Results for “best book” 1948 found
Paris advice
1. A few of the best restaurants are Pierre Gagnaire, Taillevent, Le Cinq, and perhaps Guy Savoy. Most critics might put Gagnaire as number one.
2. Michelin "two-forkers" are quite good, but you must book to get in. In general you can’t get a seat in a decent Parisian restaurant unless you either book or show up at opening. If you are wandering around looking for good food at 8:30 p.m., or for that matter 1 p.m., you are unlikely to do well.
3. In The Louvre, spend an hour in the Poussin room and also obsess over Watteau’s Voyage to Cythera.
4. In Musee d’Orsay, gaze at Courbet’s Origin of the World (sorry, I can’t link to the image on a family blog but do Google it) and Puis de Chavannes, in addition to the usual delights.
5. Go see the medieval tapestries at Musee Cluny.
6. Spend a few hours walking the main roads of the Left Bank. Start at Invalides and take the major arteries through to the Islamic Center. Walk, walk, walk.
7. Watch The Triplets of Belleville and spend hours walking through the (rapidly gentrifying) working-class neighborhoods of the Right Bank. The Metro is splendid but it robs you from seeing the greatest walking city on earth (Buenos Aires is number two). Don’t take it. Walk, walk, walk.
8. Go into a good cheese shop and spend $40. Focus on the weirder cheeses. Buy the non-pasteurized delights. Sit down with a baguette and some fruit as well, finishing the meal with small squares of outrageously priced dark chocolate. Throw in a sausage for good measure. Keep the cheese leftovers in your room at night and eat them for breakfast the next day. And the day after that. See how many days they will keep, you will be surprised.
9. Rue de Bussi and thereabouts has a convenient collection of cheese, fruit and bread shops, and it is in an excellent part of the Left Bank.
10. Internet Cafes are hard to come by. You must rely on the dumpy area near Centre de Pompidou. I find Paris to be the hardest city to blog from.
11. See a "world music" concert from Algeria, Madagascar, or the Congo. Or try contemporary music at IRCAM.
12. Here is my previous post My Favorite Things French. Douse yourself in Godard films before going. Start with Breathless, Band of Strangers, and My Life to Live.
13. If you want to read recent French social science (if you can call it that), try Bruno Latour’s We Have Never Been Modern, Jean Baudrillard, Alain Badiou’s Metapolitics, and Gilles Deleuze’s Anti-Oedipus. Don’t get too upset if these books only make intermittent sense. At least they are alive. For a recent hit novel, try Houllebecq’s The Elementary Particles.
Comments are open, and I encourage all of you but especially John Nye and Barkley Rosser — both Paris experts — to make a few suggestions for my friend.
Jonathan Amith
Word by word, Mr. Amith is creating an extensive archive of Nahuatl, the language spoken by the Aztecs at the time of the 16th century Spanish conquest and now the first language of 1.5 million Mexican Indians. He records fables and personal histories, collects plants and insects, and keeps up a nonstop patter with locals, searching for information to add to a Web site he is building that is part dictionary, part encyclopedia and part storybook.
His goal is both daring and quixotic: to preserve Nahuatl so that native speakers don’t discard their language as they turn to Spanish, which they need to compete in contemporary Mexico…"[Jonathan Amith] harkens back to the 19th century tradition of the
adventurer-scholar who says, "I’ll go out and do something and the
world be damned," says Tyler Cowen, a George Mason University economist
who studies Nahuatl-speakng villages.
For more, see the front page of today’s Wall Street Journal,
center column. By the way, tomato, coyote, avocado, and chocolate are all English words which came from Nahuatl. Nahuatl is the most beautiful language I have heard. Here is Jonathan’s web page. I think of Jonathan as an obsessive collector of words, in the best sense of that term. He is one of the most remarkable men I have met and his knowledge of the social sciences is phenomenal. Here are some MP3 files
of Jonathan’s linguistic work. Here is my book on the village, which also
profiles Jonathan. Comments are open, especially if you have a link to the article ("Scholar’s Dictionary of Aztec Language May Take a Lifetime," by Bob Davis); it should appear on-line at some point.
These caught my eye
Dan Akst on how best to spend a dollar to help the world. He suggests micro-finance as the most potent means of charity.
James Hamilton and Mark Thoma and Martin Feldstein on why higher oil prices have not created a recession.
Fatalities from sharks may be falling because people are fighting back and punching the sharks.
Here is a new book on how to fight back if the robots rebel. Hint: go for its "eyes" (cameras), punching is not the key. Don’t give them the security codes to your defense computers.
Why email communication is so problematic, and how we overrate how much others understand us in that medium.
Markets in everything, magazine edition, courtesy of Cynical-C blog.
Forbes magazine, short essays on money and happiness.
The Great American Novel — my runners-up
1. Faulkner. He came close to winning. But which novel? Absalom, Absalom is the deepest and richest. But you need to read it at least twice in a row, and that makes it less of a story. Here is the first page. As I Lay Dying is the most enjoyable. Read it through once, without trying to understand it. Then read it through voice-by-voice. Then read it through again. Sound and the Fury and Light in August (Faulkner’s easiest major work) cannot be dismissed either.
2. Henry James – The Golden Bowl. Are you interested in Girardian doubles, the triangulation of desire, self-deception, the use of gifts to imprison, the mediation of desire through objects, and the dynamics of marriages? This was James’s last and best novel. For my taste Portrait of a Lady is static and stands too close to the Merchant Ivory tradition. Interestingly, I believe not one of you mentioned James in the comments thread.
3. Huckleberry Finn. It seems more Shakespearian each time I read it. Right now Yana is reading it and loving it.
A few comments: Fitzgerald is not quite there. I am tempted to count Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass as a novel, not a poem. Willa Cather’s My Antonia and Nabokov’s Pale Fire are close, although my wife will not let me treat the latter as an American novel. Philip Roth has many excellent novels but no one for me stands out. Only the first third of Gravity’s Rainbow is wonderful. I prefer Hemingway’s short fiction and most of all his sociological non-fiction on bullfighting. Bellow is excellent but I wonder how much his books will mean to people one hundred years from now. The dark horses you already have heard about.
The Great American Novel — my pick
1. It must reward successive rereadings and get better each time.
2. It must be canonical and grip the imagination.
3. It must be linked to American history and letters in some essential way.
4. It must span the intellectual, the emotional, the religious, and the metaphysical.
5. It must be fun. You must be sad when the book is over, and wish it had been longer than it was.
6. It must be about a large white whale and have numerous Biblical allusions.
That leaves us with Moby Dick at the top.
The most indicative chapter for the book’s strangeness is "A Squeeze of the Hand." Has anyone done a better literary treatment of a homosexual ******-****, much less when writing about whale spermaceti? Excerpt:
As I sat there at my ease, cross-legged on the deck; after the bitter exertion at the windlass; under a blue tranquil sky; the ship under indolent sail, and gliding so serenely along; as I bathed my hands among those soft, gentle globules of infiltrated tissues, woven almost within the hour; as they richly broke to my fingers, and discharged all their opulence, like fully ripe grapes their wine; as I snuffed up that uncontaminated aroma, – literally and truly, like the smell of spring violets; I declare to you, that for the time I lived as in a musky meadow; I forgot all about our horrible oath; in that inexpressible sperm, I washed my hands and my heart of it; I almost began to credit the old Paracelsan superstition that sperm is of rare virtue in allaying the heat of anger: while bathing in that bath, I felt divinely free from all ill-will, or petulence, or malice, of any sort whatsoever.
Squeeze! squeeze! squeeze! all the morning long; I squeezed that sperm till I myself almost melted into it; I squeezed that sperm till a strange sort of insanity came over me; and I found myself unwittingly squeezing my co-laborers’ hands in it, mistaking their hands for the gentle globules. Such an abounding, affectionate, friendly, loving feeling did this avocation beget; that at last I was continually squeezing their hands, and looking up into their eyes sentimentally; as much as to say, – Oh! my dear fellow beings, why should we longer cherish any social acerbities, or know the slightest ill-humor or envy! Come; let us squeeze hands all round; nay, let us all squeeze ourselves into each other; let us squeeze ourselves universally into the very milk and sperm of kindness.
Here comes the best part:
Would that I could keep squeezing that sperm for ever! For now, since by many prolonged, repeated experiences, I have perceived that in all cases man must eventually lower, or at least shift, his conceit of attainable felicity; not placing it anywhere in the intellect or the fancy; but in the wife, the heart, the bed, the table, the saddle, the fire-side, the country; now that I have perceived all this, I am ready to squeeze case eternally. In thoughts of the visions of the night, I saw long rows of angels in paradise, each with his hands in a jar of spermaceti.
Get the picture? But do read the whole (short) chapter at the link, just in case you are confused about the context…
The method of the novel, if you can call it one, is madness. It is a collage of impressions, tales, facts about whaling, erotic interludes, and observations about social science. Occasionally the plot resurfaces but this can involve less rather than more tension. Moby Dick also can be read as pure commentary on the Bible or Shakespeare. Melville knew who his competitors were.
I’ve talked to many people who find the book offputting. Delve right in and embrace the strangeness. Take the ostensible masculinity and interpret it, and all the other foibles, as over-the-top. Dig out the implicit theology. Think of it as a new literary model. And best of all, read only one short chapter a day.
Tomorrow you get the near runners-up. Do feel free to offer your first place picks in the comments.
Mexico fact of the day
1.2 billion tortillas are consumed each day [TC: I believe that includes the tortillas consumed by pigs; surely the counting occurs on the production end].
That is from Lonely Planet Blue List, one of the most fun books for browsing and lists I have encountered. Imagine a travel provocateur in print form dedicated to helping you overcome your status quo biases. Highly recommended, and did you know that Serbia is right now one of the best countries in the world to visit?
The quest for the perfect Don Giovanni
It has comedy, drama, terror, and a sense of cosmic justice. Freedom and dread are intermingled. da Ponte’s libretto stands on its own; read Geoffrey Clive’s The Romantic Enlightenment for a good interpretation, or Kierkagaard’s Don Juan essay. Leporello and the Don are among the most memorable characters of literature. Don Giovanni might be the single most impressive, most magnificent, more comprehensive, and most complete piece of classical music (Bach’s Passions have a narrower emotional range, and no single Beethoven symphony compares). You simply must buy it, if you don’t own it already.
Yet I cannot find the perfect recorded version. Here are remarks on a few contenders:
1. Carlo Maria Giulini: This recording has splendid voices but the sound is muddy and the conducting is not always so sharp. I much prefer his Figaro.
2. Otto Klemperer: I had high hopes, since his Magic Flute is the best performance of that opera. But he is lugubrious with the Don and I find this one hard to get through. Otto’s Beethoven (the mono, odd-numbered symphonies and his Fidelio) and his Bach remain pinnacles.
3. Colin Davis: Perhaps the most evenly rounded version. More than adequate in every way. But it is not a first choice along any particular dimension. And I have never been a fan of Kiri Te Kanawa’s warbling. But if you want modern sound, this may be your best bet.
4. Georg Solti: As usual, too muscular and too much whiplash. His approach to the classics worked better live, and as the years recede, people will wonder what all the fuss was about.
5. von Karajan: Stiff, as was too often the case. He is best for music which needs some additional stiffness, such as Richard Strauss or Sibelius.
6. Charles Mackerras: I’ve never heard this one, but this conductor has been getting better as he ages. I might give it a shot someday.
7. Fritz Busch: It has the charm of age, but the performances are just not up to snuff. It remains the sentimental favorite of some people, but not deservedly so.
8. Claudio Abbado: At the time most of the serious reviews declared it a disappointment, so I never bought it. His recent Beethoven symphonies are gems.
9. Bernard Haitink: A good moderate pick, just as Davis is. Haitink is one of the most reliable and "buyable" conductors. Yet he has never developed a truly personal sound. A good introduction to the opera nonetheless.
10. Ferenc Fricsay. Nope.
11. Erich Leinsdorf. Double nope, and I won’t even give you an Amazon link.
12. John Eliot Gardiner: Better than you might have expected. It is short of first-rate vocalists, but the conductor’s musical intelligence elevates this. Gardiner is almost always better than you think he will be, and I mean that as a compliment.
13. Dmitri Mitropoulos: Fiery; it grabs you by the balls and doesn’t let go. Sloppy at times and not perfect. So-so live sound from 1956. At times this is my favorite Don. Cesare Siepi sings the lead role with abandon.
14. Wilhelm Furtwangler: Do not neglect the differences between the 1950, 1953, and 1954 Salzburg versions by Furtwangler. The link above is to the 1953 (only $18, plus you get part of Magic Flute). I have a 1954 on EMI, but no Amazon link for that one. Many people with better ears than I have prefer the 1953, which is supposed to be slightly more energetic. Either way you get Cesare Siepi as the Don, passionate conducting, and a celestial feeling throughout.
Recommended, as they say.
How many Don Giovannis must one hear?
Are bigger paintings better?
Believe it or not, some art lovers hold this to be a stupid question.
But not I. So consider a simple model and imagine the rest. You are an artist and you have better and worse ideas, as defined by either marketplace success or critical acclaim (or both). You can, to some degree, allocate your ideas across different size canvases. Some ideas only work well in the small, and some ideas only work well in the large, but still there is some flexibility. You are most likely to allocate your best ideas to the most saleable medium. And since larger pictures usually sell for more than smaller ones, why not put your better ideas into the larger pictures? You won’t waste a tremendous idea on a mere snippet of work, except perhaps as a practice or draft. The marginal revenue product (or "marginal critical acclaim product") will be higher for the bigger pictures. Of course we assume that the substitution effect outweighs the income effect. (Micro question: what assumptions about costs do we need? Does it suffice to assume that, given the cost of producing ideas, we can produce larger paintings at less than proportional cost? If you are Ellsworth Kelly, doubling the canvas size just isn’t that big a deal…)
There are caveats. If the picture is too large, and cannot hang above a sofa, perhaps it sells for less. So throw out monotonicity. You will put your best ideas into the most saleable medium, which does not always mean "bigger."
Longer songs are not better than shorter songs. I’ve never paid attention to all of "Nantucket Sleigh Ride." But the best songs will be close to around three minutes long, the dominant size or "medium" for hit songs. Songwriters and composers won’t put their best ideas into snippets. The best movies will be around two hours long, rather than a skit. Some artists will break these patterns for personal reasons; Peter Jackson wanted a three-hour King Kong for the (ha-ha) sake of the story. This may be a case of the income effect weighing in and financing self-indulgence.
Books should be better than short stories. Again, put your better ideas into the better-paying medium. Of course if customers use length as a signal of quality, these tendencies will be further strengthened. Intermediaries, such as networks, record companies, and your agent, will help enforce the constraints.
And how long are the best blog posts? The best comments to your wife? The best flirtations? The best comments on blog posts?
Thanks to Robin Hanson and Ilia Rainer for useful discussions of this point, and to Ilia for the question.
Would you take an architectural pilgrimage?
Donald at www.2blowhards.com nominates some architectural pilgrimages worth taking. I suggest the Ford Rouge plant in Dearborn, Michigan:
Here is a brief history, with some stunning black and white photos. I also enjoyed my pilgrimages to Tulsa and Kansas City (barbecue too). Buenos Aires has the best public sculptures. I’ll nominate the Taj Mahal for the most overrated site; it looks just like the postcard and I liked the saris of the visitors more than the site itself. Here is a picture of Magnitogorsk, which I hope to visit. Here is a broader index of Magnitogorsk pictures. Brasilia is another dream of mine, and yes I do find that image attractive.
Here is an on-line version of Ludwig Lachmann’s Capital and its Structure, courtesy of Liberty Fund.
Further subjective impressions of Argentina
…the good stores just don’t have the larger sizes for their finest items. What else?
Piegari was the best food, Olsen the best restaurant decor (they serve Swedish food, oddly enough), and Ataneo (the Santa Fe branch, set in a former Art Deco movie theater) is the most attractive bookstore I have seen anywhere. If it wasn’t for that tiny matter of per capita wages, I would live here. It is my favorite city, period. I don’t care that I go to bed before most of them wake up; I am not that social anyway.
The people here don’t seem very Catholic. But most of the politics revolves what has happened to various dead bodies. Older people still speculate about what happened to Eva’s corpse during its missing years, a topic fraught with political implications. And for two decades the "desaparecidos" (disappeared ones), killed under the military dictatorship, have dominated the national consciousness.
When the New Year comes everyone rips out the pages of their old calendars and leaves them on the street. It makes for a mess. You can walk just about anywhere in the central bank without encountering hostile or even inquisitive security guards.
I recognized only one name on the top ten music charts, namely Madonna at number four. The new Saramago book — not yet available in English — is number one in book sales. Taxi drivers know not only Borges but also Ernesto Sabato.
A quality apartment in an excellent part of town can sell for as little as $U.S. 50,000. I have stocked up on DVDs of recent Argentine movies.
Have you heard of the appropriately-named "Faena Hotel and Universe"? The Hotel as Womb. The people who stay here (that’s not us) are pampered by a personal assistant and barely leave their quarters. The modern world has not ceased to produce architectural wonders.
Get the bitter [amargo] chocolate ice cream. Go to Uruguay with low expectations and you will be charmed.
Tango shows are mostly a waste, unless you have an inside connection to a dance group or some good lessons. And don’t be put off by the fact that two-thirds of your meals boil down to a choice of either lomo or pasta; both are superb.
Woe to the young Argentine woman who is perceived as overweight.
Our guide at Recoleta had indigenous features, but she insisted repeatedly (and to a foreign audience) that her family was white and she simply had too much of a sun tan. She has been learning about the histories of the families in the graves since she was five years old; she can talk for hours about them without notes and has an opinion of each and every family and its moral character. Auto-Icon, or the cemetary as Panopticon.
Why do so many stores and restaurants use the "ring the bell" system? These are not diamond merchants seeking to protect their wares. I suspect that clientele effects are especially strong in this city. Perhaps "regulars" are more willing to ring the bell, and these same regulars are more valuable as customers. Signalling is rampant.
Don’t expect major sights of the kind you find in a Frommer’s guidebook. Use the Time Out guide to find experiences.
Contrary to what my wife thinks, people here are not happier than in the United States. She won´t go to the parts of town that prove her wrong. Nine years ago, there were no beggars opening taxi doors for you, expecting a peso in return. The shanties near the airport are extreme. The poor of Buenos Aires have it good compared to parts of northern Argentina, but Salta and Jujuy will have to wait for another trip.
Go to Kumana’ for the best corn empanadas, fifty cents a piece. El Obrero is excellent Italian home cooking, with amazing soccer decor, again for a pittance. Cafe Uriarte was first-rate. La Brigada has the best baby lamb intestines you can imagine.
You have a status quo bias. And like most people, you probably overinvest in goods and underinvest in experiences. Get off your bum and go. Many major cities in the USA have direct connections to Buenos Aires. You fly overnight and sleep on the plane. You wake up in a new universe.
In the meantime, thank god or luck that you were born where you were, unless of course that was northern Argentina. Happy New Year to you all.
My favorite things of Argentina
1. Tango CD: Astor Piazzola’s Tango: Zero Hour. If you are looking to download a single song, try Carlos Gardel’s El Dia Que Me Quieras.
2. Novel: Cortazar’s Hopscotch [Rayuela]. I read one chapter (almost) every day, which amounts to about three pages. I expect to finish in July, and no I don’t understand it in English either. It does hold my attention, and is rapidly becoming one of my favorite novels. Looking elsewhere, Eduardo Berti is a much underrated author.
3. Short story: Tlon, Uqbar, Orbus Tertius, by Borges. Could this be the best short story period? Here is an excerpt.
4. Film: Nine Queens is the obvious choice, and yes it is implicit commentary on their economic crises. Here is a longer list. For "Film, Set In," you might try Kiss of the Spider Woman.
5. Pianist: Martha Argerich. Try her Chopin, or perhaps her Prokofiev. She is one of the sexiest women:
6. TV show: I only know one Argentinian TV show — Epitafios — but it is a blockbuster. Noir about a serial killer in Buenos Aires; sometimes they show it on HBO.
7. Social science: Domingo Sarmiento, Facundo: Civilization and Barbarism. The Argentinian Tocqueville, you might say, and just translated into English last year. If you relish the idea that rural areas are barbaric, you will find intellectual company in this book.
8. Painter: Guillermo Kuitca. Try this one, or here is a classic Kuitca image.
The bottom line: This is one of the best places on earth, and yes I am here now. Comments are open, if you would care to add to this.
More on the Xbox shortage
I’m finishing an MA in Economics at Boston University right now, and am also the author of "PSX: The Guide to the Sony Playstation" which is being released this week. In the course of research for the book, I interviewed a number of VPs at Sony about why they priced at 299 when the PS2 came out. The waits for the PS2, in fact, were much longer than those for the Xbox360, and still no rise in prices.
Here’s my understanding of the pricing situation:
1) Console prices are announced months in advance of the system release, unlike many other products. There is a general consensus that a price above 299 (or 399, perhaps, which is the true price of the 360) will be unsuccessful. In the mid and late 90s, a huge number of consoles bombed by announcing prices of 400-1000 (Sega Saturn, cd-i, 3DO, Amiga CD32, etc.). Third party developers are essential to a system’s success (a system without games, after all, does nothing), and in order to have games ready for a system, they evaluate a system a year before launch. A high price would discourage developers -> discourage games -> lessen demand. Given the competitiveness of the console game market, I have no doubt that major third-party game producers (Activision, Ubisoft, Square, EA, etc.) would balk if Microsoft were to raise prices, fearing, justly or not, that system sales two years down the road (when their games are ready) will be lower. For the 500-pound gorillas (EA in particular) there might even be contractual stipulations with MS about the system price.
The other reason is the one Alex gave – The $700 consoles on ebay represent the highest WTP on the demand curve, not the average. Personally, I don’t think MS would’ve sold 500k Xboxes at $500. Why MS didn’t auction off "limited edition" systems early, as you said, remains a mystery though. Nintendo has done exactly that with some items (in charity auctions, however).
In any case, the basic pricing structure is no mystery at all. MS needs to satisfy both end-users AND third-party developers, not just end-users. They’re selling a *platform* more than a product.
Brush your teeth to lower weight?
…there is no clear evidence that schools are contributing to the growth in obesity. The obesity-related complaints about school lunches, vending machines, and physical education are based largely on the assumption that these factors are causing our kids to get fat. Yet, I find little evidence to support this claim. For example, in looking at survey data on the health behavior of middle and high school students, the factor I found that best predicted whether or not a kid was obese was tooth brushing [emphasis added]. More important than how much junk food they ate, soda they drank, or physical education they received was whether or not they brushed their teeth. Among fourteen- to seventeen-year-olds, only 16 percent of kids who brushed their teeth more than once a day were overweight compared to 24 percent who brushed less than once a day. Of course, other factors were important as well — teenagers who play more computer games, eat more fast-food, and drink less whole milk were also more likely to be obese — but these factors were tiny in comparison with tooth brushing. Meanwhile school policies, such as whether the kid was in physical education or ate school lunches, had no predictive power for whether or not a child was obese.
Now obviously the act of brushing one’s teeth plays little direct role in a child’s weight, but it is a good indicator of something else — in what type of household the child lives. Children who brush their teeth more often are more likely to come from homes where health and hygiene are a priority…In other words, outside of genetics, the biggest factor predicting a child’s weight is what type of parenting they receive [emphasis added].
That is from J. Eric Oliver’s Fat Politics: The Real Story Behind America’s Obesity Epidemic. Here is my previous post on the book; the comments are open.
Should Christmas be more commercial?
Sometimes a bracing Randian approach is needed. Leonard Peikoff writes:
Christmas in America is an exuberant display of human ingenuity, capitalist productivity, and the enjoyment of life. Yet all of these are castigated as "materialistic"; the real meaning of the holiday, we are told, is assorted Nativity tales and altruist injunctions (e.g., love thy neighbor) that no one takes seriously.
In fact, Christmas as we celebrate it today is a 19th-century American invention. The freedom and prosperity of post-Civil War America created the happiest nation in history. The result was the desire to celebrate, to revel in the goods and pleasures of life on earth. Christmas (which was not a federal holiday until 1870) became the leading American outlet for this feeling.
Historically, people have always celebrated the winter solstice as the time when the days begin to lengthen, indicating the earth’s return to life. Ancient Romans feasted and reveled during the festival of Saturnalia. Early Christians condemned these Roman celebrations — they were waiting for the end of the world and had only scorn for earthly pleasures. By the fourth century, the pagans were worshipping the god of the sun on December 25, and the Christians came to a decision: if you can’t stop ’em, join ’em. They claimed (contrary to known fact) that the date was Jesus’ birthday, and usurped the solstice holiday for their Church…
Then came the major developments of 19th-century capitalism: industrialization, urbanization, the triumph of science — all of it leading to easy transportation, efficient mail delivery, the widespread publishing of books and magazines, new inventions making life comfortable and exciting, and the rise of entrepreneurs who understood that the way to make a profit was to produce something good and sell it to a mass market.
For the first time, the giving of gifts became a major feature of Christmas. Early Christians denounced gift-giving as a Roman practice, and Puritans called it diabolical. But Americans were not to be deterred. Thanks to capitalism, there was enough wealth to make gifts possible, a great productive apparatus to advertise them and make them available cheaply, and a country so content that men wanted to reach out to their friends and express their enjoyment of life. The whole country took with glee to giving gifts on an unprecedented scale.
Santa Claus is a thoroughly American invention. There was a St. Nicholas long ago and a feeble holiday connected with him (on December 5). In 1822, an American named Clement Clarke Moore wrote a poem about a visit from St. Nick. It was Moore (and a few other New Yorkers) who invented St. Nick’s physical appearance and personality, came up with the idea that Santa travels on Christmas Eve in a sleigh pulled by reindeer, comes down the chimney, stuffs toys in the kids’ stockings, then goes back to the North Pole.
Of course, the Puritans denounced Santa as the Anti-Christ, because he pushed Jesus to the background. Furthermore, Santa implicitly rejected the whole Christian ethics. He did not denounce the rich and demand that they give everything to the poor; on the contrary, he gave gifts to rich and poor children alike. Nor is Santa a champion of Christian mercy or unconditional love. On the contrary, he is for justice — Santa gives only to good children, not to bad ones.
All the best customs of Christmas, from carols to trees to spectacular decorations, have their root in pagan ideas and practices. These customs were greatly amplified by American culture, as the product of reason, science, business, worldliness, and egoism, i.e., the pursuit of happiness.
OK, some of that is over the top and some of the history is a wee bit false. Many Christians place greater stress on Easter. Still, I should start a new title: "Bracing but Required Randian Shocks, A Continuing Series."
Thanks to www.politicaltheory.info for the pointer.
Hello, I’m Johnny Cash
I’d always thought that Sun Records and Sam Philips himself had created the most crucial, uplifting and powerful records ever made. Next to Sam’s records, all the rest sounded fruity. On Sun Records the artists were singing for their lives and sounded like they were coming from the most mysterious place on the planet. No justice for them. They were so strong, can send you up a wall. If you were walking away and looked back at them, you could be turned into stone. Johnny Cash’s records were no exception, but they weren’t what you expected. Johnny didn’t have a piercing yell, but ten thousand years of culture fell from him. He could have been a cave dweller. He sounds like he’s at the edge of the fire, or in the deep snow, or in a ghostly forest, the coolness of conscious obvious strength, full tilt and vibrant with danger. "I keep a close watch on this heart of mine." Indeed. I must have recited those lines to myself a million times. Johnny’s voice was so big, it made the world grow small, unusually low pitched – dark and booming, and he had the right band to match him, the rippling rhythm and cadence of click-clack. Words that were the rule of law and backed by the power of God.
That is from Bob Dylan’s Chronicles, volume I. And I am picking the film to win Best Picture this year, whether or not it deserves it.