the issue of gun violence. I've set forth my opinions here and here. But I will not stop because this is too crazy. We, as a body politic, are crazy not to take practical and reasonable steps to limit gun violence. 

So as I write this and listen to Christmas music playing the background that celebrates the Nativity--the human joy of a new beginning with the birth of a child-- let me suggest a Christmas gift for me, you, and all of us: write the President, your senators, and your congressman, and tell them in no uncertain terms that we need to regulate firearms in an effective and reasonable manner. Let them know that you will hold them to account until we have a nation and as a state enact legislation that will truly work to prevent these all too common occasions of murder and mayhem.  





 

Movie Review: Coriolanus

This production of Shakespeare's Coriolanus  is the first production that I've seen, nor had I read it before. (By the way, this link is useful; also, it comforted me that  the great Shakespearean scholar A.C. Bradley and other agree with my sense of this play.) Directed and starring Ralph Fiennes in the title role, its an intense but not especially revealing drama. Similar to the Richard III filmed starring Ian McKellen from several years ago, it "updates" Shakespeare by using a contemporary setting. Indeed, as both films revolve around characters who make their mark in battle (and by general violence, with Richard), they are quite similar in this regard. Both reference fascist and militarist props--costumes, set design, and lots of guns & tanks--to set the scene. All of this works reasonably well, which is reassuring, because some contemporary settings for Shakespeare fizzle for me. One does, however, have to set aside the fact that until the advent of guns,  most fighting in both military and day-to-day situations was done hand-to-hand. (Okay, okay, I haven't forgotten Agincourt, but you get my point.) Guns take away this immediacy, but this production worked around this issue fairly well. 

Fiennes is a dynamic, raging, and proud Coriolanus, one that seems to fit the bill. Vanessa Redgrave as his mother, hautily proud, domineering, and ambitious for her son, provides a very compelling figure. Throw in Gerard Butler as Auffidius, the nemisis of Coriolanus, Brian Cox as Coriolanus' would-be mentor, and a pair of tribunes who play the roles of political hacks wonderfully, and you have a very sound production. 

In the end, Coriolanus isn't as compelling as Shakespeare's great tragedies, even of those about grasping for power, like Macbeth, but it does give us a strong image of the world of militarism, caesarism, mobacracy that we can still find in our world today. For this, it is worth seeing.  

Alexander McCall Smith, Friends, Lovers, Chocolate

 
How does he do it? 

Alexander McCall Smith has a way with women that I can’t help but admire. Not a tom-cat way, not the way of a lothario; rather, he has a way of creating women in fiction that makes us like them right off. We—or I at least—find myself empathizing with his heroines, with the small and large battles they must fight in life, winning some and losing others, at times triumphant and other times feeling rather failures. Within the confines of this 276 page novel, we get to further know and appreciate Isabelle Dalhousie, the Scottish woman who edits The Journal of Applied Ethics. 

After creating the delightful Precious Romotswe and her world, you would have thought Smith could have said “good enough”. (If haven’t read any of The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency books or you haven’t seen the delightfully faithful HBO television production of some of the books, you have cheated yourself.) Instead, Smith has created the delightful Isabel Dalhousie, a single woman in her early forties who lives in Edinburgh, is independently wealthy, and who loves fine music and friends. She is not a detective, but she does get involved in things. In this book, she has a chance encounter with the recent recipient of a transplanted heart that leads her to new places and new thoughts. 

Assuming you read Iowa Guru in the Pink City, you know that I purchaed purchased Friends, Lovers, Chocolate on Saturday (examine the photo closely) and finished by Monday night. The writing is fine, but not difficult. McCall Smith’s style is workman-like, but his narrative touches lightly here and there, leaving little morsels of thoughtfulness revealed by Isabel’s actions and reflections. And while Isabel is a philosopher, one needn’t have any background to follow her thoughts or musings, just an appreciation of her inquisitive mind, much like Isabel’s housekeeper Grace keeps toward Isabel and her world. 

Like chocolate, one is tempted to gorge on this fare, but a rational mind, and further reflection (worthy of Isabel), prompt me to wait before acquiring the next book in the series, all in order to savor the delight that I expect to find in each one. Like a fine chocolate.

An Open Letter to the President, My Senators & Representives

Dear President Obama, Senators Grassley and Harkin, and Representatives Loebsak and Braley:

Now that the election has been decided and each of you will be serving our nation during the course of the next two years, I want to share my thoughts on issues that I hope you address. I know these are difficult issues, and not ones that politicians seem to want to avoid. Nevertheless, I think these are the issues that are in desperate need of appropriate action:

1. Economic Growth & Not Austerity as Our National Goal. We need to assure the long-term fiscal health of our nation, but we need to make sure that we do not torpedo badly needed economic growth and the restoration of good jobs in our nation. Going over the fiscal cliff would be among the stupidest decisions that our nation could make at this time. The main legitimate concern with the deficit comes from rising healthcare costs, and to the extent that controlling health care costs demand further attention, that issues should be addressed. We also need tax laws that benefit more than just the wealthiest Americans. Wealthier Americans need to accept a tax increase as a part of long-term fiscal stability. We always need to consider the efficiency of government and the appropriateness of programs, but slashing government programs at this time the kind of austerity that we’ve seen failing Britain and Europe and that would likely prove disastrous here.

2. Campaign Finance Reform. We need to reform our campaign finance system. Each party and each candidate and each PAC spends immense amounts of money on campaigns that usually sully the public discourse and that do not benefit voters. Much more importantly, each of all of us know that money talks, and that your honorable intentions notwithstanding, those who pay the piper call the tune. In the immediate aftermath of Watergate and the corruption of the political process that we experienced during that era, we had campaign-finance reform that did a reasonable job of leveling the playing field. That reform has now been hacked away and no longer provides us with meaningful protection. No billionaire, liberal or conservative, should be in a position to buy an election. An immediate change in our campaign finance system is imperative if we maintain the integrity of our political institutions. I don’t have an easy answer on how to do this, but this is an issue where Republicans and Democrats should find common ground if each side acts in the interest of American political institutions and not with an eye towards short-term advantage for their respective party.

3. Reasonable Firearms Regulation. The availability and abuse of firearms in the U.S. is disgraceful. As a resident of Iowa City over more than 30 years, our prosperous and generally law-abiding community as seen too much gun violence, and we are normally a sedate and happy group of people. As I’m now abroad, I am shocked and ashamed to read of continued gun violence in the U.S.: innocent victims are mowed down by individuals who’ve have quick and easy access to firearms. I won’t ask you to repeal the Second Amendment (although I would support repeal and replace it with something much more understandable and reasonable—I’m not talking about banning or confiscating firearms.)  However, I understand that repealing the Second Amendment is implausible. Instead, I do urge you to take every reasonable step to regulate firearms, as we do automobiles, pharmaceuticals, and any other number of items that could prove lethal. There are reasonable ways to do this, and both parties should be able to find some common ground as they did in the past to make some reasonable regulations that protect Americans from the random violence.

4. Action on Global Climate Change. Global climate change is no longer an issue that we can pretend doesn’t exist. The presidential campaign attempted to ignore it, but then came Sandy. I applaud President Obama for his acknowledgment of the issue in his victory speech. We must get past the head-in-the-sand approach that we’ve been taking and begin to think about how we can best address this common threat to humanity. It’s time for the U.S. to become a global leader again; not a laggard.

5. Avoid Wars. We must avoid military adventures as much as possible, acting only when no other option exists and when we are compelled to act by a very clear definition of our national interest (and not any other nation’s). This does not deny the importance of our allies; rather, if we act foolishly and continue to diminish our national resources on wasted wars we do no one any favors except those who would benefit by a diminishment of our capabilities.

Gentlemen, thank you for your continued service. I wish you the strength and courage that addressing these issues require. Thank you for your consideration.

Sincerely yours,

Stephen N. Greenleaf

Permanent address: 345 Magowan Ave., Iowa City, IA 52246

Temporary address: 4 Bhawani Singh Lane, Jaipur, Rajasthan, India 300005

Email: Greenleaf.stephen@gmail.com

Two Charlie Chaplain Films

Iowa Guru and I recently bought a box set of Charlie Chaplin films. We've watched two of them, and one learns that Chaplin was not simply a sad-sack, slapstick performer from the silent era, but an incredibly graceful and talented actor.

Modern Times is considered by many to be Chaplin's's greatest film. Made in 1936, it is in large measure a silent film, including large portions that use separate shots to display dialog, altougth later in the film some voice is used (as well as music). This film includes the famous scenes where Chaplin travels through a large series of gears. He winds through them like a reel of film through projector. This scene and other scenes that display work on an assembly line use his amazing slapstick sensibility. Yet, in another portion of the film, Chaplin dances, and he does so with the grace and litheness that is quite amazing.

Chaplin wrote and directed Modern Times, and in it you can appreciate his sense of concern about modern life and  especially the life of those less fortunate. The film centers on the destitution of those thrown out of work by the Depression and the often ugly demands placed on those who could work. The film also shows  "the little man" ensnared by the police and the legal system. Chaplin was eventually forced to leave Hollywood and the U.S. because of his alleged association with "Communists", but I think the fair assessment of hims would be of a person  who was concerned for the type of characters that he made famous. (If you haven't seen The Great Dictator, then you don't not have a complete appreciation of Chaplin's sense of injustice and support of democracy the belies any other charges that might be brought against him.)

The other film we viewed was A King in New York, the last feature film the Chaplin made. It was filmed in Great Britain and released in Great Britain in 1957, but was not released in  the US until 1967. In this film, Chaplin plays a king exiled to New York City. It again combines Chaplain's fascination with physical humor along with  cutting social satire. Chaplin ridicules the red hunting and red baiting that was plaguing the US in the 1950s. As a victim of such witch hunting, Chaplin had a full appreciation of what it entailed. Chaplin doesn't beat his audience over the head with anger or sarcasm, but instead he uses a gentle humorous ridicule and truly sympathetic characters who do their best when caught up in appalling circumstances. This latter Chaplin, which IG and I have seen in some other later films, is quite an appealing figure. For someone who began in the silent era, Chaplin always displays the utmost and consummate skills would truly fine actor.

Pico Iyer, The Man Inside My Head

Pico Iyer’s book is difficult to review because it’s difficult to classify. It’s part memoir, part literary biography and criticism, and part travel book. Indeed, there seems to be two men inside Iyer’s head, the novelist Graham Greene and Iyer’s father. The book traces its course through various episodes of Iyer’s diverse life. Iyer is the son of Indians who emigrated to the U.K. and then, in the 1960s, to southern California. Iyer returned to England for schooling while his parents remained in California, thus requiring Iyer to ferry back and forth across the continents to experience both school and family. This type of background, along with the fact that his father was an academic and one well-versed and enthusiastic about the classics, made for an interesting background for young Pico (named, by the way, after the great Italian humanist, Pico della Mirandola). 

But during all of this, and well into the present, the singular figure of Graham Greene, the novelist and the man, became the “man within my head”. Perhaps their shared travels and uncertainties lead to this attraction, although as someone who’s been quite rooted his whole life, I, too, find Greene’s work quite fascinating. Greene, if you’re not acquainted with him, is the British novelist who often sets his novels in far-off locales, such as Haiti, Mexico, Sierra Leone, and the like, and then populates the novel with complex, often quite psychologically tortured characters. Greene was not afraid to delve into issues of God, belief, and guilt, as well as all manner of sin and betrayal. And Greene himself proves quite a convoluted and complex character, at once cold and kind, approachable and lonely. 

I recommend this book to anyone who’s read Greene’s work or whose seen the movies that do some justice to his work, like The Third Man (a great film starring Orson Welles and Joseph Cotton—and did you know that in the short story, Harry Lime was a Catholic?), The Fallen Idol (another Carol Reed film), and The Comedians (Liz and Dick at their best along with a fine cast). For established Greene fans, this would prove a worthwhile read. As Iyer has written a lot of other work that I’ve not read, I can’t say how this fits, but it’s interesting, instructive, and like all of the characters in the book, very elusive.

Further Thoughts on the Election

I have been digesting the election results and giving further thought to what happened. Below are some random ideas that occur to me:

The Republicans have always been the party of the wealthy. This also used to mean that they were the party of the better educated. However, that has certainly changed. While Republicans captured a majority of into the votes of individuals making more than $100,000 a year, they didn’t do well among the better educated and many of the affluent. In addition to capturing the wealthy, Republicans tended to attract those who live in primarily rural areas, such as western Iowa. What these individuals who live in these communities, as small business owners and as laborers, have in common with billionaires like Sheldon Adelson? I do not know. This is the “what’s the matter with Kansas?” problem that Thomas Frank has written about. Of course, this reflects the strange marriage of the very wealthy with the socially conservative.

Looking at post-election demographics is also interesting. Obama carried the Catholic vote by a couple of points, which I found interesting. He garnered a majority of the least educated and the most educated, but lost those in between. Does that demonstrate that a little education is a dangerous thing? It’s an interesting split. As I mentioned above, most of the wealthiest voted Republican. This is, of course, traditional. But I wonder, do the rich think that they can enjoy their wealth in a society that is, on the whole, less wealthy and more unequal? Of course, this is how civilizations have worked from their beginning until very recently; that is until economic and political modernity changed the world so drastically. I compare the belief that the wealthy can enjoy their wealth in a sea of poverty with what I experience here in India. I really wonder how the rich can think of themselves as well off when streets, sewers, utilities are poorly maintained (if at all); pollution is rampant (air & water); and all manner of private goods are not as easily available as they should be. The impoverishment of the public sector deeply attenuates the benefits of wealth. But, some think that if they have enough private wealth they can buy themselves happiness.

Politicians have always been known for lack of candor and for maintaining an escape hatch on most issues. In earlier days, candidates could say one thing in Shenandoah and another in Iowa City. But since the advent of national news coverage, this becomes more difficult. With this campaign, we saw a whole new level of mendacity from that Romney. I’ve never seen a candidate criticized so much for reversing his positions or trying to alter the facts (i.e., lie) as Romney has received. (This piece by Kevin Kruse is representative.)But not only between his time as governor of Massachusetts to his time as Republican presidential candidate, but even from the time of the primaries earlier in the year to the time of his campaign this fall. And yet, far too few seemed to mind. (Garry Wills, of course, is an insightful exception.) Now, I am willing to give candidates some slack, and I’ve always been a believer in Emerson’s admonition that “a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds.” However, Mitt Romney has taken this beyond any rational prudence. Everyone should have developed grave concerns about his character. This baffles me because while I disagreed very much with his limited worldview and his willingness to pander to the Republican right wing, I didn’t consider Romney, a candidate of deficient character. In his private life, he seems like a fairly forthright and honest fellow. This either means that he was willing to do almost anything to get elected friend (and he did almost get elected) or that he thought that he could somehow square the circle. Neither of these options is attractive, and all the more reason his defeat relieves me of having to wrestle with such vexing thoughts.

Since I left the Republican party about three decades ago, I’ve never been as enthusiastic a Democrat as some. Party ties can bind us in a way that can seriously distort our judgment. I’m thinking particularly of persons like David Frum and David Brooks, conservatives for whom I have a modicum of respect and to whom I give credit as thoughtful observers of contemporary politics. However, I believe both of them tried to justify a vote for Romney by suggesting that Romney would ignore his promises to the Republican right wing and forge a working coalition with Democrats. This assumes the Democrats would keep their goodwill, which, heaven help them, they probably are forced to do because they’re so damned reasonable. But this suggests that we should have elected a man who would turn tail again to please the crowd. First, this is a long shot that, because the political realities would’ve made Romney beholden to a Republican Congress that has much closer ties to the radical right that now controls the party. But second, as I suggested in the preceding paragraph, this defect in character could have made him a tough person to work with, let alone trust.

I highly recommend this article by Rick Perlstein about mendacity in the conservative movement. It’s a pretty shocking piece, but Pearlstein does his homework. I’m not sure what to make of it, but it is an explanation of Romney’s mendacity and the deception within the conservative movement. Krugman has also suggested that conservatives grasp for power in a way that distorts all judgment. Perhaps that’s true.

How much will we see a replay of the politics of the Great Depression! Oh, that Obama will now become an FDR! He needs to drive a hard bargain at this point, and I think a lot of us are holding our breath about this. Stay tuned for further developments!

Andrew Sullivan on the Problem with the Right

Read the entire blog, but this quote from Andrew Sullivan hits the nail on the head. Republicans: please, can Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Ann Coulter, Bill O'Reilly & their mean-spirited & paranoid delusional comrades. Come home! You'll find Lincoln, TR, Ike & others waiting for your return. Turn to Burke, to Niebuhr, to something other than the paranoid style of American politics. Anyway, here's Sullivan: 

These charlatans and money-grubbers have turned the broad tradition of Anglo-American conservatism into Southern Fried Fanaticism - and I wanted to see them crackle in their batter. They have replaced empirical doubt with unerring faith in an ideology that had its moment over thirty years ago and is barely relevant to the world we now live in. That faith has been cynically fused with fundamentalist religion to make it virtually impossible for the GOP to accept that women are the majority of voters in this country, that gay couples are equal to straight ones, that 11 million illegal immigrants simply cannot be expected to "self-deport" en masse by a regime of terrifying policing, that war is a last and not a first resort, that the debt we have is primarily a function of two things: George W. Bush's presidency and the economic collapse his term ended with.

So true, so true!