This was Tim­o­thy Findley’s fourth nov­el, and it attempts to get into the mor­bid world of the celebri­ties and intel­lec­tu­als who cosied up to the Nazis and the Ital­ian Fas­cists. This was iden­ti­cal, psy­cho­log­i­cally, to the coterie of celebri­ties who cosied up to the Com­mu­nists. It was a loath­some time, in which there were very few voic­es who spoke for any­thing good. Every­one was some kind of sleazy creep. Ezra Pound, the Duke and Duchess of Wind­sor, Har­ry Oakes, Rudolf Hess, and von Ribben­trop appear as char­ac­ters, among oth­ers, all seen through the eyes of a fic­tional Hugh Sel­wyn Mauber­ley (the per­sona of some of Pound’s poems), whose frozen corpse is found in an Alpine hotel, with a tes­ta­ment scrawled in pen­cil on the walls of three rooms. It’s a good and intrigu­ing read, but the absence of any char­ac­ter that one can feel any sym­pa­thy for left me feel­ing worn out by the end. But that has always been my response to the intel­lec­tual world between the two World Wars. Frankly, I don’t care about the fact that peo­ple like Ezra Pound of Bertolt Brecht were tal­ented writ­ers — they were dis­gust­ing lit­tle pieces of shit, and no amount of clev­er­ness or artistry makes them admirable. The Nazi-Com­mu­nist-Fas­cist men­tal­ity was the low­est ebb of the human mind, when genius­es degrad­ed them­selves into moron­ic sav­ages. There is prob­a­bly no way to write about it, or read about it, with­out feel­ing ill. We are still suf­fer­ing the after­ef­fects of that intel­lec­tual holocaust.

15738. (Unto Salo) Ukko, The God of Thun­der of the Ancient Finns and His Indo-European 
. . . . . Family
15739. (Émile Ben­veniste) Les valeurs économiques dans le vocab­u­laire indo-européen
. . . . . [arti­cle]
15740. (Bernard Wailes) The Ori­gins of Set­tled Farm­ing in Tem­per­ate Europe [arti­cle]
15741. (Ber­nice Mor­gan) Cloud of Bone
15742. (Edgar Polomé) Ger­man­ic and Region­al Indo-Euro­pean [arti­cle]
15743. (William F. Wyatt, Jr.) The Indo-Euro­peaniza­tion of Greece [arti­cle]
Read more »

This is an inter­est­ing dis­cus­sion of the psy­cho­log­i­cal real­ity of Amer­i­can pol­i­tics, and why Democ­rats from a pro­fes­sional back­ground don’t con­nect with it. How­ever, it makes unwar­ranted assump­tions about the ratio­nal­ity and “pro­ce­dural savvy” of the social group the author sees him­self as belong­ing to. In my expe­ri­ence, they have demon­strated exact­ly the same degree of sus­cep­ti­bil­ity to super­sti­tion, mag­i­cal think­ing, and irra­tional mum­bo-jum­bo as any of the pro­les that he con­trasts them to. You rarely see this kind of dis­cus­sion in Cana­da. We real­ly do live in dif­fer­ent worlds, now. It is a good arti­cle, mak­ing some good obser­va­tions, despite the patron­iz­ing tone, and the annoy­ing use of the sil­ly neol­o­gism “com­pe­tency” in place of the Eng­lish word “com­pe­tence”. Avail­able at Burke’s blog Eas­ily Dis­tracted, or through Brad DeLong’s site..

The ear­li­est known his­tor­i­cal doc­u­ment is a Sumer­ian king list, of which there are 16 extant copies. It is some­what myth­i­cal in tone (the sec­ond king, Alal­gar, is said to have ruled for 64,800 years. But many of the kings seem to have been real, and some seem to have had hum­ble ori­gins, which the chron­i­cle is care­ful to point out. We are told that “The divine Dumuzi, the shep­herd, ruled for 36,000 years”, that “Etana, the shep­herd, who ascend­ed to heav­en and put all coun­tries in order, became king; he ruled for 1,500 years”, and “The divine Lugal-ban­da, the shep­herd, ruled for 1200 years”. Not only shep­herds aspired to king­ship: “The divine Dumuzi, the fish­er­man, whose city was Ku’ara, ruled for 100.” He was the king just before Gil­gamesh, of epic fame, who is gen­er­al­ly thought to have been a real per­son. Oth­er trades­men in the king list include Kiš, Su-suda, the fuller, Mam­a­gal, the boat­man, Bazi, the leather work­er, and Nan­niya, the stone­cut­ter. Alto­geth­er, even in a long king list, this seems a remark­able num­ber. Per­haps there is, embed­ded in this list, a hint at some mis­in­ter­pre­ta­tion in our ideas of the nature of Sumer­ian kingship.

But most remark­able of all was a woman king (appar­ent­ly not a queen who came to pow­er through wid­ow­hood), Kuba­ba. The text reads: “In Kiš, Ku-Baba, the woman tav­ern-keep­er, who made firm the foun­da­tions of Kiš, became king; she ruled for 100 years.” Sure­ly there’s a inter­est­ing tale behind this terse entry. If she is a real his­tor­i­cal fig­ure (and one should­n’t assume so), her reign may have been in c.2400 BC. It’s thought that she over­threw the rule of En-Shakan­sha-Ana of the 2nd Uruk Dynasty to become monarth. The peo­ple of the ancient Near East cer­tain­ly thought her remark­able. Kuba­ba (or Ku-Baba or Kug-Bau) also appears in the text known as the Wei­d­ner Chron­i­cle, in this most remark­able pas­sage: Read more »

I can’t describe this amus­ing graph­ic nov­el any bet­ter than the back cov­er blurb: “The aston­ish­ing sto­ry of the incom­per­a­ble Rex Lib­ris, Head Librar­ian at Mid­dle­ton Pub­lic Library. From ancient Egypt, where his beloved Hypa­tia was mur­dered, to the far­thest reach­es of the galaxy in search of over­due books, Rex upholds his vow to fight the forces of igno­rance and dark­ness. Wear­ing his super thick bot­tle glass­es and armed with an arse­nal of high tech­nol­ogy weapons, he strikes fear into the recal­ci­trant bor­row­ers, and can take on vir­tu­ally any foe from zom­bies to rene­gade lit­er­ary characters.

How could I pass up a book about a guy who is climb­ing in a part of the Utah Desert that I’m very fond of, gets pinned by a fall­en boul­der for six days, and has to hack off his own arm with a util­ity knife to get out of it? Aron Ralston’s book about his expe­ri­ence is actu­ally very well writ­ten, and enter­tain­ing through­out. He wise­ly struc­tures it so that his auto­bi­og­ra­phy, chiefly out­door adven­tures in the moun­tains and deserts of the U.S., alter­nates with the details of his most dra­matic expe­ri­ence. It took place in the Canyon­lands area made famous in Edward Abbey’s Desert Soli­taire. Those of us who are emo­tion­ally attached to the red rock deserts of the Four Cor­ners region are gen­er­ally will­ing to under­go some hard­ships to enjoy its beau­ty — but not quite as much as Aron did.

I have some prob­lems with this book (most­ly impa­tience with any­thing any­one says that has the term “post-” in it; that always puts my teeth to grind­ing). But most of it is rea­son­able and use­ful. Of spe­cial inter­est to me:

The basic dis­tinc­tions that traders [North West Com­pany and Hudson’s Bay Com­pany traders liv­ing among the Colum­bia Plateau Indi­ans– P.P] drew between “fish­ing” and “hunt­ing” peo­ples illus­trates well the pow­er of con­tem­po­rary dis­course con­cern­ing the influ­ence of envi­ron­ment on soci­ety. As is made clear in the chap­ters that fol­low, the iden­ti­ties these labels describe are in large part inven­tions of the traders. All Plateau peo­ples includ­ed a range of sub­sis­tence strate­gies — fish­ing, gath­er­ing, and hunt­ing — in their sea­sonal round… The empha­sis itself was sea­son­ally and his­tor­i­cally vari­able, how­ever, and com­mu­ni­ties described as “hunters” at oth­er times gath­ered and fished.… … As for the influ­ence of envi­ron­ment on “hunters’ and “fish­erme,” the groups that occu­pied the banks of the Colum­bia Riv­er were cast as hope­lessly indo­lent, sup­pos­edly because the riv­er “afford(s) an abun­dant pro­vi­sion at lit­tle trou­ble for a great part of the year.” Those who lived in areas that were rich­er in ani­mal life, and par­tic­u­larly those who hunt­ed on the buf­falo plains, were judged far more indus­tri­ous. Clear­ly, the traders’ mate­r­ial inter­ests fig­ure promi­nently in the imagery that casts fish­ing peo­ples as lazy and hunters as hard-working.

My impres­sion is that many his­to­ri­ans, archae­ol­o­gists, and even anthro­pol­o­gists have hard­ly pro­gressed at all from the world-view of these Com­pany fac­tors.

My whin­ing about the lack of seri­ous atten­tion to fish­ing in archae­ol­ogy and the­o­ret­i­cal pre­his­tory may be out­dated. This report on a recent dig in the Out­er Hebrides describes every­thing I’ve want­ed to see done for the last fif­teen years. A few dozen projects like this will sup­ply us with the data to trans­form our under­stand­ing of pre­his­toric economies.

This is a mas­ter­piece of Amer­i­can lit­er­a­ture that will present dif­fi­cul­ties for a Cana­dian read­er. This was Flan­nery O’Connor’s first nov­el, writ­ten in 1949. O’Connor (1925–1964) was a native of cen­tral Geor­gia, and the old seg­re­gated Amer­i­can South that she writes about more than con­firms the adage that “the past is a for­eign coun­try.” The world of Wise Blood is clos­er to anoth­er plan­et than a mere for­eign coun­try. Wide­ly regard­ed as the heir to William Faulkn­er, lit­er­ary con­ven­tion has placed O’Connor in the annoy­ingly patron­iz­ing aca­d­e­mic com­part­ments of “South­ern Goth­ic” and “Region­al Fic­tion”. (If you write in New York, of course, that isn’t “region­al”). Much is made of the “grotesque” ele­ments in her fic­tion. But she was not much pleased with that kind of peg-board­ing. “Any­thing that comes out of the South is going to be called grotesque by the north­ern read­er, unless it is grotesque, in which case it is going to be called real­is­tic,” she once remarked.

O’Connor was a Catholic, some­thing which is pret­ty nor­mal here in Cana­da, where it doesn’t involve much in the way of meta­phys­i­cal or psy­cho­log­i­cal com­plex­ity. But in Geor­gia, it makes one an out­sider, and philoso­pher. O’Connor was fas­ci­nated by faith, apos­tasy, sin and redemp­tion, and in the reli­giously super­charged world of the South, and espe­cially the region where the Moun­tain cul­ture inter­acts with the Deep South, there was plen­ty of mate­r­ial to chew on. Wise Blood tells the tale of Hazel Mote, trau­ma­tized son of a preach­er who hates reli­gious faith, but finds him­self involved in every kind of reli­gious expe­ri­ence. He is a vir­tual cat­a­log of here­sies and bizarre reli­gious prac­tices, while he tries to avoid belief. He is sur­rounded by an assort­ment of odd char­ac­ters, each one dri­ven by some equal­ly pecu­liar belief. One char­ac­ter ends up wor­ship­ing a mum­my in a muse­um. It all does seem grotesque, a kind of sur­re­al­is­tic fan­tasy. But the irony is that noth­ing hap­pens in the book, and no char­ac­ter is rep­re­sented, that has not exist­ed in real life.

That is the real pow­er of the book. Every­thing in it is relent­lessly faith­ful to real­ity. It’s writ­ten with incred­i­ble con­trol, pre­ci­sion and econ­omy (it is real­ly a novel­la, rather than a nov­el). Not a word is wast­ed, not a word is wrong, not a word is out of place. Dialect and idi­olect are ren­dered with absolute per­fec­tion. Some­times a sin­gle, short sen­tence will cre­ate a crys­tal clear visu­al image in the reader’s head. The prose sings,

I could not come from a more dif­fer­ent cul­tural back­ground, and my inter­ests and pre­oc­cu­pa­tions could not be more dif­fer­ent than O’Connor’s, but this book still held me in com­plete absorp­tion. What must it do for some­one for whom it’s clos­er to the bone? I would love to sit down and talk over this book with my old friend William Brei­d­ing, who must sure­ly have read it. William? Send me your thoughts on this one.

Cur­rent inter­ests led me a sec­ond read­ing of this excel­lent his­tory (it’s approach is his­tor­i­cal, not eth­no­log­i­cal) of the Man­dans, Hidat­sa and Arikaras of North and South Dakota.

Schol­ars try­ing to recon­struct the Neolith­ic soci­eties of Europe, espe­cially regard­ing trade, ear­ly agri­cul­tural set­tle­ment, and the move­ment of peo­ple, would prof­it by study­ing the val­ley of the Mis­souri Riv­er. Here we have a mix­ture of first-per­son eye-wit­ness sources and archae­o­log­i­cal data that shows us much about the inter­ac­tion of nomadic and agri­cul­tural peo­ples, which Old-World his­to­ri­ans could learn a lot from, if they both­ered to look. The rel­e­vance to under­stand­ing the Euro­pean Neolith­ic seems to me obvi­ous, but the par­al­lels and exam­ples have not been explored or exploit­ed. Exact­ly why this is, so, I’m not sure. But of par­tic­u­lar rel­e­vance is the detailed knowl­edge we have of Man­dan and Hidat­sa trade: the prod­ucts involved, how they moved, how far, how many peo­ple where involved, and with what eco­nomic con­cepts and process­es. They do not at all resem­ble the pic­ture con­jured up by his­to­ri­ans in the Old World of How Things Must Have Been Done. One can­not prove, of course, that the Euro­pean Neolith­ic farm­ers, hunter-gath­er­ers, and nomads had the same kind of econ­omy as exist­ed in the cen­ter of North Amer­ica in a lat­er peri­od, but the data cer­tainly is rel­e­vant to guess­ing what was like­ly or prob­a­ble. Read more »