for 21 August 2000. Updated every WEEKDAY.
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Muggling Through When I got to the end of "Muggling Through" I kicked myself for not recognizing Reason's "Pop culture is good 'cause lotsa people like it" stance before seeing your byline. Bloom's an ass, but I have to agree with him about the Potter books. They're not bad; I can see why people enjoy them (I did too), but I quit half-way through the second book because there are too many other, better books to read. I have to wonder if a lot of Potter fans wouldn't feel the same way if they had someone more winsome than Bloom to help them find the really good stuff. Good critics are more valuable than the NYT best-seller's list. SMTIRCAHIAGEHLT Michael Straight <straight@email.unc.edu> Who says everyone has to run around reading really good books all the time? There's plenty of room in the world for OK books, especially when they're made for children. But you're right — we've spent a long time reading books based on whether or not they got good reviews in the NYT Review of Books. Boy, did we end up reading some bad books. While You Were Gone? What a turd. Gripefully yours, Sucksters  Dear Mr. Mxyzptlk, what a great job of pricking of Harold Bloom's flatulently over-inflated balloon. As one who had a chance to observe Bloom in action some years back —when he was a guest speaker at a conference on fantasy and science fiction lit where I gave a paper —I relished every word. Actually, I think Bloom is quite good as long as he sticks to the turf he knows, that of English Romanticism. He deserves some real credit for having rehabilitated Romanticism from the trash can to which the New Critics had consigned it. I am old enough (56 going on 57) to have had an instructor as an undergraduate at San Diego State College who was a Yale product, a student of Maynard Mack, Cleanth Brooks, and W.K. Wimsatt, who could hardly mention Shelley's name without foaming at the mouth. What I find interesting is how quickly Bloom got off the "deconstructionist" bandwagon once he saw it was running out of gas —probably the guilt by association with Paul de Man's political past unnerved him as well. But the pompously oracular position Bloom is trying to strike on these shores is utterly farcical, quite apart from the conceptually threadbare quality of his most recent excogitations on literature. Bloom seems to be aspiring to the sort of eminence held by European intellectual figures like Martin Heidegger, Theodor Adorno, J.-P. Sartre, or Jacques Lacan. But those characters were a dying breed at the height of their fame, and no one in this country has ever occupied a comparable position —all to the good, as far as I'm concerned. Henry David Thoreau remains the prototypic American intellectual in my books. But Bloom is hardly alone in suffering from this folie de grandeur. Susan Sontag, who used to offer an interesting antidote to the pieties of the academic establishment, has become just as stuffy, if not as overtly conservative, as HB —she seems to have taken herself for the reincarnation of Hannah Arendt. Once more, my congratulations! Best wishes, David Clayton <daveclayton@worldnet.att.net> Oh, intellectuals and all their foamings at the mouth. It's enough to make you eat a six pack of chocolatey ho-hos and watch 10 straight hours of Brittany babbling on about her oh-so-precious virginity on Big Brother. Thinking the Salon Big Brother coverage deserves a Pulitzer Prize... Sucksters For what it's worth, I was watching Letterman or one of the other late night talk shows when Bill Cosby came on in order to promote his (then) new movie, Leonard Part VI. He actually apologized for the poor quality of the movie, stating in his own defense that, "They payed me an awful lot of money." I believe that this apology came even before the move came out. However, this incident was so many years ago, that my precise memory of it has faded. Mark H. Ehrlich, Esq. <mhe@aviationattorney.com> That would have to have happened many years ago, because we're pretty sure that most promotional contracts celebrities sign state pretty clearly that you're not allowed to openly trash a movie as long as it's in the theaters. Or maybe that's something their contracts should say. Either way, it's amazing he got away with it. If only everyone would tell the truth, we'd never have to waste our time with shitty movies again. Damn that Joel Siegel! Sucksters 10 points if you get the reference. With respect to today's Suck, I think Harold is suffering from a mental attitude that does not allow him to take a more sociological approach to reading. The readers of recondite stuff don't need his approval, and those of us who are Potter fans are fans because the books are either 'cracking good reads' or because for all their flaws we can close our eyes and see the story happening in a way TV can't touch, or maybe because of the unbelievably angry subtext of the books, which takes on the British class system with about as much steam as George Orwell. JK writes from the rage of the outsider and this animates her stories above the usual kiddie kark. And she dares to be politically incorrect, which takes more balls than the feminists are displaying these days, alas. Critical thinking, I agree, is missing. I can wail at the wall of western civilization along with Prof Bloom on that one. But the smartest purveyors of literature use the popular stuff to point to Other Things; they don't sniff and wail about clichés. It's a long way from Archie comics to Maus, and it's a fuck of a long way from Transformers to Ulysses, but it's up to the critical thinkers to connect the dots, and I don't see Bloom doin' it. Thanks for a good column. Best regards, Allegra Sloman (Mrs.) <allegra.sloman@xantrex.com> Wow, sniffing and wailing about clichés sounds pretty fun. Suck: Sniffing and Wailing About Cliches Since 1995. Sucksters Whee! The People Note that, by your definition, Paris is a theme park. While business is still done there, it's all been moved to the outskirts (easily reached by excellent public transportation), where highly efficient high rises hold the high-tech companies that power France (and that the French prefer to pretend don't exist). Downtown is Gigi and baguettes and the world's best produce and some really pretty street scenes. It's all done so well that the Parisians, by and large, don't seem to realize they're extras in the park. It's not unique to Paris of course: there's Prague and Florence and Amsterdam and.... It's just that Paris is bigger and does it better.I'm sure there's a moral there somewhere. Alan Kornheiser <ASKornheiser@prodigy.net> I'm more than suggest Europe be viewed a gigantic theme park complex, if only for the chance all currency would then be destroyed in favor of the convenient, around-the-neck day pass. 40th Street Black Hit & Run Dear Sucksters: Nice to see the Great Patriotic War get its correct recognition. Nobody who wasn't there, or at least hasn't seen the remains, can conceive of what the Russian people suffered. The Russians, at least, still remember. A visit to St Petersburg (nee Leningrad - where are the Snowdens of yesterday?) is incomplete without a few trips to the Summer Palaces, and every room shows what they looked like after the Germans left. Almost unbelievable mindless destruction, for no real reason. The Amber Room - where in Germany is it buried? When you read that the Russians won't return war booty, take a look at what they're owed. In theory, war vets still get preferential treatment in the subways; and you won't find a lot of people who don't think they deserve it. Which brings me, without noticeable transition, to my rant about "the greatest generation." Yeah, they were all seriously brave guys. My father, my uncle, my girl friends' fathers: serious bravery. But if they (or, more fairly, their fathers and older brothers) hadn't criminally fucked up before then, would all that bravery have been necessary? The Great Depression was, more than anything else, the fruit of incompetent fiscal policies. The Second World War was a function of massive moral cowardice and a refusal of the US to take its responsibilities seriously. Just as adventure is somebody being uncomfortable far away, bravery is the result of somebody making a very bad bet that has to be paid off, in blood. Bear that in mind the next time somebody whines about how "they don't make them the way they used to." Alan Kornheiser "Insulter of both national and personal dignity. <askornheiser@prodigy.net> Sherman Alexie had a good insight on that not making them the way they used to business. During a recent tirade against the founding fathers, he said, "I would take any white man of the current generation over George Washington, who was an imperialist, racist, sexist, homophobic jerk." Sucksters Greetings Sucksters; A leftist candidate (hmm, would that be Unsafe at any Speed Nader) declaring the triumph of collectivism over the evils of the Nazi War Machine and asking us to celebrate with another "May Day." It would then be up to the real lovers of liberty to point out that Nazism is but another version of the collectivist mind set. Stalin, Hitler; does it really matter who steals your life? Regards, Daniel Corvino Trenton, NJ <DANCORV@aol.com> We don't know who stole our lives, Daniel, but we know our hearts were stolen long ago by the Trentonian, the best-kept secret in American newspapers. You lucky stiff, you get to read that fine publication every day! Sucksters The Code War You wrote: "The revelation that Oracle hired a group of bungling private dicks to dig into the finances (and through the trash) of trade groups that support Microsoft surprised exactly no one." These "trade groups," as you call them, were actually lobbying organizations that were part of Microsoft's "Freedom to Innovate" campaign. As you may recall, this campaign was aimed at getting a favorable decision for Microsoft in their antitrust dispute with the Justice Department. When Microsoft covertly funds "trade groups" and "grass roots" efforts to affect a decision of this magnitude, the public's interest is clearly involved.Oracle performed a service by exposing this covert funding. The fact that it indirectly helped Oracle by making Microsoft look bad is beside the point. A question to ask: why don't media organizations get involved in this sort of reporting? This would have been a great story for some up-and-coming investigative "new media" site. This trash-digging story is not just about Oracle - the facts that they uncovered about Microsoft are the real news. Gary Stephens <garyrstephens@yahoo.com> Yeah, yeah, yeah. Blah, blah, blah. Microsoft gives out money in exchange for good press? Why, I'm... I'm shocked! The fact that the folks up Redmond way are unethical scumbags doesn't exactly come as a surprise. But to defend Oracle as champions of democracy and the flag-bearers for a laggardly Forth Estate is a load of crap. Oracle was looking out for exactly one thing: Oracle, just as Microsoft was looking out for exactly one thing: Microsoft. They're both bottom-feeders, equally so, who wouldn't recognize fair play if it walked up and kicked them in the ass. Bill Gates and Larry Ellison deserve each other. Greg Knauss Are you the guy that did that wicked parody of Slashdot? <bob@linux-mag.com> Yep. Unless you're armed and angry. Then it was Polly. Greg Knauss As someone who soldiered for a few years (that's in a green beret and jungle fatigues, not Polo over Dockers) I propose the following Turing-like test for software-biz- as-war. When one company can get someone to strap explosives to his or her body, walk into the executive suite of the competition, and detonate themselves, then software biz is war. Love and kisses and the answer to the question "What is the Spirit of the Bayonet?"* * "To kill!" RCR <rroist@home.com> Actually, I know a few consultants who would be happy to do this, but only because they think they wouldn't have to stick around to see how it works out. And while actual murder hasn't played into the software industry much yet - (Dramatic chord) that we know of - can Outlook Express be considered anything but a terrorist act? Greg Knauss I like it. From the employees perspective, it couldn't get much worse in the shallow end of the software industry - games. Check out the fatbabies.com forums. I learn all kinds of things there. For example: did you know that game testing causes body odor? Or that code writing makes your wife ugly? Neither did I, until I started surfing the internet while I was on the clock. jpowers <jpowers500@worldnet.att.net> Y'know, in the great Cold War of the software industry, people who browse at work are the moral equivalent of slacker, drop-out, stoner hippies. Dude! Pass the bong! Greg Knauss |
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