Category: Books
Which works ought to be read in their original language?
Gabriel Power, a loyal MR reader, asks:
What works really ought to be read in their original language? Does this suggest classes or types that are best read in the original? Does it suggest that some languages are poorly translated into English while others are well translated (indeed, possibly improved upon, e.g. Poe into French)? Why?
I can speak only to German, Spanish, and English. Borges and Goethe and Juan Rulfo are much, much better in the original and I believe they cannot be well understood or appreciated in translation. Vargas Llosa is an example of a conceptual, plot-driven Spanish-language author who translates quite well into other languages. Max Frisch requires German and in general German humor (please don't laugh) does not translate into other languages, less than English-language humor does. Shakespeare translates relatively well into German, but I wonder about other Shakespeare in other languages. I have always thought of Chekhov as requiring Russian, but that is speculation. It is hard for me to imagine James Joyce in any language but English, but most modern American authors can be translated OK, in part because they are not writing "word-rich" material.
Potentially "cheesy" material, such as Poe, often does better in another language. Raymond Chandler in German was excellent, as it added a layer of cranky mystery to the proceedings. I think of "word rich" and "subtly humorous" as hard to translate, so genre fiction is often better in another language.
What can you all add to this?
France outlaws discount pricing for eBooks
A mobilization by French publishers at last month’s Frankfurt Book Fair has proven successful: Last Tuesday the French Senate voted for a law imposing a fixed price on eBooks for sale within French territory – that is, just as with print books in France, everyone has to sell a given ebook for the same price. No discounting.
Here is more; solve for the equilibrium! Oddly, in the United States, the market has been moving toward an approximation of this outcome, at least for new books, though not for classics. Probably both prices need to fall, though perhaps they will in rough tandem. I believe the equilibrium value of a hardcover or e-version of a bestseller is below $10, given the recent shift out of the supply curve for the written word.
The new Deirdre McCloskey book
Bourgeois Dignity: Why Economics Cannot Explain the Modern World.
It is due out November 30th and it centers on the role of ideology in bringing about the Industrial Revolution and the modern world more generally.
What I’ve been reading
1. Hector Abad, Oblivion: A Memoir. A boy's, and then a man's, relationship with his father; it may put this bestselling Colombian author on the Anglo-American map.
2. Robert D. Putnam and David E. Campbell, American Grace: How Religion Divides and Unites Us. This book is very well done, but it suffers from the "I already agree with it" problem; it shows for instance that religious people make better neighbors, even after making the relevant statistical adjustments.
3. The Penguin Book of Irish Poetry, edited by Patrick Crotty. This is spectacular, covering both the medieval material (beautifully translated) and the last fifty years, and everything in between. The volume looks like it should sell for $40, yet it goes for $15 on Amazon. Definitely recommended, a real contribution and also a wonderful Christmas present.
4. Manuel de Lope, The Wrong Blood. For those who love poignant Spanish meditations on memory, at the expense of plot. I finished it, eagerly, but take the caveat seriously. One good bit: "…no one on his way to a wedding seems like a dangerous man, and experience taught that dangerous men can come from a wedding…and so the owner of Etxarri's Bar gave no thought to his loaded shotgun."
Regulatory Capture and Judicial Incentives
John Kay recounts the classic story of regulatory capture:
In 1887, Congress passed an act to regulate the US railroad industry. The legislation originated in the demands of farmers and merchants for protection against the “robber barons”.
Despite this background, railroad interests supported the bill. Charles Adams, president of the Union Pacific Railroad, explained his reasoning to a sympathetic congressman, John D. Long. “What is desired,” he wrote, “is something having a good sound, but quite harmless, which will impress the popular mind with the idea that a great deal is being done, when, in reality, very little is intended to be done.”
On the whole, he got what he wanted. The Interstate Commerce Commission established by the act was chaired by a lawyer with experience of the railroad industry – acquired, naturally, by acting on behalf of his railroad clients. When, a decade later, the Supreme Court ruled that a rate-fixing agreement between railroads was illegal, the ICC was crestfallen: surely, the commission said, it should not be unlawful to confer, to achieve what the law enjoins – the setting of just and reasonable rates. Soon after, Congress approved legislation making it a criminal offence to offer rebates on tariffs the ICC had approved, and the commission thereafter operated as the manager of a railroad cartel.
Kay is a little too quick, however, to argue in favor of judges. Aside from the tradeoff (which Kay notes) that Judges will be less informed than people closer to the industry (the bias-efficiency tradeoff familiar from econometrics), judges also have their own set of interests and incentives. Elected judges, for example, tend to be biased towards plaintiffs (voters) and against out-of-state corporate defendants (non-voters). More generally, I think Kay understands politics without romance but still sees law with a romantic lens.
The application of public choice insights to legal institutions, "law without romance," is a new and growing field. If you are interested, I recommend The Pursuit of Justice, a very good new book on this topic (edited by Ed Lopez, I was general editor.)
Britain fact of the day
In 1960, the British drank 3.6 pints of wine per head per year; by 1971 they drank 7 pints, by 1973 9 pints, by 1975 11 pints and by 1980 almost 20 pints. One obvious reason was that it was cheaper than ever, with the duty having been slashed when Britain joined the EEC; another was that people picked up the taste on holiday; a third was that wines were advertised more successfully, being associated with glamour, luxury, and ambition, and aimed particularly at young women.
That is from Dominic Sandbrook's excellent State of Emergency, The Way We Were: Britain, 1970-1974.
I guess they really are for sanity
For the pointer I thank Thomas Acox and also Joshua Hall.
*State of Emergency*
Could it be the best non-fiction book so far this year? The author is Dominic Sandbrook and the subtitle is The Way We Were: Britain, 1970-1974, here is an excerpt:
As a spender, Joseph had only one Cabinet rival: the Education Secretary, Margaret Thatcher. Derided as the "Milk Snatcher" in 1971 because she had to carry out Macleod's plan to scrap free school milk for children aged between 8 and 11. Mrs Thatcher was actually a big-spending education chief who secured the funds to raise the leaving age to 16 and to invest £48 million in new buildings. In December 1972, she even published a White Paper envisaging a massive £1 billion a year for education by 1981, with teaching staff almost doubling and vast amounts of extra cash for polytechnics and nursery schools. She wanted "expansion, not contraction", she said. It never happened; if it had, her reputation in the education sector might be very different.
Every page of this book has excellent analysis and information, attractively presented. It masterfully covers a wide range of topics, ranging from how the British started drinking wine, to how the power cuts affected public morale, to the strategies of British labor unions, to the insightfulness of Fawlty Towers. It's a key book for understanding how the Thatcher Revolution ever came to pass.
It is simply a first-rate book. It is out only in the UK, but I was happy to pay the extra shipping charge from UK Amazon, which you too can pay here. Or maybe try these used sellers. Some reviews are here.
China fish fact of the day
Currently the world's wild [fish] catch measures 170 billion pounds — the equivalent in weight to the entire human population of China, scooped up and sliced, sauteed, poached, baked and deep-fried, year in and year out, every single year. This is a lot of fish — six times greater than the amount of fish we took from the ocean half a century ago.
That is from Paul Greenberg's Four Fish: The Future of the Last Wild Food.
Lydia Davis’s translation of *Madame Bovary*
Rip-off
The iTunes version of 4'33" offers all three movements, a snip at $1.99. Strangely, they only add up to 4'31". You might have thought a duration of four minutes and thirty-three seconds the minimum prerequisite for a recording of 4'33": apparently not.
That is by Wesley Stace, from his review "Hush Now: The silent of music and the music of noise," TLS 15 October 2010.
*Why the West Rules — For Now*, the new book by Ian Morris
Most of the book is intelligent, well-sourced, easy to read, and non-dogmatic. It is a "big book" on the scale of Jared Diamond or Paul Kennedy and the author is obviously highly intelligent. There is a good use of archaeology and mostly the author supports geographical theories of the rise of the West and other civilizations. It considers energy use, urbanization, and war-making explicitly, all pluses in my view. Eventually you realize it is going nowhere and has only a weak theoretical framework. The first two-thirds are still better to read than most books. It raised my opinion of the importance of coal in the Industrial Revolution. The final chapter collapses into the lamest of conventional wisdoms.
The WSJ gave it a big review which somehow I cannot find on-line. Here are other reviews.
Parentheticals to ponder
Geoffrey Johnson, who gave a speech that attempted to debunk any ideas that a machine could have emotions or self-consciousness and could, therefore, be said to think in a human way (Johnson was a pioneer of the frontal lobotomy).
That is from Jane Smiley's new and worthwhile The Man Who Invented the Computer, The Biography of John Atanasoff, Digital Pioneer. My favorite part of the book was the discussion of Konrad Zuse, who deserves his own popular biography.
Arbitrage
I make a living buying and selling used books. I browse the racks of thrift stores and library book sales using an electronic bar-code scanner. I push the button, a red laser hops about, and an LCD screen lights up with the resale values. It feels like being God in his own tiny recreational casino; my judgments are sure and simple, and I always win because I have foreknowledge of all bad bets. The software I use tells me the going price, on Amazon Marketplace, of the title I just scanned, along with the all-important sales rank, so I know the book's prospects immediately. I turn a profit every time.
Sometimes the guy spends eighty hours a week in used book stores, and if you are an author think of this as your competition. For the pointer I thank Andy Howard and the full story is here.
Along related lines, Adam Ozimek thinks that "Brain Mounted Computers are a Dominant Strategy Equilibrium."
Classical economics reading list
Joel, a loyal MR reader, asks me:
I am an undergraduate economics student curious about which of the classical economists and books you find most valuable. Classical not just meaning Ricardian but in terms of significant non purely quantitative works that influenced economics as a whole. If one were to put together a reading list of twenty or so of the most influential or important books, what would you recommend? The Wealth of Nations and General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money seem logical starting points, beyond them though it's hard to wade through the range of choices (Ricardo or Hayek? Schumpeter or Jean Baptiste Say?)
For now I'll stick with classical economics in the narrow sense, as it ends in 1871. If you can read only a few works, I recommend these:
1. Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations. Duh.
2. David Hume, Economic essays. He lacks some of Smith's profundity as an economist, but he is more precise analytically and as always a beautiful writer.
3. David Ricardo, Principles of Political Economy, the first six chapters. Rigor arrives, though at the expense of truth. Still there is something to it. Supplement with Mark Blaug on Ricardo, if you want the model spelt out mathematically.
4. The early marginalists: I'll recommend Samuel Bailey on value and Mountifort Longfield on price theory. Yet still it was a (temporary) dead end and you should read them with that puzzle in mind. At what level of technical sophistication do the contributions of marginalism suddenly seem impressive?
5. Thomas Robert Malthus, on population (don't ask which edition) and Principles of Political Economy. He understood supply and demand, elasticity, a version of the Keynesian model, and environmental economics, and yet he is mainly criticized for being wrong about population. He is one of the strongest and most profound and most underrated economists of all time. Also read Keynes's biographical essay on him.
6. Edinburgh Review. The econ blogosphere of its day. Read the economic essays published in that outlet, by Malthus and many others, especially on monetary theory. I don't know any easy way to track this stuff down, but if you do please tell us in the comments.
7. John Stuart Mill: Autobiography (yes, for economics) and his Some Essays on Unsettled Questions in Political Economy (Kindle edition is free). Mill has underrated depth as an economic thinker and he encompassed virtually all of the interesting trends of his time. That was both his greatest strength and his biggest weakness.
8. Marx: The 1844 manuscripts. More generally, read the Romantics as critics of classical political economy. Coleridge and Carlyle are good places to start.
What about the French?: I find Say boring, Bastiat fun, Cournot incredible but there is no reason to read the original. Try someone weird like Comte or LePlay to get a sense of what economic discourse actually was like back then.