You probably heard that Nuala O'Faolain crossed the bar, but did you catch this line from her obit?
She is also survived by her partner, John Low-Beer of Brooklyn, N.Y.Dude, I am SO changing my name.
I'm now happily installed in my 20th-floor suite on the Magnificent Mile in Chicago, having driven through pelting rain from Kalamazoo to get the rental car in on time and not yet having had a grand meal with Culture Maven, doused with buckets of wine.
But the panel I went to see this morning -- on the role of the present in medieval studies -- is still with me. It was a roundtable discussion, arranged by Eileen Joy as part of the BABEL Project. I was gratified to see that there was real disagreement, and not just about pedantic things like the nuances of raptus and the role of miscellanies in early 14th-century Franciscan literary production.
Eventually the conversation about torture (modern and Roman) devolved into a debate about who is listening to us talk, which Katharine Jager, at New Jersey City University, brought up short by reminding us that the biggest effects of theoretical work are in the classroom. "This is all very abstract," she said by way of qualification, and my first instinct was "Abu Ghreib, abstract?!?!" But of course she was quite right: We can talk till the cows come home about Schmitt's state of exception (although they kept calling it Agamben's idea), but the rubber hits the road in the classroom and the boardroom.
I am firmly convinced that what I put on my syllabus affects the way students make choices about their lives. Given the student body at U. Topia, I hardly think that studying the Norman Conquest -- an important, domino-knocking example of colonialism -- is going to change a single vote, but it certainly gives us all a broader understanding of the subtle processes of power.
What no one said in so many words -- which is why I'm saying it here -- is that the Middle Ages is THE ideal field in which to confront issues of alterity and otherness. Better than the ancient world, better than Anglo-Indian relations in the 19th century, better than science fiction. It's sufficiently alien, particularly to Americans (as Nancy Partner noted in her opening remarks), and yet it has the force of the past, of cause and effect, however much we thumb-wrestle over exactly which causes and what effects.
There is nothing more alterior than the Middle Ages. We can thank the Renaissance for that, with its rewriting of its own lineage, starting with Petrarch and his sneer about the dark ages (ages that apparently ended the moment Petrarch came into being). Yes, I do buy that old chestnut, about the Renaissance eschewing the Medieval. Sniff all you want.
The Middle Ages is centrally, critically, crucially organized around misreading and misunderstanding. This the other way in which it is unlike other fields of historical studies. I've ranted before about how many of the trademarks of the Middle Ages are actually creations of the Renaissance (which then gets embarrassed about what it has done and points the finger at its older sibling), but it's a point that I find I have to make again and again. I'd tattoo it on a visible part of my body, but only my ass is big enough to hold the full rant.
Sometimes even medievalists buy that load of codswallop -- yesterday I was at the book exhibit, and someone said (in reference to a promise), "We're medievalists -- we've got horrible machines of torture!" Uh, I'm sorry, no you don't. Well, you might, and what you do in your private life is no concern of ours, but medieval people (as opposed to medievalISTS) didn't; torture machines, like chastity belts, big witchcraft trials, and attempts to turn gold into lead, are postmedieval.
So it is that studying the Middle Ages is about learning to read through the noise (and other malign synesthetic influences). And those who recognize misrepresentation of the past are better equipped to recognize misrepresentation in the present. Next time someone grouses about the pointlessness of medieval studies, he or she had better watch out, because HULK SMASH!
Enough palaver; it's time for my bucket of wine.
Can you believe that the Chicago top-40 radio station has commercials for bird feed?!?
Favorite lines from this conf, decontextualized for your amusement:
"Five chapters of bad habits"
"I talk about feeding my pit bull raw meat I killed myself, and I get accused of sentimentality."
"She speaks in clear and declarative sentences, and she wears deodorant."
"This is like herding mollusks."
(The most accurate description ever of trying to get a group of people out of the lobby and into a restaurant, any restaurant.)
"Dispose of the porridge immediately adjacent to the weasel"
(instructions in a 12th-century penitential manual -- for when a weasel falls into the pot of porridge you are preparing for another member of your monastic order. You know how weasels are.)
"People don't usually bring their mothers to a place like this."
(Hostess' comment on Mother's Day while I was making a reservation to have a fancy dinner with Culture Maven in Chicago sunday night. What's that supposed to mean? Is it some kind of class-based critique of people with mothers, or just of Mother's Day?)
[DATELINE: SOUTHWEST FLIGHT 1678, SEAT 12F]
Woman in 13E: blah blah Cher in Las Vegas blah blah
Woman in 13F: Oh yeah, and Liza Minnelli blah blah blah
13E: blah blah blah spent a weekend in Oregon blah blah blah
13F: blah blah blah wonderful pie blah blah
[12F perks up her ears -- who isn't interested in eavesdropping about pie?]
13E: And they use all those unusual berries they've got up there.
13F: Some of them aren't natural, you know -- some are genetically engineered, like marionberries and blackberries.
[12F mutters to herself, you're thinking boysenberries, you yutz, and it's not genetic engineering, it's crossbreeding.]
13E: Yeah, and why on earth would they name a berry after the mayor of Washington D.C.?!? He's such a crackhead!
You can see why defibrillators have been on my mind this trip. I think I'll buy one to carry in my handbag.
[DATELINE: KALAMAZOO] Over breakfast, T.E. and I were trying to figure out what panels we were going to for the day. There were two at the same time that we both wanted to see, so we agreed that I would go see one, she'd see the other, and then we'd swap notes.
It's a good thing I went to the one I went to, because the first speaker, a well-respected senior medievalist, ended up quoting me. Extensively. Ending with a claim that my argument reshapes the way that we need to think of Early Middle English. As she was saying this, I couldn't decide whether to pass out or to text Special K.
I went up to her after the session and said, "I'm the Meg Worley you quoted," and she said, "I'm so happy to finally meet you!" My day was already well made, but she put the mint on the pillow by saying, "Yes, Jocelyn Wogan-Browne was the one who told me that I absolutely had to read your article if I was going to write on this subject." (For the non-medievalists, JWB is a VBN -- a Very Big Name -- in the field.)
Now, back to the conf for drinks with a pal. Just as soon as I get done with this defibrillator.
The pikkie is of the WMU bookstoremobile, which seems to sell mostly personal-care products and thumb drives.
Early May is a terrible time for a birthday if you're an academic. If you're on the semester system, have fun grading, because senior grades are due at 11:59pm on your birthday! (And you can't put the birthday off a few days, because non-seniors' grades are due the following week.) If you're a medievalist, whisper "Happy Birthday to me" at the International Boethius Society cash bar reception, because you can't miss the big annual medieval conference at Kalamazoo (and your colleagues don't know it's your birthday). If you're both a medievalist and on the semester system, well, skip the IBS reception, grade in your hotel room, and call home for a ration of shit from your sweetie for being gone on your birthday.
[Actually, I have gotten around the Kalamazoo problem by refusing to go unless it's not on my birthday -- every third or fourth year. So the only ration of shit I get from Special K is a very small one, in which he frets that I'm damaging my career by not going to Kzoo often enough.]
One way or another, my birthday long ago got untethered from the actual day. Plans for a special dinner get deferred, sometimes for months. Last year, we never got around to it at all.
But if there's one thing to be learned from Mr. Casaubon, it is to pull up in time, before one lets oneself (or one's birthday) be run away with. And we did just that, by having a knock-out drop-dead meal at Ortolan, details of which you may or may not choose to read about below -- all thirteen courses of it, not counting the mignardises pictured above.
You may have read about this elsewhere, but Bloomsbury Press has just had to withdraw a fab new biography of Louis XIV's mistress because its author, Veronica Buckley, mistook François Bluche's fictional Secret History of Louis XIV for a primary source.
Bookmark that page for your students, ladies and gentlemen. File under "Evaluating sources."
If you know anything at all about comics, you've heard of Will Eisner, whose Contract With God (four short-stories about growing up in the Bronx) may or may not be the first comic referred to as a graphic novel.
Eisner has a very compelling style, and his eye notices things that most artists do not. It's a pretty dated style, as well, having a lot of resemblance to Sad Sack, even in the non-military work. (And Eisner and George Baker were contemporaries, and almost certainly knew each other.)
I just finished Eisner's Last Day in Vietnam, another set of short stories based on his experiences doing cartooning for the military. They're sweet little stories, with a poignant punchline -- again, very dated.
But one thing has started bugging me about Eisner's work (and you must know that it is utterly heretical to say anything critical of the great one): his reliance on broad visual stereotype. All the Asian women and children have buck teeth:
The Asian men are all shifty looking, even when the narrative portrays them in a positive light:
And the working class is slovenly, drunken, and recognizable by their miserable dentition (and, in this case, marked by suggestions of buggery up in the holler):
We all know that comics -- more even than prose -- has developed a complex shorthand for conveying information. Where's the line of acceptability, though? I don't mind Eisner using certain hand positions to convey class (knobbly knuckles versus tea-drinking pinkies), but is that any different than the portrayal of the hick above? And if we can't locate the line (or even zone) of acceptability, what is the status of comics shorthand?
The Beast may look quite innocent in this picture, and it's very obliging of him to let me rest my books on him (just as it's very obliging of me to let him lounge in my lap, and esp. lean on my arm). But don't be fooled: Underneath that grey coat is the mind of a bomb-throwing Fabianist.
The other night I was outside talking to our next door neighbor. A couple walked by with a dachsund on a leash, and Voiceover stalked that dog almost down to the end of the block, returning with an expression that read, "Eh, that little thing wasn't worth the energy."
Five minutes later, they walked back, at which point Voiceover hid behind a curb and ambushed the poor dog. The skirmish was brief, and the cat ran off about 10 feet looking pleased with himself, but he was not done for the night. Oh no.
Our neighbor has an indoor cat named Jake, and at the sounds of the skirmish, Jake came to the screen door to check out the action (we were still chatting in the yard). As soon as Voiceover noticed, he went up to the screen door and the two of them started vocalizing in their best catfight voices. Then the Beast reached up and opened the screen door, letting Jake outside.
A quick fight ensued on the porch and then Jake ran under the house, where he still moped the last I heard.
How does one punish a cat for antisocial behavior? "Wipe that smirk off your face, Mister!" made no impact at all.
I'm in a scramble to get off to the ACLA (bags packed? paper finished? images scanned? -- ummmmm), but take a look at this video (well, film) of the World Airways rescue mission out of Da Nang on 29 March, 1975. I vaguely remember the story from the time -- I was in junior high -- but I certainly didn't see the film footage.
Suddenly I'm not feeling so panicky about getting to the conf.
Ed Daly, the owner of the airline, was on the plane, and also made several of those babylifts out of Saigon, as well as airlifting rice into Phnom Penh at a time when most American deposits were of an explosive nature. If I had more time, I'd check the NYT for an obituary.
Courtesy of Princess Siracusa, we have Lady Antonia Fraser fulminating on the horrors of open access at the British Library.
As the daughter of a librarian, my natural inclination is to sniff loudly, or perhaps growl softly. Damned elites, wanting to keep the people down (and out)!
But of course I was complaining about the crowds at the BL a mere six weeks ago, so this beam in my eye prevents me from saying anything tart.
Ha! No, it doesn't. Lady Antonia, you are too old to tell the difference between students and black-clad hipster entrepreneurs. I prescribe a month of University Challenge and Pulling, and then you can retake this very simple quiz.
Next up, a rant about Famous Authors clogging up the reading rooms and keeping honest scholars from their work. Just look at Lady AF's writing room above (courtesy of the Grauniad) -- what's she doing hanging out in the BL?
This is really the purview of KF at Planned Obsolescence, but as a prolegomenon to someone else's future mediaphysics, I want to point out something buried in yesterday's business section. It would have been very easy to miss it, unless you're an ardent fan of Gossip Girl (in which case you heard about on the MySpace page or something).
You may not even know what Gossip Girl is, in fact. It's a series of novels that revolve around the ups and downs of the junior plutocracy at a snooty boarding school -- a Head Girl at Melling for our jaded times.
The CW (formerly the WB) has turned the book series into a tv series that shows on monday nights, and if that's not convenient, you can buy download it from iTunes or stream it from the CW website.
Or at least you could. Apparently, the target audience -- 18-to-25-year-old women -- is just a little too comfortable with online consumption, so they aren't bothering with the television. Which means crappy ratings and measly advertising rates.
So the CW has yanked all the online content in order to plump up the ratings. I'll be interested to see if it works. Usually when old media goes after new media, it loses, and I'd say the chances are 50-50 that many Gossip Girl fans will just take up with another online show instead.
I did not realize until today that Aimé Césaire, the great theorist of the Caribbean, was alive -- except that he's not anymore. I hate it when I learn from obituaries that the person in question had been alive until just now.
In Césaire's case, I always assumed he was a past-tense kind of guy because his ideas are so deeply rooted, so present-perfect themselves. I shouldn't be making such assumptions, but I keep doing it.
In any case, go read his obituary in the NYT (even though it's not one of their best); I'll try to find a better one to update with.
If you live outside of California, you won't have seen the wonderful ads for the L.A. County Fair (which is walking distance from our house, as a matter of fact). They really take the piss -- until I saw them, I had no idea that the 10 million people in L.A. had that much sarcasm between us.
At least, I thought sarcasm was the driving force behind those ads, but now I wonder. Courtesy of Teodito:
And don't be snopes.com'ing me or otherwise harshing my hysteria, I love this too much.
Every comics reader with a blog seems to post periodic reading notes; not only are they de rigueur in comics blogs, but even ordinary bloggers who read comics post about their latest reads. I guess if this is a standard bloggerary form, I'd better hop on the bandwagon, given how many comics I've been reading lately (because you know I am all about being on the bandwagon!).
Town of Evening Calm, Country of Cherry Blossoms (Fumiyo Kouno)
Three interrelated stories about hibakusha, the survivors of the atomic bomb, all set many years after the actual blast. They're very sweet -- the first one particularly -- and drenched in that type of longing that Japanese literature perfected before we even had the word. The book jacket says that the book was very controversial in Japan, but I'm not sure how; the generation that needed to brush the hibakusha under the rug or into the closet has died or been roundly criticized for their attitudes, so I can't imagine it's that.
The art is very manga-esque, although sketchier than most. It's not particularly to my taste, but it doesn't impede the story, the way that some art does. Actually, I'm trying to picture the book if it were only written by Fumiyo Kouno, and drawn by Adrian Tomine or Gene Yang... Tomine I can envision (it wouldn't be nearly as sweet), but Yang not so much.
Black Diamond Detective Agency, Eddie Campbell
Eddie Campbell is probably best known for doing the art in From Hell, a Jack the Ripper retelling by comics great Alan Moore. And the main thing I have to say about BDDA is about Campbell in general, not the book.
Namely, I don't care for his style. It's not even his style (although I'm not wild about that either); the attempt at realism (in shape and line only; coloring is very impressionistic) is periodically hobbled by a failure to look closely enough at things (faces, locomotives, furniture). I don't demand or even seek out realism, but consistency is another matter
The plot is fine -- train blows up, main suspect joins the detective agency responsible for finding the perp, lead detective solves the case and clears the suspect. It was clouded by the fact that all the men looked alike. In real life, I'm all in favor of people changing their clothes every couple of days, but in a comic book where everyone looks alike, I really resent their efforts at hygiene.
I also didn't much care for the image design. Comics frequently emulate film, juxtaposing different perspectives, interspersing close-ups, and so forth, and Campbell does this quite a bit. But it hindered rather than helped the story along; if BDDA were a film, we would accuse it of being stagey and stilted.
I haven't read From Hell, classic though it is, and based on the one-two punch of Campbell's artwork and the Jack the Ripper theme, I don't think I will. But I will keep reading his blog, because regardless of my personal issues with his work (and I'd argue that comics are more susceptible than other literary forms to the foibles of individual taste), he's an interesting guy.
The subject line is lifted from something Bill Watterson (with whom I supposedly went to kindergarten, although I don't remember him) said in an interview: "The early cartoonists, with no path before them, produced work of such sophistication, wit, and beauty that it increasingly seems to me that cartoon evolution is working backward. Comic strips are moving toward a primordial goo rather than away from it."
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