Trotsky

The TV series on Netflix called Trotsky is a Russian production with English subtitles, and the Russian spoken sounds rough and sinister. Maybe that’s because of the way the actors deliver their lines, or the nature of the subject, I’m not sure. But I found the treatment of the subject compelling.
In the first scene Trotsky, then known as Lev Bronstein, is in prison, and begins a riot in protest about a beating administered to one of the prisoners. The head of the prison takes him to his office, challenges him to a chess match (a game at which Russians are particularly adept), and lectures him on how to use power. Impressed, Bronstein takes the name of the warden as his revolutionary pseudonym: Trotsky.
In the next scene he is in the armored train he used as head of the Red Army he did much to organize as the Russian civil war began in the wake of the Bolshevik coup in November of 1917. He has a group of soldiers shot for running from battle, but then inspires the rest to return to battle and win.
In the next scene he is living in Mexico with his wife and being interviewed by a Frank Jacson, whom those familiar with the story know as the assassin sent by Josef Stalin to murder him. Jacson poses as a writer for a magazine sent to write about Trotsky. He criticizes Trotsky, but has a reluctant admiration for him. Trotsky is justifying his career to Jacson, though he pretends he doesn’t care about his opinion. This becomes clear when the series shows him talking to dead people from his past. To one Trotsky insists he doesn’t fear death. The specter replies that people who don’t fear death are already dead.
From there the story moves to a Socialist meeting where some of the stars of the Russian party were meeting, like Plekhanov (more or less the grand old man of the group), Lenin, and Parvus (a paradoxic character who was very well off, but who turned out to be a double agent). Trotsky, brilliant and arrogant, is disrespectful to all of them. One scene has him walking out of the meeting and Stalin seeking to greet him. He ignores Stalin, suggesting this is where Stalin’s resentment of him began. I don’t know if that’s historically accurate.
Principal actors in the series manage to closely resemble the characters they represent (except Stalin is too tall), to the credit of the casting director, incidentally.
At the same time as the conference Trotsky was meeting his wife. He had had two children with a previous “wife” who had insisted he leave Siberia (where he had been exiled) without her. In London he met his second wife, Natalia, with whom he stayed for the rest of his life. The film portrays her as a sophisticate who invites Trotsky to a party in which the guests are using drugs. He denounces them for that.
Later they travel to Vienna where, according to the film, he meets Freud, and pretty successfully debates him, though Freud also has insights into his character. I’m not too sure about historical accuracy in this case either. It’s possible he could have met Freud, but I haven’t heard of any documentation, especially not of Trotsky successfully debating Freud.
Another scene of doubtful accuracy occurs during the depiction of the revolution of 1905. An incident that helped set off that revolution was a group of workers led by a priest to petition the Tsar which was fired on by Cossacks with many casualties. Trotsky is shown organizing another protest group, then sending them home when they’re confronted by troops. Good for him if he actually did that, but I find no mention of it elsewhere.
Almost the only place in which he is less than confident is in 1917 when he has returned to Russia after the Tsar has abdicated and finds himself confronted with anti-Semitism. Russia, like most European countries, didn’t like Jews. He and some of his children are rescued by a worker who has read and approved of Trotsky’s work, and wants to be friends with him. Trotsky is less than enthusiastic, despite the help this worker gives him, including getting him released from prison and prompting Alexander Kerensky, leader of the interim government, to escape the country. When Trotsky has the chance he sends the worker to the front where he is killed, later admitting it was because the man had seen him vulnerable.
The film also has Trotsky beginning the Bolshevik coup two days before it was planned by Lenin and others. He then presents the leadership of the government to Lenin because Lenin had previously told him that Russians would never accept a Jew as their leader. The historicity of this incident is questionable too. Trotsky was certainly brilliant and able (which aroused jealousy among other Bolsheviks, especially Stalin), but this seems unlikely.
His next assignment was negotiating a peace treaty with Germany. The treaty was very unfair to Russia, as German soldiers had penetrated deep into Russian territory, so Trotsky had little leverage. He attempted to get more by publishing all the secret treaties found in Russian diplomatic headquarters, something I thought was a very cool thing to do, something like the Wikileaks of today. He hoped this would help start the world revolution Bolsheviks were looking forward to, but it didn’t. He had to accept the treaty, but the USSR repudiated it before long.
He then began organizing the Red Army, which initially didn’t have enough men and wasn’t well trained. He insisted on using soldiers from the previous regime to make the army effective, with political commissars assigned to each general to make sure they weren’t trying to prevent the army from winning, a system that was carried over into World War II.
After that he tried to oppose Stalin’s growing power. Stalin was General Secretary of the party, and was able to give people he liked jobs so they would support him. He began getting a bit arrogant, and insulted Lenin’s wife. Lenin asked Trotsky to help him denounce Stalin at the next party congress, but Lenin had a stroke just before then, and wasn’t able to speak at it. Trotsky didn’t bring the issue of Stalin’s rudeness up. It’s doubtful it would have mattered if he had. Stalin had created a strong foundation for his power. Had Lenin’s health allowed, removing him might have been possible, but Stalin had a genius for building and retaining power. Nor is it entirely certain that Lenin really wanted to oust Stalin from the government, though he may have wanted  to punish him.Trotsky alone wasn’t able to oppose Stalin, at least partly because he’d alienated other Bolsheviks as well. From that point on it was a matter of time until Trotsky was ousted from the government and then the country.
The TV series doesn’t cover that. Trotsky spent time in a number of countries trying to oppose Stalinism, but not very successfully. His last stop was in Mexico, where he was killed in 1940. The series has a different take on that too. When he and his wife realize who Jacson is (his real name was Ramon Mercader)  they are at first frightened. Then Trotsky says, “Don’t worry, it will be okay.” Then he goads Jacson into killing him with an ice axe (used for mountain climbing, I think). According to the portrayal, he really wasn’t afraid of death. Maybe he even desired it.
The real Trotsky was a giant. The Bolshevik movement attracted quite a number of very able people, though in retrospect we wonder how they could have been so misled. They were fanatics, absolutely sure that what they were trying to do was right. People in Russia had been talking about revolution since the 1820s, to the alarm of some, and with the support of others. The Tsarist regime was an autocracy, and the people wanted freedom. The Bolsheviks may have believed they wanted it too, but power took precedence: once they had it they built a military and secret police to keep it, and Trotsky wasn’t the least of those. He was prominent in building the Red Army, he restored the death penalty, and helped set up labor and concentration camps, many of the mechanisms that Stalin was able to use against him and millions of others. If Trotsky and the others did believe in freedom, it was vastly ironic that they made a government much worse than the one they replaced.
More ironic than that was the forced collectivization which disrupted Russian agriculture and killed millions of people, but did give the government the money to modernize their armed forces, which enabled them to beat the Nazis and play the major role in winning the European part of World War II. They did need a great deal of aid from Britain and the USA in the form of tanks, planes, telephone wire, and other things, but they had to do the fighting, and did it very well. The commander in chief of Britain’s armed forces said he hadn’t believed the Russians could win. Hitler thought he could beat them quickly, and very nearly did. We would prefer to believe it took a democracy to beat Hitler, but that wasn’t so.
But there’s a reason the war is referred to in Russia as the Great Patriotic War. Stalin wasn’t stupid enough to ask the Russians to fight a war to save Communism. Had the Nazis been less brutal in their invasion many Russians might have sided with them, but that’s not how it happened.
Would things have been different if Trotsky had been leading the country, and not Stalin? I find Trotsky somewhat more sympathetic, but not a great deal. Executing soldiers who don’t want to fight, backing the Red Terror, labor and concentration camps I find difficult to sympathize with. I would never be in a position to make such decisions, but if I did have to I can’t guarantee I wouldn’t do much the same. Not to do at least some of those things might mean not surviving myself, and giving up the dream that Trotsky and a great many others had put a great deal of labor into. Too bad the manifestation of the dream turned so horrible, but at the same time Communists have certainly not been the only people to use unsavory means.

James M. Buchanan, Revolutionary Stealth Strategist

James M. Buchanan was an economist whose name isn’t well known, but whose influence is being widely felt throughout the country because of political initiatives that allegedly suppress voting rights for various people, and attack working conditions, public services, and consumer rights.

Though he, according to Wikipedia, identified as a socialist in his youth, he eventually attended the University of Chicago (after World War II, in which he had served) and became influenced by his economics professor there. By the 1950s, when teaching at the University of Virginia, he had become an extreme advocate of capitalism. Historian Nancy MacLean characterizes his view as “stark”, and has written a book,  Democracy in Chains, about it, and how he managed to spread his influence.

She compares him to Milton Friedman, whose views may have been somewhat similar (they both belonged to the Mont Pelerin society, a group for economists), but who had a much more attractive personality, and made an optimistic case for free market capitalism. MacLean is quoted as saying (ineteconomics.org), “Buchanan was the dark side of this: he thought, ok, fine, they can make a case for free markets, but everybody knows free markets have externalities and other problems. So he wanted to keep people from believing that government could be the alternative to these problems.” (externalities are the costs or benefits that affect people who didn’t choose to incur the costs or benefits–pollution is one such cost).

That view fits very well with modern conservative beliefs: “Government is the problem, not the solution.” And that fits together with Buchanan’s view (which many wealthy people were quite willing to endorse) that “The people who needed protection were property owners, and their rights could only be secured through constitutional limits to prevent the majority of voters from encroaching on them….”(https://www,inet.org/perspectives/blog.meet-the-economist–behind–the-one-percent’s-stealth-takeover-of-america ). This is because of Buchanan’s bleak view that nobody worked for anything that wasn’t of direct benefit to themselves, including legislators, government employees, teachers, doctors, and civil rights advocates. The inet.org article about him says, “They wanted to control others, and wrest away their resources,” and quotes him as saying, “‘Each person seeks mastery over a world of slaves.'” The “makers and takers” narrative popular in conservative circles.

That’s not entirely untrue, since many of us at least have self-centered and self-seeking aspects, but restraining democracy to protect property owners ONLY seems an extreme solution. MacLean believes that “Buchanan wanted a private governing elite of corporate power that was wholly released from public accountability.” Charles and David Koch thought this a goal worth striving for, and spent a lot of money spreading this view, funding institutions and politicians that would promulgate it, and begin crafting and passing legislation to implement it. Other groups and individuals funded the process too, including companies like: Shell Oil, Exxon, Chase Manhattan Bank, Ford, IBM, and General Motors. That kind of support bought a lot of almost subliminal publicity and almost unnoticed activism. “The economist saw that his vision would never come to fruition by focusing on who rules. It was much better to focus on the rules themselves, and that required a “constitutional revolution.”

“Suppressing voting, changing legislative processes so a normal majority could no longer prevail, sowing public distrust of government institutions–all these were tactics toward the goal. But the Holy Grail was the Constitution: alter it, and you could increase and secure the power of the wealthy in a way that no politician could ever challenge.” (ineteconomics.org)

At an event of the like-minded, “MacLean recounts that Buchanan…focused on such affronts to capitalism as environmentalism and public health and welfare, expressing eagerness to dismantle Social Security, Medicaid, and Medicare as well as kill public education because it tended to foster community values. Feminism had to go too: the scholars considered it a socialist project.” (ineteconomics.org).

The ineteconomics.org article sees his work as paralleling that of John C. Calhoun of South Carolina, a senator and seventh vice president of the United States, who sought to protect the institution of slavery, saw the southern planters as “victims of the majority”, and “sought to create ‘constitutional gadgets’ to constrict the operations of government.” In other words, slave owners were claiming to be victims–practicing “identity politics”–long before Progressives were.

Where did Buchanan’s ideas come from? He grew up in Tennessee during the Depression. His grandfather had been an unpopular governor in the 1890s, and according to the Atlantic he “grew up in an atmosphere of half-remembered glory and bitterness, without either money or useful connections.” MacLean says Buchanan was involved in the pushback against the Brown vs Board of Education decision which attempted to force desegregation of schools. Conservatives had been opposing extension of government power since the 1930s, but ordinary people liked Social Security, and weren’t too attracted–until the possibility of desegregation. According to Wikipedia, both libertarian and nonlibertarian writers question MacLean’s contention of Buchanan’s racism, saying that he played a role in inviting an anti-apartheid activist to the University of Virginia in 1965, and condemned Jim Crow laws at that time. She says he was careful to couch his objections in economic rather than racist terms.

But the extremity of his views suggests that he shared the resentment of many ordinary Southerners, whether his was about race, or not. Such resentment is common in a number of circles now, and has historically caused acts of violence. Segregation was an issue that focused Southern bitterness about their defeat in the Civil War, just as the loss of the First World War paved the way for Hitler’s ascendancy. His views are popular now in some circles, and are remarkably dualistic. The idea that wealthy property owners are good, and everyone else bad–only parasites and thieves–speaks of a great fear and simplistic mindset.

The trauma of the Civil War, still remembered by many Southerners, justifies their conservatism to themselves. They felt attacked before the war, and WERE attacked during it, with catastrophic effect. What many prefer not to remember is that they had, for nearly two hundred years, been attacking and kidnapping black Africans whom they then forced to work for them. Maybe the idea of karma wasn’t current before the war, but Southerners felt even then that they had to justify their treatment of blacks. That’s where the racism became attached to slavery. Race had never particularly been an issue with regard to slavery in the Old World, where ANYBODY could be a slave.

Was race the issue, or one of them, that drove Buchanan’s work and point of view? MacLean thinks it at least played a part, and says he trained students how to disagree with the Brown decision the implementation of which, in Virginia (where he was then employed by the University of Virginia) was delayed five years during which white families were able to send children to private schools (and were reimbursed by tax deductions), while black children simply weren’t able to go to school, something those who objected to desegregation may have been quite happy about. Teaching blacks to read had been a crime during the time of slavery. If they were able to read they would be able to find ways to resist the ways in which they were mistreated–as they did about the time schools began to be desegregated in Virginia, and (according to Doug Stafford, chief strategist for Rand Paul, as quoted in Time Magazine), when the public schools reopened, few white students returned to them.

MacLean remarks in an interview with Slate magazine that Buchanan’s view wasn’t primarily racist, but more driven by the knowledge that black voters have a different experience from whites, and will never vote for the kinds of laws he wanted to establish. Nor would most women, or other groups. “We make a mistake when we think these are just reactionary prejudices, and we need to see them as shrewd calculations to keep people who would oppose this vision away from the polls.”

But Buchanan’s viewpoint seems to have been more about class divides (racism can be considered closely akin to class, since blacks and other minorities have been more often poor in this country than not). Why did he believe property owners had to be especially protected, when their wealth enabled them to better protect themselves than could the poor and vulnerable? Just because the United States is called a democracy (inaccurately–it’s really a republic) doesn’t mean there aren’t plenty of people who really don’t want ordinary people to be politically represented.

One might think giving ordinary workers more of an economic stake in the country would make the states more united; conservatives don’t seem to see it that way. Does this sort of paranoia suggest a guilty conscience? Conservatives are always interested in discrediting Marxism, and of course the manifestation of Communism has been horrible in most cases. But that doesn’t mean Marx didn’t have any valid insights. On some level the ultra-rich may be aware of how badly they’ve mistreated their fellow citizens, and that when they accuse the poor of practicing, or wanting to practice class warfare, it’s the wealthy that have been conducting it all along, and usually much more successfully than the poor.

Consider that Democrats are accused of wanting people (especially immigrants) to vote illegally, while Republicans are accused of suppressing the votes of people who have a perfect right to vote. Whether either of these accusations is true isn’t the point: that each is seen the way they are means that Democrats are more inclusive, with Republicans more exclusive.

Of course there are always problems with democracy, as with any other governing system. But if Buchanan is to demand “fairness” for property owners (the wealthy) shouldn’t he demand it for others too? The wealthy can defend themselves in comprehensive ways others can’t. Demonizing anyone who isn’t wealthy brings civil war closer. No one can deny the existence of crime, but there’s no question that it’s not the exclusive property of one class. White collar crime is crime indulged in by people in high positions, and is often difficult to detect, much less punish. Because people with high positions can behave criminally, they can also cause far more damage than street criminals. There are at least two tracks in the justice system, and if you’re on the lower track you’re probably out of luck. On the upper track you’ll probably get away with bad behavior.

Why exactly did Buchanan want so badly to protect the wealthy? He didn’t start out wealthy himself, but since his grandfather had been a governor of Tennessee (and unpopular) his family probably had been wealthy. How did they lose their wealth? Was it bad choices on their part, or was it taken in some questionable fashion? That might explain the depth of his bitterness, and willingness to advocate really radical measures to protect wealthy people. Or was it just abstract belief not reinforced by personal experience? I can’t find enough detail about his family to say.

In any case, his views on democracy were different from those of many, as Michael Chwe explained in the Washington Post. He says that Buchanan’s ideal society was noncoercive. That, to him, meant that it should be almost impossible to pass laws, unless they were unanimously approved, because penalties for breaking laws are coercive. Thus, employers should be allowed to refuse to hire or serve people on any basis whatsoever, which provided a rationale for people to send their children to private schools so they wouldn’t have to associate with minorities.

He also disapproved of public demonstrations against perceived injustices (something many people consider firmly in the realm of democracy). “,..Buchanan…embraced ‘order’ and insisted something must be done about students who have not done anything illegal but merely disregard ‘ordinary rules of conduct’ and ‘obstruct others’, which are of course part of peaceful civil disobedience. He also called them ‘child-men’, ‘animals’, and ‘parasites’. Why was he so afraid of protesters he had to call them dehumanizing names? Does a person who truly believes in democracy call his opponents names, or does that indicate a belief in something else? To me it signifies a rigid personality. Though he must have been able to tolerate disagreement, since many of his colleagues saw things differently, he seems not to have felt it was legitimate to disagree with him.

Chwe goes on to say that he believes in the field of economics, public choice, which Buchanan was instrumental in founding and defending. He gave talks at George Mason University, where many of Buchanan’s supporters work, and that they treated him well. He adds that it’s possible to find intellectual inspiration in Buchanan’s work without agreeing on all his ideas.

The ideal of noncoercion certainly isn’t entirely wrong, but isn’t entirely practical either. Quakers believe in noncoercion, and take a lot of time in consideration and discussion before making unanimous decisions. I doubt this would be possible on a national level.

And the refusal to make new laws, especially laws to correct faults with the status quo would perpetuate injustice. Of course it could also create some, but it seems clear (at least to me) that such profound conservatism wants almost NOTHING to change, including unjust social practices. The majority can certainly tyrannize; more often it has been the minority, in human history.

Buchanan had the chance to put his ideas to the test with the military coup in Chile in 1973, when Salvador Allende (who had won the election) was deposed and Augusto Pinochet installed as leader. Pinochet liked Buchanan’s ideas, used a number of them, took advice from Buchanan–and Chile’s economy went down the tubes. MacLean says Buchanan didn’t seem to be too upset about the human rights violations Pinochet’s regime committed, though the regime was far from being a democracy. He also took the precaution of not advertising his involvement there. MacLean says he’s unlike Milton Friedman in this way, since Friedman liked being center of attention, and had a “sunny” personality (more pleasant?).

She adds that his first major work in his field of public choice economics, The Calculus of Consent, “…he seemed to believe that people of good will could come close to something like unanimity on the basic rules for how to govern our society on things like taxation and government spending and so forth. And by the mid-1970s he concluded that that was impossible…that there was no way people who were not wealthy, were not large property owners, would agree to the kind of rules he was proposing.” In his book, Limits of Liberty, “He actually said in that book the only hope might be despotism.”

And we’re seeing the beginnings of despotism. Suppressing voting is despotism. So is exporting jobs, and then blaming workers for not being able to earn a living. Withholding medical care from anyone who can’t afford insurance or to pay for it outright is too. And then blaming people who protest against policies that injure them.

The details are different, but anyone who disagreed with the Communists in Russia, China, and other countries had no right to protest. The repression in this country isn’t enforced by military power–yet. But proponents of limited government think a strong military is one of the few legitimate functions of a federal government, and having one means it can be used repressively, if anyone wants to. It has been in the past, and rarely for the benefit of poor people. If Buchanan’s vision is implemented, it would probably have to be. That vision would essentially constitute a one-party government in which only a minority would be represented.

That’s what Communism was and is. It hardly matters that the economic vision is different; like Communism, the world designed by Buchanan and the Koch brothers would be one in which anyone who disagreed would be punished. No debate. No representation. The owners of the country, as John Jay put it, would be the ones running it. All the laws would be on their side. There would be no checks or balances. Just a foot forever kicking anyone in the face who didn’t love Big Brother.

 

The Praise Singer

I have read Mary Renault’s last novel, The Praise Singer, three times, and have just been reminded why I couldn’t remember much about it: although I always enjoy her prose, and learn something from each of her historical novels, in this one most of the interesting things take place off-stage.

The novel purports to be the memoir of Simonides of Keos, one of the great poets of ancient Greece; more recent than Homer, but before the golden age of Pericles, and even before the glories of Marathon and Salamis. It’s a period we casual history buffs aren’t so familiar with.

Keos (now Kea) is an island not far from the Greek mainland, and Athens. Apparently it was an austere place where, even if one were wealthy, one was not allowed to flaunt it. Not much is known about the life of Simonides, so Renault had to interpret it. Because he rarely visited the island in later life, she speculated that he and his parents didn’t get along. It was already known that he was ugly, which would have been especially hard to bear in an openly bisexual culture in which love between males was as celebrated as love between man and woman, if not more so.

Renault has him meet his teacher by chance on Keos and travel with him to Ephesos (mentioned in the New Testament), which shortly surrenders to the Persians, who are expanding their empire in what is now Turkey, but was then the region of Greek cities of Ionia. From Ephesos she has them travel to Samos, the large island just off what is now the Turkish coast which was safe from the Persians until its ruler was lured into Persian territory and murdered.

Simonides lives in the era in which words and music had not yet been separated. To be a poet meant that one “wrote” music as well as words, performed one’s songs solo with the kithara (a relative of lute, harp, and guitar), or trained and led a chorus. This was the top of the performing ladder, and singers like Simonides performed for the nobility, and even for heads of state.

When they reach Samos, Renault has the teacher be unable  to attract the attention of the tyrant (tyrant was a more neutral word then than now), and losing heart. He doesn’t have enough money to last long without performing for the nobility, nor enough to travel. Simonides saves the situation by finding a tavern to perform in, which the teacher finds shameful: they are supposed to be above performing in such places. Simonides is more practical, and finds the practice of performing useful. He returns to Keos to sing in a festival, and when back in Samos finds his teacher has died. He leaves Samos to live on family property in Euboia, the long island parallel with the coast of Attica, then visits Athens often enough to come to the attention of Peisistratos.

Peisistratos was the tyrant of Athens for most of the period between 561-527 BC. He had been young when Solon instituted reforms in Athens and Attica that changed the bias towards oligarchy in the direction of democracy. Before, anyone unable to pay their rents was liable to be enslaved, and rarely was anyone but the wealthy able to own land.

Renault has Simonides invited to a dinner by Peisistratos, then engage in nostalgic conversation with him about his relationship with Solon. Solon had opposed his becoming first Archon (magistrate) of Athens because he feared his corruption by power. Renault has him say he and Solon still loved each other, and that he frequently asked Solon for advice. According to Wikipedia, Solon died about three years after Peisistratos’s accession to power, so I’m unsure how accurate that is, but it does seem that Peisistratos enforced Solon’s laws and was therefore popular with most citizens, though not so much by the nobility, who resented having lost any power, though they remained far more powerful than the poor.

Peisistratos is also known for having had Homer’s verse (primarily the Iliad) written down to preserve it. Simonides (probably like most poets of the time) doesn’t believe this is necessary, but when the lines are read to him he contributes a line that hadn’t been included, and hears two lines he’s never heard before, and is somewhat reconciled to the idea.

Peisistratos is succeeded by his two sons who together seem to be a reasonable facsimile of him. Hippias is solemn and responsible; Hipparchos loves the arts and pleasure. He is the more social of the two, inviting friends to parties frequently, and using his great wealth to promote both arts and friends. Simonides likes him, not only as a friend, but as a patron.

There are descriptions of the Olympics and various other festivals, and Simonides comments on some of the pieces he wrote at various times, but we’re handicapped by being unable to hear them (we could read those that have survived). It’s interesting that he met Pythagoras, Aeschylus, Heraclitus, and one or two others, these being names still remembered today. And it’s nice that he depicts his relationship with Bacchylides, whom Renault makes his nephew. Bacchylides was another poet of the time, known to have associated with Simonides. Renault believes Theasides, another historical character, to have been Simonides brother, since they both have a father from the same place with quite an unusual name. Simonides becomes Bacchylides teacher, and Bacchylides stays with him until death, which comes at an advanced age far from Athens.

The reason is civil war. Hipparchos is shown to frequently change male lovers, but after some time he begins pursuing Harmodios, a very handsome son of a noble family, and refuses to take no for an answer. Harmodios has Aristogeiton, from another noble family, as a lover, and greatly resents the behavior of Hipparchos, especially when Hipparchos excludes the younger sister of Harmodios from a chorus at a festival to which she has every right to belong. Harmodios then kills Hipparchos, setting off civil disorder.

While Simonides is sad that his friend Hipparchos so forgot himself as to behave with such impropriety, and for the death he suffered as a result, the tone of the book is mostly elegiac. Simonides is a man happy because he has excelled at his chosen vocation, has had the opportunity to travel, and to make many friends, some of whom are still remembered today. This was Renault’s last novel, so it’s not hard to see it as expressing her satisfaction with her own life, her own ability to excel at the particular art she chose, and having been able to live up to her own standards. This novel is less memorable and dramatic than her earlier ones, but still enjoyable, not least for the happiness and satisfaction it expresses.

It also continues her interest and concern about how government ought to behave. Governments that work for the good of the majority are usually popular. Those who put the good of the wealthy minority ahead of the majority are those which cause dissatisfaction, and especially when the powerful behave inappropriately. Renault comments in an afterword that she followed one of the famous historians, who corrected the propaganda that Harmodios and Aristogeiton killed Hipparchos because of their democratic principles. They came from noble families, and if they wished to start a revolution, they were disappointed. She adds that this is possibly the first verifiable instance of propaganda. As we know, little has changed in that respect during the past two and a half thousand years. Social paradigms and religious beliefs change, but human behavior is a great deal more recalcitrant.

Renault’s Greece isn’t heaven. There is as much corruption and other forms of bad behavior there and at that time as now. But her novels, though reflecting the dark side of human nature, reflect its positive side too. I wish there were more of her novels I could discover.

Alexander the Great

I was disappointed years ago when I found that Mary Renault, one of my favorite authors, was writing not only one book about Alexander the Great, but three. I was less interested in him than in her retelling of the Theseus legend, and was fascinated by the Mycenaen period of which we know far less than of classical Greece.

But on rereading the series now, I find that her treatment of Alexander the Great is perfectly in line with her other earlier novels about ancient Greece. Among her concerns is not only good government, but how humans can be better than we usually are. Theseus was her early exemplar of these concerns; it only made sense for her to treat Socrates and Plato, as well as Plato’s friend and disciple Dion of Syracuse, who tried, despite the tragic flaws which caused his failure, to bring good government to Syracuse. Alexander could be seen as a more successful attempt to give what most people wanted at that time–and possibly even at this.

He was Macedonian, and looked down on for that. The Macedonians seem to have been related to the Greeks (Renault depicts their speech as a Doric Greek dialect), but living far to the north of the famous Greek cities they had neither stable government nor intellectual development–until King Philip came along.

He was the first of the kings to not only manage to stay in his position for enough time to accomplish some things, but to also have a vision of what he wanted to accomplish: uniting Macedonia and preventing their neighbors from molesting them, to begin with. Not only that, but to be chosen, by a more or less united Greece, to free the Greek cities on the coast of what is now Turkey. These cities had been conquered during or after the Peloponessian war, and Greeks in general wanted them to be free again–but not to be freed by Philip.

The Greeks had tried most of the possible forms of government: monarchies, tyrannies (a tyrant was roughly the same as a dictator now), oligarchies, and democracies. All had become corrupt.

Alexander was born at the same time a general of his father’s won an important battle, his father’s horse won an important race, and someone burned down an important temple in Ephesus. Lots of omens there, along with dreams of a fire exiting Philip’s wife’s womb. That was almost equivalent to his being of divine birth, something he later claimed. Renault says, in an afterword, that we know very little about his early life, since the memoirs of his friends didn’t survive. We do know, however, that his mother and father didn’t get along.

His mother, Olympias, seems to have been known (with some excuse) as a witch. Renault has a very Freudian scene at the beginning of the novel, in which Alexander gets into his mother’s room at night, and is found there by his father who has come to join her. He is only four or five, but tells his father his mother doesn’t love him, and will marry HIM instead. But it later becomes clear he loves and admires his father TOO. His mother does not, and his father ceases to visit her bedroom.

Instead, Philip finds sex elsewhere, both from women and men (bisexuality is readily accepted in Macedonia, as in southern Greece), and when he is on campaign (frequently) he often takes a wife, even going so far as to go through the marriage rituals, though the connection generally ends after the campaign. These are usually women from barbaric tribes of the general area, and aren’t taken too seriously–except by Olympias. She is perpetually resentful, and her conflicts with Philip repeatedly wound Alexander, as do his own conflicts with his father.

Perhaps this is why he is so appreciative of love when he receives it, why he tries so hard to be better than all the rest so he deserves love, and why he so hates disloyalty. He is practically worshiped by the soldiers who follow him to Asia, where he stays the rest of his life. Eventually the soldiers get tired of continuing conquest, and refuse to go further, but that takes more than a decade.

Renault didn’t believe that he set out to conquer the world, only to free the Greek cities in what is now Turkey. But when, at the battle of Issos, the Persian Great King Darius turned and fled the battlefield leaving behind his wife, mother, and children, Renault has Alexander say he believed he could give the Persians better leadership.

He has been brought up not only with the example of his father, a very able politician as well as military man, but with the examples of Homer’s Iliad, and especially the example of Achilles, whom his family believed to be an ancestor. He readily criticized the high king Agamemnon for his conduct at Troy, which had instigated the events making Homer’s story. He saw that leaders who are seen to be unjust cause terrible trouble, and tried very hard to be just himself. Sparing the Persian royal family was unusual in a war leader of those times, but typical of Alexander’s behavior. It seems possible to say that he almost never killed in anger, and when he did he found it hard to forgive himself. War was a kind of problem for him to solve, and he was extremely talented and inventive in doing so. It was that aspect he loved, not the violence, though of course he was also an excellent fighter, frequently taking terrible risks.

The first of Renault’s novels, Fire From Heaven, is told by an omniscient narrator. The ancient legends are there, but Renault has to infer his early personality from his later. She sees him as a busy active boy, pursuing accomplishment very early, and refusing to allow fear a hold on him.

She has him kill his first man at age 12, without any documentary evidence (killing a man was a way to assert one’s manhood in Macedonian culture), but notes that he was a commander in the Macedonian army at age 16, and has troops following him without objection, strongly suggesting that they already knew he was competent at that age. He also served as regent while Philip was fighting at Byzantion, repelled rebel forces during that time, and founded a city. When Philip went south to fight against Athens and Thebes, who objected to his growing power, Alexander went with him as a commander and his cavalry did much to win the battle–at age 18. Two years later, after Philip was assassinated, Alexander became king, and entered Asia.

Renault’s second novel in the series, The Persian Boy, is told by the “boy” of the title, Bagoas, who is historical. Renault surmises that he was of noble blood.  As he a slave he would thus have commanded a high price, and have been that much more acceptable to Darius who becomes his owner until his defeat by Alexander. Bagoas then becomes Alexander’s lover. Renault portrays him as having been forced, after being castrated, into prostitution, citing the example of Phaedo, one of Socrates’ students (who apparently was freed at least partly through the influence of Socrates). It seems Persian nobility were particularly known for good looks, which made someone like Bagoas particularly desirable as a bedmate. He describes himself, however, as loving Alexander first for his qualities rather than his attractiveness.

Alexander, as was common in both Greece and Macedonia, was bisexual. His first lover was Hephaistion, also of noble blood, and almost his exact age. Renault remarks that ancient sources say Alexander was extremely moderate sexually, which suggests a low sex drive. It may well also reflect how active he was in other arenas almost all his life. As Renault portrays it, Alexander’s initial attraction to Hephaistion is mainly as an understanding friend. The sexual aspect of the relationship comes later. It’s also worth noting that despite his taking Bagoas as a lover, his bond with Hephaistion remained powerful. He was upset to the point almost of madness when Hephaistion died in Babylon. In the novel Bagoas frequently expresses jealousy to the reader, but not to Alexander, who would not have tolerated it.

It’s amazing how much ground Alexander covered. Genghis Khan conquered more territory, but few others came even close. He reached Afghanistan, what is now Pakistan, the area north of Iran known generally as Turkestan, and India. Some traders might have been that far, but probably few others.

One effect of his conquests was to make Greek the lingua franca of the Middle East for some centuries to come. One thing he TRIED to do, but with mixed success, was to encourage his men to accept the Persians and other peoples as their equals. One method was trying to get the Macedonians to prostrate themselves in his presence, as Persians did to the Great KIng. The experiment wasn’t successful. King was an elective office in Macedonia, so his soldiers weren’t going to accept a practice that put them in an inferior position. They were allowed to bluntly express their opinions to their king. Nor were they amenable to accepting the more sophisticated Persians as equals. They resented his having married first a noblewoman of Bactria (somewhere in the vicinity of Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Turkestan today), then a daughter of the Great King he had conquered. They wanted him to marry a Macedonian, though Macedonia was far away, but Alexander suited himself in marriage.

Only slightly more successful was his arranging eighty Macedonian soldiers to marry Persian women at the same time he married the daughter of Darius, whom he had defeated. No doubt some couples were happy, but a number got rid of their Persian wives. Some Macedonians were open-minded, but on the whole the culture was xenophobic. One of Alexander’s virtues was being able to assess the worth of men of different cultures.

But Greeks would be mixing with Middle Eastern peoples for centuries to come. Alexander’s empire didn’t last as a whole, but in three major segments until the Romans took over: Macedonia, Seleucia, and Egypt. And even after the Romans became overlords the government of the eastern empire, which survived the fall of the western empire and became known as Byzantine, centered on what is now Turkey, was predominantly Greek. I think it would be fair to say that Greeks never again had a leader as famous or influential as Alexander, though.

Renault points out that the one area in his life that Alexander didn’t manage well was acquiring an heir, which he did nothing about until the last year of his life. His first marriage was to Roxane, the Bactrian heiress, and seems to have been based on attraction to her, so it wasn’t because of indifference to women. Far more plausible is the influence of his parents’ marriage, in which they repeatedly wounded each other. He also married Stateira, a Persian princess, and left her and Roxane both pregnant before he died rather suddenly in Babylon. Though he was still full of plans for the future, Renault believes he was indulging in self-destructive behavior, like drinking too much. This was a common habit for Macedonians, though Alexander wasn’t usually very inclined. But Hephaistion had died two months before, which had had a huge impact on him.

George Gurdjieff, a spiritual teacher, referred to Alexander as “the arch-vainglorious Greek” because his invasion interfered with the teachings of a man (supposedly based partly on an historical figure) he called Ashiata Shiemash in his novel, All and Everything. This is a valid criticism, but Renault points out that Alexander would never have heard that idea: that there was something wrong with war was an uncommon notion until well after his death. Pursuing glory by military means was very acceptable in Greek culture, and Alexander fulfilled that ideal about as well as anyone could.

But, as much as anything, it was his charisma that held his empire together. After his death it came apart quickly. Stateira, poisoned by Roxane, was among the first victims. Among the last were his mother and his son by Roxane. In between, a lot of generals.

Ptolemy had been one of the most successful of these, and had almost immediately decided he wanted Egypt for his kingdom. He got there as quickly as he could, organized an army for defense, and was so successful his dynasty still controlled the country almost 300 years later. Other generals weren’t so skillful or so lucky. Renault sees them as reverting to the Macedonian pattern of civil war after the death of a king. I think it’s something more than that.

Alexander’s charisma was based on his excellence in not only war but government. He wasn’t as successful at the latter, but there too he tried to be just. Macedonians didn’t appreciate Persians (with some exceptions), but Persians in particular appreciated Alexander, who was willing to learn from them and recognize their virtues. It wasn’t just the Macedonian habit of civil war that recurred after his death, but the absence of his charisma challenging each person to be better than he thought he could be–something usually, but not always, greatly appreciated. The army which had loved him reverted to lazier sloppier ways in his absence and the absence of generals who knew how to discipline them. It took more than a decade for the chaos following his death to subside.

It seems usual that a great leader like Alexander may inspire behavior from his followers they would ordinarily not exhibit. Nor does the inspiration commonly last. Perhaps a few of Alexander’s generals (Ptolemy seems to be the best example) continued to follow Alexander’s influence, but many did not. Most tried to fill the leadership vacuum left by Alexander, and were simply unable–which didn’t prevent them from trying. This may have been, as much as anything, part of the mores of the time, or perhaps it was simply part of masculine DNA.

The Greeks in general were less than expert at constructing stable governments. Athens had a blaze of glory in the fifth century BC, but unwisely overreached, and had a long period of degeneration when they became far less than admirable. Sparta was perhaps the most stable Greek state, at the expense of change, but during and after the Peloponessian war, when money entered the country, so did corruption, and Sparta lost its position as the most potent military in Greece. Macedonia had a long history of volatile behavior. Maybe it’s as simple as that. But for whatever reason, the Romans were more skilled at constructing and maintaining stable government, despite periodic civil wars.

The last of Renault’s novels about Alexander (though it’s really about the absence of Alexander) ends with Ptolemy looking back decades after Alexander’s death. Most of Alexander’s relatives and generals are dead. His mother has been stoned to death by survivors of her murders while she acted as regent in Macedonia, but not before she has had Alexander’s retarded brother and his wife killed. Kassandros, who hated Alexander, and was cordially disliked in return, has succeeded her, and has poisoned Alexander’s son by Roxane, an echo of Roxane’s poisoning of Stateira. He has also given an alternate version of Alexander’s behavior to a historian in Athens to try (unsuccessfully) to blacken his name.

But Kassandros hasn’t enjoyed what revenge he has accomplished long. He has died of a disease in which worms ate his flesh while he still lived, another echo, this of King Herod hundreds of years later. His sons are less successful than he, and have also been forgotten. Greek government doesn’t become notable again until the Byzantine empire.

Fyodor Dostoievsky

Looking into the past shows that many old problems recur frequently. Fyodor Dostoievsky was born about 200 years ago in Russia at a time when modern technology had only begun to emerge, but modern problems were already here, if not with the severity they would exhibit later.

His father was a doctor, and the family lived outside a hospital in Moscow. One of Fyodor’s early traumas was the discovery that a little girl with whom he played had been raped and murdered at the age of nine, her body discovered near the hospital.  Dostoievsky would always be concerned about child abuse, and also feel he could have committed the crimes some of his characters do.

Dr. Dostoievsky worried about poverty, but wasn’t too badly paid. He bought a village in rural Russia to achieve financial security, but keeping the farms working during a drought was extremely stressful. Dostoievsky’s mother died of tuberculosis at 37; his father two years later. He was 16 at his mother’s death, 18 at his father’s. There’s a legend that Dostoievsky hated his father for his brutality, and that at his death was first smitten with epilepsy. The other legend was that his father was killed by his serfs. Neither story turns out to be true: Dostoievsky’s father died of a stroke, the peasants immediately sent for the nearest doctor (who couldn’t certify the death), and Dostoievsky never had a seizure until he was in Siberia years later. He later wrote that his childhood had been filled with love, and it seems to have been overall a very positive experience. His father may have been severe, but was also loving and concerned about his family’s future.

His father had put him and his brother in an army engineering school, thinking this would give them occupations with which they could support themselves. But Fyodor had writing talent, and immediately became successful on publishing his first novel, Poor Folk in 1845. He had been influenced by the German ETA Hoffman, the French Balzac, Sir Walter Scott, and the Russians Pushkin and Gogol, but showed enough originality that to the end of his life he was remembered as the author of Poor Folk. One of his early friends, the critic Valerian Maikov, saw him much as he saw himself: as a writer who saw the fantastic being part of real life, and that the depiction of life wasn’t realistic without the fantastic element.

Russia had been a backward country by European standards until the time of Peter the Great, who forced the country to learn new skills. This began a recurring conflict between the “Westernizers”, who looked for inspiration to Europe, and the Slavophiles, who were suspicious of European ideas and trends. Dostoievsky began his career as a “Westernizer”, but circumstances caused him to change orientation.

He became friends with a man named Petrashevsky who had regular gathering that played at liberalism, then began to make more radical noises. Mikhail Bakunin, a revolutionary, didn’t take them seriously, but the Czarist secret police did. The group didn’t agree on everything, but did agree that serfdom was an evil, and should be ended. The author notes that Dostoievsky probably thought liberation of the serfs should come from the Czar, but if it did not, “Then let it happen through rebellion,” he is alleged to have said. An informer had entered the circle, and in April of 1849 Dostoievsky was arrested, with 23 others. (Serfdom actually was ended by the Czar in 1861, earlier than slavery was ended in this country).

The next incident was to become famous too. Dostoievsky and the others were held until late in December, when they were taken out to be executed. Unknown to them, the Czar had decided to pardon each from death, but to condemn them to prison, and for some to lose their civil rights. Dostoievsky was to enter the army after four years of prison, which, the author comments, was actually very lenient compared to usual Czarist practice. The drama was to continue until a firing squad was aiming at the prisoners before they would be told their actual fates. After Dostoievsky was reprieved he later wrote that he sang loudly in his cell from gladness. He was fitted with ten pound shackles to arms and legs that would remain until the end of his prison sentence, and was sent to Omsk, north of Khazakstan.

Probably few would have expected him to live to complete his sentence; he was small, and his health wasn’t very good. He had to labor outside with the other convicts, standing in the river Irtysh to help unload barges in winter. The prisoners didn’t like him, though he often pitied them, so he kept his distance from them too. He felt as if he were being buried alive in prison, but was stubbornly determined to stay alive. He managed to get onto good terms with a number of people who would help him become rehabilitated, meeting many of them in the hospital, where he often was taken.

He felt very isolated most of the time he was in prison, which led him to reevalutate his former attitudes. Lower class prisoners told him and others that in the outer world the political prisoners had wanted nothing to do with peasants and other poor people. “Now you’re in here, you want to be our friends.” Thinking this over, he decided the criminals were fully justified. That led him to think about the “Westernizers” (of which he had been one) who wanted to “enlighten” the peasants without really knowing them, what their virtues and faults were, what they needed and wanted. While he still thought serfdom to be an evil, he began to believe that the Russian peasant was more virtuous (though hardly perfect) than the bourgeoisie because of their humility and willingness to repent, as well as being better than what he considered the inauthentic life of Europe.

After four years he was released from prison and inducted into the army in Semipalatinsk, a pretty dreary army outpost north of Kazakhstan, but at least more free than prison, especially after he was allowed to live by himself. He busied himself making friends who could help him be discharged from the army and eventually be allowed to return to Russia, but only to Tver, which didn’t suit him. He needed to be in St. Petersburg, the center of literary activity. With the help of friends, including the governor of the area, he was able to accomplish this too, returning to St. Petersburg, publishing novels and stories, and starting a magazine with his brother.

The first book he published was The House of the Dead, a story about his imprisonment, which was a sensation. But at the same time as he’d moved back to European Russia he had married. The marriage was an unhappy one. His wife was ill and didn’t get along with him. She had tuberculosis and died from it within three years.

The magazine he started with his brother was quite successful, but its attempt to comment on the Polish rebellion against Russia, suggesting Polish culture was superior to Russian (Dostoievsky did not agree), was more than the censor could tolerate, and the magazine was shut down.

In this time period he had made a potentially disastrous deal in which he had to finish Crime and Punishment in a month (he had had most of a year to work on it, but had made little progress) or a man who had loaned him money would have the right to publish his work for nine years without paying him. He tried dictating to a stenographer, which worked: he finished the novel in time, and he also fell in love with the stenographer and married her, greatly to his benefit. She not only took dictation, but also took charge of his business affairs and took care of him very competently.

But he upset his family when he married, instigating a lot of fighting about money: after the magazine he and his brother started had ended his brother had died, and he now was responsible for supporting his brother’s family. He also had many debts, and creditors hounded him continuously, preventing him from working. Accordingly, he and his wife escaped to Europe in search of places he could write in peace.

But peace was difficult to find. Dostoievsky didn’t like western Europe. He was xenophobic and thought western culture immoral. He also didn’t like what he saw of various national cultures, thinking the Germans arrogant and the Swiss smug.

Besides that, he became addicted to gambling, with disastrous effect to his finances, but which stimulated his writing. It seems to have been a masochistic sort of mechanism, in which he was not only addicted to the thrill of gambling, but to the guilt that resulted from losing all his money. Legend has had it he found the determination to stop gambling, but the biographer doesn’t think so: he says Dostoievsky quit because Germany closed all gambling houses, not to reopen them until Hitler’s regime. But he was able to finish The Idiot in Europe; unfortunately it didn’t sell well.

Crime and Punishment is the first of the novels everyone considers great. It describes horrifying living conditions in the slums of St. Petersburg (Dostoievsky had seen these at first hand), and a university student who has dropped out, and is trying to survive. He wants to help his mother and sister, and decides an effective way would be to murder an old woman pawn broker and steal from her. He reasons that the old woman is both stupid and cruel, so the world would be better off without her, arrogantly believing he’s competent to make such decisions. But he discovers that his conscience won’t allow him to get away with murder, and he feels forced to confess, which then gives him the opportunity to suffer in atonement for his crime.

This is Dostoievsky’s portrayal of what he calls nihilism, something other writers were also treating. Nihilism could be considered the loss of belief in morality, apparently caused by loss of Christian belief, also happening elsewhere in the western world, perhaps in part because of the conflict between science and official Christianity. If one believes in nothing, any kind of behavior could be permissible.

This was also the period in which resentment of the Czarist regime was building, which manifested in terrorist incidents. Such an incident would inspire his novel The Possessed later on.

Meanwhile, as he worked on The Idiot, a novel with a main character based on Jesus, his wife bore him two children, the first of which died very young, to the sorrow of both. Dostoievsky particularly loved children. His own especially, but children in general. He often watched them in playgrounds and struck up conversations with them.

The Idiot’s main character is Russian, coming home after a stay in a sanatorium in Switzerland (where Dostoievsky was living at the time). He is thus a contrast to the Russians bringing western European attitudes back to Russia. He’s also a contrast because he’s not jealous, and is very forgiving, finding excuses for numerous bad behaviors. In this he is much like Jesus, but not in the sense of performing miracles. He is a stranger to the people he meets, and his qualities prompt people to confess to him. That he is unable to make people’s lives better in any other way apparently doesn’t bother Dostoievsky. His empathy is what attracts people (Dostoievsky thought empathy to be perhaps the most important element of Christianity) and his attitude towards the people he interacts with is what may help them. He doesn’t have miraculous powers to do things for them.

This, the biographer explains, is one of the differences in Dostoievsky’s view of Christianity. He is more concerned with attitudes than with actions. Actions follow from attitudes, he believes, and bad actions leading to degeneration provide a sort of fertilizer for remorse and regeneration. This is the opposite of the belief that it’s impossible to recover from any mistake, even if made unconsciously, but wrong attitudes make forgiveness less possible than merely bad behavior, if one is sincerely remorseful and seeks forgiveness.

Dostoievsky and his wife had intended to stay in Europe three months, but stayed there four years longer. They suffered a good deal there between his gambling, which left them chronically short of cash, and fairly often of food; and the loss of their child. Because Dostoievsky also didn’t like Europe he wanted to return to Russia, but couldn’t before he made some money. He did this with his next novel, The Possessed.

This was about nihilism again, and the characters were mostly revolutionaries, revolutionaries who denied the truths of Christianity, and thus were parallels for the apocalyptic events described in the Book of the Revelation. He saw socialism as being prophesied in the Revelation, though his perspective was more Christian than capitalistic. And, whatever the virtues of socialism, The Possessed WAS prophetic about what was to happen in Russia within about forty years.

One of the inspirations of the novel was the murder by Sergei Nichaev, an associate of Mikhail Bakunin, of a student who had refused to cooperate with him. This was exactly the sort of thing Dostoievsky had predicted nihilism would lead to, and affected him especially strongly since he knew the student slightly. Bakunin had said, “As long as God exists, man is a slave. Man is rational, just, free–consequently there is no God.” Irrespective of the logic or illogic of these sentiments, such a sentiment is opposed to that of Dostoievsky at every point. Bakunin’s words are words of rage, underlined by the Catechism of a Revolutionary (probably prepared with help from Nichaev), which calls for either liquidation or exploitation of the ruling classes in every possible way, so they end enslaved if not killed. No evidence of empathy or mercy there, and to Dostoievsky that meant they had lost all the Russian virtues and been possessed, if not by Western atheistic ideas, then perhaps literally by Satanic powers. Certainly the words of Bakunin and the actions of Nichaev presage some of the most terrible actions of the twentieth century. And yet the picture of Nichaev in the biography shows a mild-looking young man. His face seems to show nothing of his will to terrible crimes.

It’s easy to condemn nihilism as amoral, if not immoral, but it’s also true that horrible things have frequently been done in the name of religion. Dostoievsky in fact addresses this later, in his last novel. Of course it’s easy to call for revolution in the name of the people, who will ostensibly benefit from a change in regime. Sometimes that even happens, but those calling for revolution are often only interested in power, and might as easily be found within government.

In the last ten years of his life Dostoievsky wrote A Raw Youth about a young man’s relationship to his father and to someone more a father to him, but perhaps more significantly was his publication of The Diary of a Writer in magazines, which spread his name around the country and gave him the chance to express opinions about a wide range of subjects. It was also during this period his wife undertook the publication of his works, which contributed to paying the family’s debts and putting them on a much sounder financial basis.

But most significant was the publication of Dostoievsky’s last novel, The Brothers Karamazov. This took the form of a mystery: the murder of a father of four sons, and the question of who did it and why.

The old man is known to have been violent and lustful, and is disliked if not hated by most of the brothers. Ivan is the rationalist brother who doesn’t deny the existence of God, but refuses to follow him because of the suffering of children, in particular. He can see no reason for children to suffer, and denies God’s goodness because of that, to the distress of his brother Alyosha, follower of a monk named Father Zosima. Another brother, Dmitri, is a sensualist, and he is blamed for the murder, tried and condemned, even though Ivan rises in court to take responsibility for having at least inspired the act. But Dmitri accepts his sentence because he knows that he too desired his father’s death.

The actual murderer turns out to be an illegitimate brother, son of a mute woman possibly raped by the elder Karamazov. Smerdyakov is a servant of the older Karamazov, and the others may not even know he’s their brother. It is Ivan’s ideas that have freed him to do the killing, but he then commits suicide.

The author points out that Dostoievsky’s view of sin and guilt is much different from much of western religion. He has two different characters speak eloquently of their views of life: Ivan Karamazov and Father Zosima.

Ivan reads a story he has written to Alyosha: About 1500, in Spain, Jesus returns, and roams the country preaching and healing. He is duly brought to the Inquisition and confronted by the Grand Inquisitor, some 90 years old, who tells him that he has done wrong to expect so much of humans. The Roman Catholic church, he tells Jesus, is correcting his doctrine by giving people security and food, and not expecting more of them than they can possibly give. The Inquisitor, the author explains, is really an atheist, though he wishes he could believe in humans as Jesus does. The same is true of modern critics of Dostoievsky’s parable: they wish humans had the strength Dostoievsky credits them with, but are unable to believe it. But Dostoievsky returns to his view that commission of evil can prepare a person for regeneration.

He has Father Zosima say, in his last talk before he dies, that contrite love is the way to approach anyone who has offended, and that no one should look down on anyone, even if they’ve behaved criminally. If YOU had behaved better, he says, maybe your example would have kept them from doing evil.

Father Zosima has two basic beliefs: We live in paradise, but don’t want to believe it. If we truly did, we would directly experience it. And, that all of us are guilty, before all, and of everything.

This latter is like the concept of original sin: if we are ALL sinners, none of us has the right to feel superior to anyone else. It connects also to the quote from Julian of Norwich: “God said, It is necessary that sin should exist, but all shall be well, and all shall be well, and every manner of thing shall be well.” The reason sin (or evil) must exist is so each can make his choice. If God controlled all, forcing each person to be good, humans would be unable to make choices, which would exclude from them the possibility of transformation.

This makes the statements of mystics like Father Zosima (who says he came to his conversion because of his own bad behavior for which he felt bound to seek atonement) a matter of consciousness. Like science, which can only measure phenomena available to either the senses or to instruments, rationalists can only acknowledge phenomena they are able to perceive, not realizing that they have the potential to perceive far more, and angrily denying this may be possible. If there is no validity to religion, why are they angry at it, and why do they wish to copy its worst deeds? As the Communists in Russia discovered, attacking religious institutions doesn’t destroy religion.

The Brothers Karamazov cemented Dostoievsky’s reputation in Russia, with the aid of A Writer’s Diary. He was in the public eye the rest of his life, spending time with the nobility and other public figures, giving public readings of his own work, as well as Pushkin’s poetry, and so on. People were moved by his readings to such an extent they called him a prophet (He used to read Pushkin’s poem The Prophet). He still had many ambitions, but was running out of energy.

He died early in 1881, possibly of tuberculosis (his mother had died of that, as had his first wife), but more likely of emphysema since he was a heavy smoker most of his life. He was never wealthy, but the government gave his wife a pension supporting her and their children.

I’ve always found it difficult to understand what Dostoievsky was saying. His work was psychological, but I have found it murky, and needed a good biography to try to unravel his meaning. Henry Miller, in his book about Arthur Rimbaud, Time of the Assassins, includes Dostoievsky with others of the same period who sensed that things were wrong, and called for reformation and regeneration. Nietzsche was another such figure, as was van Gogh. All were religious in some form, though hardly in orthodox ways (Dostoievsky might be considered an exception in this respect).

The biographer says that one thing that makes his work difficult to understand is that he allowed different characters in his novels to debate without manipulating what they say to indicate his own beliefs. Thus, Ivan Karamazov’s legend of the Grand Inquisitor is powerful, and Dostoievsky doesn’t try to undermine its power. Instead, he tries to balance it with the speech by Father Zosima. Of course Father Zosima’s approach to life is much different from the worldly approach. It contradicts the Grand Inquisitor’s use of power to control his world with its emphasis on acknowledgment of guilt and embracing the suffering from it.

The Brothers Karamazov was Dostoievsky’s most powerful novel, as he treated his usual themes of rebellion and criminality even more profoundly than before. He became famous throughout Russia because of it, as well as his Diary of a Writer, and his public speeches and readings. He is said to have read powerfully. With his fame came more money and many more public appearances. He was even invited to meet the Czar, but died before he could.

After more than a hundred years he still has things to say to humans in general. I don’t care for his Russo-centrism and xenophobia, but perhaps these are understandable as a contrast to too much respect for European ideas which, as we see from our present vantage point, were not always very healthy. Russia paid a huge price, at least partly foreseen by Dostoievsky, for accepting ideas that led to Communism. Dostoievsky’s ideas may not have been so wrong.

 

Ayn Rand

I’ve written about Ayn Rand before, partly because I dislike a lot of the people who claim to be inspired by her, partly because I never cared much for her novels, which a lot of people like. But in reading The Passion of Ayn Rand, a biography by Barbara Branden who knew her intimately in the 1950s, it becomes clear that she was in many respects an admirable person who accomplished a great deal, but also lived a tragic life.

One of her misfortunes was to be born in Russia just as the country was beginning to descend into revolution. That was just after the revolution of 1905 that made some sweeping political changes in the country, but not enough to prevent the 1917 revolution that ushered in Communism. Her family, being moderately well off, suffered more than some from the dislocations of revolution and civil war, but survived. She was also Jewish, but told Barbara Branden that she never encountered anti-Semitism in Russia, though the country was notoriously inclined that way.

By that time Alice Rosenberg, as her family named her, had decided she wanted to be a writer, and that liberty and heroism were perhaps the values most important to her. When relatives in the USA contacted her family, concerned about how and whether they had survived the civil war, Alice Rosenberg told her family she HAD to go to the USA. Her family wasn’t enthusiastic, but agreed to arrange it, if possible. It turned out to be possible, though she came close to being refused.

By 1926, when she immigrated, she had seen less than wonderful things in Russia. Lots of hungry people struggling to survive, violence, people prevented from attending university or getting good jobs because of the social class they belonged to, rather than any crime they had committed. Unsurprisingly, she became a committed anti-Communist, having seen the way the system operated close up. Things got worse in Russia after she left.

Once in this country she began to work at becoming a writer in an unfamiliar language. She went to Chicago first to stay with the relatives who had helped her immigrate, then to Los Angeles to attempt screenwriting. She happened to meet Cecil B. DeMille,  who was impressed with her, and gave her work as an extra and other odd jobs before allowing her to write screenplays. She was moderately successful at that.

In Hollywood she also found her husband, who physically incarnated the fantasies of a hero she had had, though his character wasn’t particularly heroic. Marrying him provided her with citizenship so she didn’t have to return to Russia, where she could in no way have had the writing career she had visualized. She wanted to write about heroic individuals. That wouldn’t have been acceptable in Stalin’s Russia (unless they were Communists–and Communism was unheroic, in her view), and it took a long time for what she wrote to become acceptable here.

There was sympathy for Russia among American intellectuals of that time, a feeling that Communism just might help save the world. Rand knew it would not, but few people she tried to tell would listen in the twenties and thirties. Her first novel, We the Living was set in Russia and somewhat autobiographical. The main male character of the book catches tuberculosis, and has to go to a sanatorium; the heroine takes an unwanted lover so he can stay there, which sets up an unhappily dramatic climax. She is then killed trying to escape the country. The book sold poorly at first, but eventually sold more, especially after her better-known novels became popular.

The Fountainhead was next, about an architect unsuccessful because his work is too original. He has a friend, also an architect, who has little originality, and tries to succeed by copying. He gives this friend the design for a housing project which no one will allow him to build himself. His condition is that the project must be built exactly as he designed it; when a change is made, the architect blows the project up. He won’t allow his design to be watered down, nor allow anyone to have his work without meeting his price.  There’s a happy ending after that, too. The architect is prosecuted, but declared innocent.

Rand said the hero of that novel was her ideal man: in conflict with society, but not with himself. She contrasted him with three other men. One, the untalented architect friend who wasn’t the ideal man, but didn’t know it.  Another, stronger and more intelligent, runs a newspaper that tells the lowest common denominator what they want to hear. He could have been the ideal man, but wasn’t. A third is a critic who is not the ideal man, and knows it. He’s the villain of the novel.

The hero’s friend, unable to be the ideal man was, Rand told Branden, based on a woman she met who was obsessed with her career and very hard-working, but who rubbed Rand the wrong way, not because of her ambition or her work-ethic, but something else. When she asked the woman what was important to her, the woman replied that if no one else had a car, she wanted to have one; if everyone wanted a car, she wanted to have two. Rand was disgusted, but felt this pointed up a distinction between frivolous selfishness and actually HAVING a self that wants to accomplish something worthwhile. She called the latter “selfish” in a truer sense of the word. She saw the woman as being what she called a “collectivist” rather than an individual. A “collectivist” because for her success was strictly in relation to other people rather than a course chosen and pursued because of its meaning to the individual.

The Fountainhead became popular enough to have a somewhat successful movie made of it. But her REALLY popular novel was the next one, Atlas Shrugged. The idea behind this one is that the talented people, the ones whose ideas–translated into reality–are crucial to making society work, go on strike. Their complaint is they’re being told to work for the good of society (including those who deserve nothing, being unwilling to make efforts themselves) and are made to feel guilty for wanting their talent and work to be recognized and celebrated. This aspect of the novel is deliberately obscured at first, while Rand sketches in the decadence of the society which makes demands of its most talented members. Only towards the end does it become clear what is happening.

My memories of The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged are unclear, as it’s been fifty years or more since I read them. I didn’t really buy into Rand’s views, but what I remember most about Atlas Shrugged in particular is its insistence that its readers MUST agree with its point of view. For me that was off-putting, to say the least. It seemed almost like Stalin’s “correct line”, which all Communists were expected to believe.

Rand saw Communism and Socialism, both popular in America in the twenties and thirties (at least among intellectuals), as collectivism, and capitalism as individuality. She identified collectivism with the idea of the nation being more important than the individual, as seen in the Germany and Soviet Union of the thirties. These weren’t very attractive to those aware of the people they persecuted, though their propaganda deceived some into thinking they were positive phenomena.

Capitalism Rand liked much better because it gave people from almost any social class a chance. She found technology thrilling as a demonstration of what rationality and intellect could achieve, and saw this as examples of individuals being true to themselves.

But to what extent is this true? The production of technology is dependent on large organizations, just as totalitarian governments are. Is individualism encouraged in these organizations, other than at the very top? Why does the history of large corporations include intense hostility to unions, including the willingness to wound and kill strikers in the 19th and early 20th centuries? Have not the leaders of industries been as intoxicated with power as have dictators? Their aims haven’t been exactly the same, but they still required power over others to achieve them. Rand saw slavery as being inefficient, and if one’s aim is innovation, that’s certainly true. But slave-owning societies are stratified, which means innovation happens among the upper classes. Is this why industrialists hated unions? Industrial workers weren’t slaves, but weren’t far from being enslaved, having to work extremely long hours, often in dangerous working conditions. Their opinions weren’t wanted. Contemporary conservatives like to differentiate between “makers and takers”. Just who is in each group?

Does it make sense to identify genius and innovation with free market capitalism as Rand does? Capitalism has encouraged innovation, as Rand says, but is it the only system under which innovation can occur? The ancient Romans were notable builders. The ancient Egyptians even more–we still can’t duplicate some things they built. Did either society have free market capitalism? Both were slave states.

Which raises the question, for whom is the free market free? For the owner of the means of production and distribution, but is that true for the ordinary worker too? Historically, it hasn’t always been.

And technology isn’t all positive either. Rand didn’t approve of environmentalism, claiming that industrial civilization had lengthened human life, which was true–just not the entire truth.

‘”City smog and filthy rivers are not good for men (though they are not the kind of danger that ecological panic-mongers proclaim them to be). This is a scientific technological problem, not a political one, and it can be solved ONLY by technology. Even if smog were a risk to human life, we must remember that life in nature, without technology, is wholesale death.”

Actually, we have discovered that filthy rivers and smog ARE in part political problems because the people causing the pollution are often unwilling to clean it up, and are willing to lobby to assure they don’t have to. How would Ayn Rand analyze the recent issue in Flint, Michigan, in which many people, including children, suffered lead poisoning, which causes serious neurological damage? Or instances where a poisonous insecticide is often found on produce? Technology will fix it, but technology also caused the problem, and will not fix it without the political will to do so.

Rand points out that average human life-span increased in the industrial age. Again, partly true. Ancient civilizations like Rome and Crete had sewage systems, which later European cultures did not, until relatively late. Life spans increased, at least in part, because humans discovered that antisepsis prevented sickness, something realized by medical science, which also contributed antibiotics, as well as medicines to control diabetes and heart disease. This is the same science that tells us pollution is bad, not only for us but for the other forms of life on which our lives ultimately depend. Ecology is thus the justification of altruism and collectivism, both dirty words in Rand’s lexicon. We can’t survive without nature, and our powers are now great enough to be able to destroy large numbers of plant and animal species in greater numbers than since the last ice age some 10,000 years ago. To say that we have not yet destroyed ourselves in this way is not to say that it can’t be done, nor that we’re not in the process of doing so. It’s instructive how easy it is to fall into a false dualism in which nature is seen as something to be conquered rather than to be cooperated with, and human achievements are to be celebrated even though they may poison humans, plants, and animals. The world’s ecosystem is flexible, but human activities on a massive scale affect it, and seem likely to ultimately have regrettable consequences. That dualism would see the extinction of plant and animal species as nothing to be concerned about, since that point of view sees humans as more important than the rest of the world.

“Ecology as a social principle condemns cities, culture, industry, technology, the intellect, and advocates man’s return to ‘nature’, to the state of grunting subanimals digging the soil with their bare hands.”

Some say science doesn’t care what you believe. Nature REALLY doesn’t care. It would be nice to be able to retain and expand our current standards of living, but that may not be practical. There are only so many natural resources of the type we use to power our urban civilization, and if we’re unwilling to change our lifestyles, nature may do it for us. The outcome of that conflict remains to be seen.

Rand sees rationality, the most important tool of the intellect, as being more important than any other aspect of humanity. But another view sees the instincts and emotions as being fully as important, so that when their development is neglected, the person, culture, or society becomes unbalanced. This imbalance causes unnecessary conflict within individuals, between them, between them and the larger cultures and societies. Rand’s view of ecology is this conflict writ rather large. An example is the overabundance of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. An obvious way to redress the imbalance would be to plant more trees. Instead, we clear-cut forests for profit. Profit is not inherently immoral, but there are ways of achieving it which are.

A recent article in the New Yorker presents evidence that rationality wasn’t evolved to assess truth, but to make sure we didn’t get screwed by others, since our most effective means of survival has been cooperation–a way to argue better, in other words. If so, this perspective makes Rand’s position special pleading on the basis of identity–she was a genius, and deserved to be treated better, as do all geniuses. This may be true, but it’s interesting that conservatives (the main group to whom Rand has appealed) generally dislike identity politics.

The conflict, writ smaller, was shown when Rand embarked on an affair with a man 25 years younger, in spite of his wife (her biographer). and in spite of her husband. She had the power to persuade everyone to go along with it, though neither her husband nor the wife was really comfortable. Ultimately, this led to a break between her and many of the young people who gravitated to her and her views after the publication of The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged. She exacerbated the problem because she couldn’t admit she was in any way to blame.

Barbara Branden makes clear that Rand’s views were very rigorously thought out, and that her novels were very carefully written to express just what she meant, and in a language of which she was not a native speaker. Her view of man as a potentially heroic being who often falls short of that level can be seen as admirable, though I quarrel with her view of man being superior to nature. Not many individuals have the strength to choose their own path and persist in it despite conflict with or disapproval from their society. I would suggest that not all such individuals are on a productive path, nor do all of them agree with Rand’s views.

There seem, for instance, to be alternatives to Rand’s lone genius view of creativity. Collaboration may occur more frequently in music than in writing. Collaboration between a composer and a lyricist isn’t unusual, and in a band context a piece may evolve from communal input instead of being shaped only by one person, and even be seen as being superior because of that input. That’s not to say one form of creativity is superior to another, only that there’s more than one approach.

Rand considered religion (or mysticism) to be a chief hindrance to rationality. But at least two 20th century men attempted to approach the apparently immaterial spiritual world scientifically, ie, rationally. One man who did so made much the same comment as Rand put in the mouth of one of her characters: that he would love to be able to have acquaintances with whom he could interact as equals. He wasn’t jealous of anyone approaching his level, he wanted them to do so, contrary to some popular narratives. His intellect was not inferior to hers, but he recognized other aspects of the human being, and taught them, as well as the intellect.

Rand accomplished a great deal in writing novels of ideas that interested and influenced a great many people. Not everyone will agree, but I think it’s tragic that she drove many people away from her because of her insistence that she was right and others were wrong, as well as her misuse of her power to persuade others to allow her behavior that hurt them. And while I think she had great insight, I think some of her views were tragically misguided, and are likely to have tragic consequences. She was more determined and powerful than most, but just as capable of being mistaken.

 

 

 

 

J.D. Salinger

I read Catcher in the Rye in high school, and didn’t get it, so I never became a fan, unlike (I guess) most of the rest of the country. I read his other books too, later on. I don’t remember making much of the short stories, rather liking Franny and Zooey, but not enough to reread them.

I lived in the same general area as he did for more than a decade, and drove through Cornish, New Hampshire every now and then, aware that he lived somewhere there, but not being very interested. I certainly had nothing I wanted to say to him, unlike a lot of other people.

Years before that I had picked up a short book by Joyce Maynard, called Looking Back. She wrote about junior high school (at a time when she was only just out of high school herself), which brought back the experience to me, but she had clearly been much more aware of what was going on around her than I had been when I was a student.

Years later, when I was living in New Hampshire, she wrote a column for the local paper, which I read pretty regularly. It was interesting, but I felt there was something wrong there, I can’t say what, because I don’t remember. It wasn’t that she listened to country music when writing a book, though that wouldn’t be my taste. I’m not sure I knew at the time that she had had an affair with Salinger, nor that she had written the book I read while they were together.

Later I read his daughter’s memoir. I didn’t have a LOT of interest in him, but still some curiosity. This morning I watched a movie about him.

I think it would be fair to say he was a strange man, with a number of paradoxical elements. His father was Jewish, his mother wasn’t, he grew up in a Jewish environment, privileged, but not liking it much. He messed up in private schools, was sent to a military school where, according to the movie, he got himself together.

He seems to have decided early that he wanted to write, and began to be published in the early 1940s. He wanted to be published in the New Yorker, and the magazine had accepted one of his stories, but didn’t publish it because of Pearl Harbor. He was upset about that.

He almost immediately tried to enlist in the army, but was initially rejected. He kept trying, and managed to enlist later in 1942. His first experience of combat was on D Day. He told someone later that he carried a manuscript about Holden Caulfield when he hit the beach, because it was necessary to his survival. Obviously he did survive, and it seems that not much later he met Ernest Hemingway (whom, according to the movie, he idolized) in Paris, got him to look at a manuscript, and that Hemingway loved it. The story is told by one of Hemingway’s grandchildren in the movie, so it may be true.

Paradox: after VE day he had a nervous breakdown, and spent time in a hospital in Germany. But he reenlisted to “track down the bad guys”. He had been in Intelligence with his company, which meant that he talked to citizens of each town they came to to find out where the Germans had machine gun nests set up, where clear areas were that ambushes could be set up, and generally anything else useful. He must have had a clearer than usual idea of local life and how it had been affected by German occupation.

His company also entered a camp in Dachau, so he saw many corpses and a few survivors. This must have made an impression on him, quite possibly especially because he was Jewish. Maybe that’s why he wanted to punish those who had done such things. Which makes it quite surprising that he married a young Nazi woman (clearly against regulations) and brought her back to the United States. The marriage didn’t last long. When he divorced her he said she had misled him.

He pursued his writing after the war, got published in the New Yorker as he had hoped, then published Catcher in the Rye in 1951, which was an almost immediate best seller. Many people identified with Holden Caulfield, the young narrator. Friends say that Caulfield was Salinger.  They also testify that he was taken aback by his sudden popularity and loss of privacy, and that he didn’t want to cooperate with the publicity, but wasn’t really a recluse either. He still enjoyed going out to bars and interacting with friends, but didn’t want strangers asking him for things, as he made clear later in New Hampshire, to someone who waited in his driveway to meet him. He had given his work to the public, but said he couldn’t tell anyone how to live.

The latter seems not to have been so true in his private life. After he married his second wife (19 years old to his 34, and with a troubled background) and they had their first child, they settled in New Hampshire and he isolated himself from her and the children much of the time to write. He had apparently been fascinated by her youth and beauty, but didn’t find her so fascinating after she’d given birth. It took some time–she probably lacked confidence–but she eventually divorced him, His daughter Margaret’s memoir (as I recall it) emphasizes that she didn’t feel she could please him. According to the movie, his son disagreed with her portrayal of their family life.

Joyce Maynard’s account of their affair, beginning in the early 1970s is interesting too. He insisted they meditate in the morning after eating uncooked frozen peas (pouring hot water over them to warm them), then writing, for which he donned a jumpsuit. They watched the old movies he liked in the evenings.

She met William Shawn, his editor at the New Yorker, and Shawn’s longtime lady friend in New York City, and apparently said something gauche. She said Salinger hustled her out of the lunch and bought her an expensive coat.

They broke up, she says, after going to the beach with his son. He and his son played in the water, he came back out, and told her he was really tired, that he wasn’t going to have children anymore. She wanted children, so she said she couldn’t stay with him, and he told her she should leave right away. He took her to the airport and gave her some money.

Later, she found that, just as he had with her, he had written letters to a number of young girls–they were always young–one of whom became his third wife. She also eventually decided to write a memoir of their affair, went to his house to tell him, and had him denounce her for it.

He stayed in New Hampshire the rest of his life, and seems to have been well accepted by people there. People who came to town looking for him found that local people weren’t cooperative. They didn’t want to be part of invading his privacy. One writer interviewed a famous man’s widow on just the other side of the Connecticut river from New Hampshire, and remarked that Salinger lived there. She remarked that he did, and that he had sat in the same chair the writer was then sitting in the previous night. She asked him what he would ask Salinger, told him that Salinger was all right, and was writing, and added, So you don’t need to meet him at all.

Why have so many people been fascinated with Salinger? Was his writing that good? For some I guess it was. I suppose part of the fascination may have been that Salinger didn’t behave like other writers in playing the celebrity game, which he easily could have. New Hampshire probably seems like a distant and foreign place to live to many. Actually, it’s not so different from other states, but may have fewer big cities, especially in that area.

Of course his response to fame was unusual, which didn’t make it wrong. He could have moved to New England just to run away, but he continued writing. The movie said that he had added more stories to the series about the Glass family already published, and possibly more about Holden Caulfield as well. According to the movie, these stories were supposed to start being released in 2015. I haven’t heard anything about that as yet. Was that story inaccurate? It doesn’t really make a lot of difference to me, but it seems curious.

He seems to have been convinced he was meant to be a writer, but what did he actually express? How important was it? I must have been too young when I tried reading him, because his stories made little impression on me. I don’t know if he really fulfilled what he was supposed to do.

Pioneer Girl

Many people are familiar with the title, Little House on the Prairie, because it was a successful TV show about forty years ago. But before that it was the title of a book by Laura Ingalls Wilder, part of a series of novels about her childhood. It was a series my mother discovered not long after they were published in the 1930s and early 1940s, and she read them to us when we were children.

The action in the novels takes place in the 1870s, beginning with some of Wilder’s early memories. She was born in 1867 to a couple, Charles Ingalls and Caroline Quiner Ingalls, whose parents had grown up in New York state and New England respectively, who had moved to Wisconsin, where Charles and Caroline met and married.

The wave of white settlers had spilled across the country west of the Mississippi about 25-30 years earlier, at first to the amusement, then to the alarm of the Indians. This led to wars which eventually ended in about  the 1890s. Laura Ingalls Wilder didn’t see any of that violence, but did see Indians.

Pioneer Girl begins with the family in what is now Kansas, living illegally on an Indian reservation, where the Indians weren’t doing too well. It was shortly after the Civil War, and payments to the Indians had been suspended during it, so they were in danger of starvation. Wilder’s mother and father gave the Indians anything they asked for out of fear for what they might do. They didn’t stay in Kansas long, traveling back to Wisconsin to live near family before heading west again.

That’s one of the places Pioneer Girl differs from the eventual series of novels: it doesn’t tell about the family’s time in Kansas, perhaps because Wilder didn’t want to admit that her father was knowingly doing something illegal, the book’s editor suggests. In later novels Wilder changes the timeline and some of the characters from how they’re portrayed in the earlier book. She also doesn’t tell some of the anecdotes of Pioneer Girl because the novels are aimed at children. Alcoholic and sexual escapades are omitted.

From Wisconsin they head west into southwestern Minnesota, where they run into a plague of grasshoppers that lasts several years. From there they head west into what is now North Dakota, where Laura’s father gets work with a railroad and also stakes a claim on land nearby what became the town of DeSmet, where he could farm. This is where Wilder spent her adolescent years before getting married.

The editor of Pioneer Girl comments that Wilder looked up to her father more than her mother, and her father was a hard-working and resourceful man. I doubt that her mother worked any less hard, though, and must also have been resourceful to be a pioneer wife.

One incident I remember being impressed with from the books is Laura’s father building them a house using pegs which he whittled to hold the structure together, since he didn’t have any nails. He not only farmed, but worked for the railroad, was on the board overseeing a church, served as a judge, and was a carpenter. He also liked to play his violin, and had a fairly extensive repertoire.

Laura knew they had to work as a team, and not only helped her mother, but contributed to the family through outside jobs sewing and teaching in nearby schools, beginning when she was fourteen or fifteen. She contributed money to buy an organ her sister Mary, who had attended a school for the blind, could play after she returned home. It’s uncertain what caused Mary’s blindness, though doctors now believe it may have been meningitis, encephalitis, or some combination. She probably couldn’t have gotten much better care in a big city in that day before antibiotics, and x-rays, but it points up how many problems there were even when civilization wasn’t extremely far away.

In the earlier books the family seems isolated, though that wasn’t entirely true. Wilder depicted them that way to emphasize how much they had to depend on themselves, but there were also other people to whom they could go for help. This was particularly acute during the winter of 1880-1881, the Hard or Long Winter.

Snow fell early and often that fall, so much of it that the town was eventually cut off, even though the railroad ran through it. The snow was too deep, and the weather too cold for the railroad to operate. Much livestock froze to death, and people were reduced to eating the seeds saved to grow crops the next season. Almanzo Wilder undertook to find a farmer a dozen or so miles away who still had some grain, a very risky business since he could have gotten caught in a blizzard and lost. But he managed to get back to the town with the grain.

Fuel was another problem. The weather was bitterly cold with high winds, and there was little wood on the prairie. Laura’s father began twisting hay together to make a sort of stick which still burned fast, but helps keep people warm.

With blizzards coming every two to three days people had to be careful about going outside. The storms were so powerful people often couldn’t see, and could get lost between house and barn, as well as in town. Teachers watched for blizzards and sent the children home as soon as they see them coming.

Her later novels depict their interactions with people in the town. They had an extensive social life, with Fourth of July celebrations, social occasions organized by the church, and going riding with Almanzo Wilder, whom she eventually married, first in a sleigh, then a buggy. He has strong fast horses whom he couldn’t trust to stay still in a crowd, so the two of them took long rides of 40-60 miles together in the summer. Such long rides were unsafe in the winter, when it was possible to freeze to death.

Laura Ingalls Wilder’s period may have seen the most dramatic changes ever in American life. She lived to be about 90, dying in 1957. Her first glimpse of high technology was a train, as a little girl. But she saw the advent of cars, movies, and airplanes, as well as the ascendance of America in the world. She may even have been aware of Sputnik, the first artificial satellite. When writing the series that made her famous, she insisted to her daughter (herself an author and editor) that her material had to be treated in its historical context. It was a very specific time, and very unlike much of the twentieth century.

She clearly had good memories of her childhood and adolescence, but didn’t publish any more novels after her marriage to Almanzo. She wrote a further novel, The First Four Years, but didn’t publish it, perhaps because of many hardships in that period which would have detracted from the optimism of the rest of the series. She and Almanzo had a son who died as a young child, they owed money they were unable to repay until selling their farm and moving to Missouri, and Almanzo had bad complications from diphtheria, leaving him temporarily paralyzed, though his paralysis stopped after they moved to Florida. The couple descended into debt and never became financially stable until Wilder’s novels became popular.

But, as the editor of Pioneer Girl says, her novels became classics of children’s literature. She ranks Wilder with Mark Twain, Louisa May Alcott, L. Frank Baum, and E.B. White as children’s authors. Our family certainly enjoyed reading them, and so did enough others to generate a TV show which, as you might imagine, wasn’t very true to the books.

It’s hard for us to imagine, I think, just what life was like as pioneers on the edge of the western advance of white settlers. The editor of Pioneer Girl makes clear that civilization wasn’t too far away: railroads were built (and Wilder’s father worked for one), and brought important supplies to the settlers, including seeds to make a crop after the Hard Winter. Had they been totally isolated, they might have been in danger of starvation. They were not, but didn’t have the technology (in particular) we take for granted now. We see Wilder and her world at the very beginning of the transition from the 19th century way of life to that of the 20th century. We never really learn what Wilder thought of all those changes, but the picture painted by the editor suggests that she took the changes for granted.

Her life overlapped mine. There have been large changes since I was born, but nothing as immense as happened in Wilder’s lifetime. She reminds us where our country came from.

 

 

Stephen Calt and Skip James

As of some twenty years ago, Stephen Calt could still appreciate some of the great recorded performances of blues from the 1920s and 30s. He had been a blues fanatic as a teenager and young man, but had become disillusioned with the genre, the older blues musicians he’d met, and the young white blues enthusiasts who took advantage of them.
The blues he traces back to a hymn by Charles Wesley (founder of the Methodist church), Roll Jordan. “The building block of the blues is the four-bar phrase divided into two unbalanced parts: a ten-beat vocal phrase, followed by a six-beat instrumental phrase. It is this unvarying phrase, repeated three times, that makes for a twelve-bar blues, and is the unique insignia of the form, removing it from the realm of spirituals or any other song form.”
Calt goes on to say that, although it’s surprising that one song should inspire a whole genre, neither white nor black had much tradition to draw on in the early 19th century. The Star-Spangled Banner, he says, was based on a German drinking song.
There was another difference between spirituals and blues. Spirituals took an obligatory happy attitude. Blues did not, probably partly to differentiate them from spirituals, partly because the singers were nomadic, and frequently in need of help. Calt suggests that the attraction of the blues was that they depicted life as it was, which spirituals did not. Lyrics by the traveling singers would often be about how miserable they were to attract handouts. Blues lyrics in general were usually not very original; they existed as a sort of pattern from which could be borrowed any line that would fit a particular song. Musicians borrowed from each other constantly, instrumentally and lyrically.
Many of these musicians, as shown by surviving recordings, were barely competent, but there were a few musicians who transcended their genre, at least occasionally. Charlie Patton and Skip James, both of who Calt has written about, were two of these.
Calt met James at the Newport Folk Festival of 1964. Calt was a young white blues fanatic. James had recently been discovered in Mississippi, and was to perform in the festival, along with two other recent rediscoveries. James took a liking to Calt, and Calt’s book, besides piecing together James’ life, tells about their friendship.
James liked to monopolize his conversations with Calt, talking about anything that passed through his mind, mostly his attitude towards life. He didn’t care for discussions, and said little about what interested Calt: how he made his music, and what other musicians he had met. Calt does record that he and Muddy Waters seemed to recognize each other at Newport, and that Waters didn’t seem pleased.
James had little interest in, or respect for, other musicians, even when they influenced him, like Little Brother Montgomery, perhaps the best blues pianist of the time. James was unusual in playing both piano and guitar at a high level.
He had recorded a number of songs in 1931, which had sold very little, as it was during the Depression. Among these are some of the greatest recorded performances of the era: Devil Got My Woman, 22-20, I’m So Glad, and Special Rider. Ironically, he quit trying to musically improve not long after that.
His father had left him and his mother when he was very young, and had become a minister. His father had some musical talent, writing and singing songs, and James happened to meet him shortly after his recording sessions. He played some songs for his father, perhaps hoping to impress him. His father’s response was to suggest he give up blues and come to Dallas, Texas to become a minister. After some thought, James decided to do so, not so much because he had been converted as because he thought it would be a comfortable place to sit out the Depression. He did eventually become ordained, but never had a career as a minister. He also never played music on the level he had again, perhaps because his father intimidated him as virtually no one else had. He may also have been deterred by the black fundamentalist belief that the blues was devil music, and that he’d be punished after death for having played it.
This view by the black community was probably because blues musicians in general were bad role models; usually alcoholics and misogynists, if not outright criminals. James fit this category comfortably.
Part of the blues lifestyle was pimping. Musicians generally had women who would give them food, money, and clothes, often managing this by becoming prostitutes, though sometimes by working on a plantation. James never depended exclusively on music for his income, but supplemented manual labor with pimping sometimes and bootlegging others, usually protected by a plantation owner.
Danger was another part of the blues lifestyle: playing at plantation “frolics” or jukehouses musicians often attracted women, whose boyfriends or husbands could get displeased. Few would care if a blues musicians turned up dead because of that. James early began carrying a gun, and was virtually never without one. He often told Calt how ready he was to use one, and how often he had in the past. He was shy on details, but left a strong impression that some of his encounters had left people dead or severely injured. Calt also quotes a lyric from one song, in which James sings that if he goes to Louisiana, he’ll be hanged for sure.
After James died, in 1969, Calt began putting things together from their lengthy conversations. James hadn’t recorded in the late 1920s, when he’d had a chance to, and when he might have sold a lot more records. James had said he hadn’t been ready to record, and that he’d been in the hospital. Calt began to wonder if he hadn’t been wanted for a serious crime, and reluctant to advertise his whereabouts. He also wondered how James had become so skillful on piano (he had never owned one), and wondered if he might have had access to one in prison.
James had traveled all over the Deep South, but denied ever visiting Louisiana, supposedly because it was too racist. But Calt remembered him mentioning having been in a Louisiana town. Had he done something in Louisiana for which the statute of limitations had not run out?
James generally approved of pimps and other types of criminals. Although he talked the fundamentalist rhetoric, he didn’t behave in a “Christian” way. He had little concern for anyone but himself. He couldn’t relate to the civil rights movement, seeing no use in voting. Though he was an angry man, he thoroughly accepted segregation in the South, merely looking for powerful white men to protect his bootlegging operations. He once remarked to Calt, “I don’t expect you to treat me like a white man.” After signing a contract with a well-established record company in the 1960s he decided that his wife wasn’t good enough, and took up with another woman whom he considered higher class. Ironically, he was less comfortable with her than his previous wife. His life in many ways was one in which he’d made himself miserable through poor choices.
James was in poor health and unable to make much of a living after being rediscovered. Part of the reason was because he was booked exclusively on the coffee house circuit, and didn’t know what to make of the white audience he played for. Calt thought he would have been better served to have performed for college audiences, where he could have had larger audiences and made more money.
But another reason he didn’t do well was, Calt speculates, because he was making a deal with God. He accepted the idea that blues was devil music, and didn’t want to be punished for playing it, though he did want to earn a living. So he didn’t REALLY play the blues which could be so compelling, which his audience might have appreciated even if they didn’t understand what they were hearing.
One of the greatest ironies of his life was that his music, which he’d essentially given up trying to improve on after his recording sessions seemed to be the only thing he had to be proud of. He may have made one or more women pregnant, but had never had a family, though he had married later in life. One of the few things that helped him financially was when the rock group Cream covered his song, I’m So Glad, which he had reworked from something very different. Cream’s version was very unlike his (though distinguished in its way), but James said, justly, that no one could play it like him. He had evidently spent much time working on it, and had been able to play it unbelievably fast when he recorded it. It was impressive, but a small thing to fasten one’s pride to.
Calt says he hadn’t understood blues when he first heard it and fell in love with it, only to discover later on that his love had been immature romanticism. He hadn’t understood that blues musicians were professionals, and lived squalid lives. His experience with James showed him just how insular the man who had approached genius in his music was. Further investigation showed him that few others of that time were much different.
The dominant impression one gets from the book is Calt’s disappointment. The music had seemed to promise him a great deal, and he expected more of his musical hero too. As of twenty or so years ago he could still be enthusiastic in analyzing what made James’s music so wonderful. But he was disappointed that so much of blues was crude and musically incompetent, and that Skip James was an anti-hero. I wonder if he ever found anything else in life to make him joyful as blues once had.

A Documentary on Amy Winehouse

I got to see a recent documentary on Amy Winehouse, and was very impressed–to such an extent that I started crying halfway through. I knew what the ending had been, and had begun to see it coming.
Hers was a sad, but not unusual story these days. She was just more visible than most people going down the road of excess. Prior to the film I had heard her name, and had someone explain to me that she was a singer with a bad drug problem. I don’t remember how soon it was after that she died. But until the movie, I had never seen her picture or heard any of her music.
The movie starts in exhilarating fashion: a teenage girl playing guitar and singing songs she’s written herself. The guitar playing isn’t distinguished, but the music is solid enough, the lyrics outstanding, and her singing even better. At one point she sounded like Billie Holiday to me, but I’d have to listen a lot more to tell if the resemblance is consistent.
Her musical career takes off pretty fast. We see snippets of interviews and her fronting bigger and bigger bands. She looks happy and alive.
But as her career progresses the picture turns darker. Her father, who had left her mother and her when she was nine, returns, and it seems clear that it’s because of the money she makes. Part of an interview with her mother tells us that she was strong-willed and determined to have her own way from the time her father left. Her mother also tells us she was bulimic.
Her mother apparently didn’t realize, as many parents probably don’t, what a serious problem an eating disorder can be. It was both the psychic and physical manifestation of the unsoundness of her foundation.
In her early twenties she remains relatively healthy physically. But there are psychological signs that all is not well. Her relationship with her father is one. Another is her relationship with her husband.
Before him she had been rather promiscuous, as if sex was a sort of pastry. With him, other things were happening. He goes back to his girl friend, then returns to Amy, and they get married. The movie states flatly he turned her on to cocaine, and that may not be all. A blood specimen is mentioned in which cocaine, heroin, and PCP were found. She also liked to drink.
Around 2005-6 going to rehab was suggested, but not followed up on. Her rising trajectory continued–for awhile. Her bands got bigger and better. When she was healthy she could still write and perform good songs.
Her husband was busted for obstruction of justice (I don’t recall the details) and went to prison for awhile. That might have been a good thing for her. It equally might have been a trauma. But later in the move is part of an interview with him that I think sums up how much he was worth: he says that he’s good-looking and dresses well, so he doesn’t need to waste time with Amy.
Amy, meanwhile, has begun to get erratic, but hadn’t entirely lost control. She’s been told she has to get straight before a US tour, and does so. One of the touching scenes (possibly from during that tour) was with Tony Bennett singing a duet (he was doing duets with various artists for an album). She starts out very nervous, trying to work with one of her idols, and he tries to get her to relax, almost like the father she never had. He also says to an interviewer that she’s a real jazz singer. A moment in her life I wish could have lasted longer. They made beautiful music together literally, not figuratively.
Later on she spent about six months on an island without access to drugs. She still had access to alcohol, though. As bad as illegal drugs can be, it seems the combination of bulimia and alcohol is worse.
From the island she was supposed to come back, and begin a tour in Belgrade. Maybe she had wanted the tour, maybe it was arranged with minimal input from her, but when the time came, she didn’t want to do it.
She went onstage to a real sea of faces, and refused to sing. I think music had been her healer, and now no longer was. With all the expectations from those around her (her father seemed fatter every time he appeared) music had become a burden instead.
Was it before Belgrade or after that pictures were taken of her at her house? I think before. There’s little light in the photos, and she looks almost dead, her eyes barely alive, her lips turning blue.
After Belgrade she wanted to return to her friends, and told them so. But by then she must have been both fearful and in great pain psychically, and maybe physically too. That was when she died. I think I remember that no drugs were found in her system, only alcohol. The movie explains that alcohol can cause the bulimic heart to stop. No doubt she felt she needed something to ease the pain. She had wanted to come back, but had gone too far.
This isn’t such an unusual story, but I found it poignant. One reason was her talent, which was enormous. A shame to see it snuffed out so soon. It may be unfair of me to find her case more affecting than that of someone less talented and less physically beautiful. She was gorgeous, and we (males especially) tend to be drawn more to the beautiful than the plain.
That leads to another possible reason: she closely resembles one of my friends, He (“She looked like they could have been sisters,” according to a mutual friend), and this friend encouraged me to write, for which I am grateful.
Her name is Heather Maria Ramirez, and she’s published several novels without making much money from them. Is she less talented than Amy was, or just not as fortunate to be in the right place at the right time? I can’t say.
But Heather’s road diverged sharply from Amy’s, as did my wife, Michelle Scala’s. All three had disordered childhoods, and both Heather and Michelle could have turned to drugs and alcohol to ease the pain they must have felt, just as Amy did. They were stronger, though, experienced the pain, took responsibility, and grew from it. If either were to become famous, they might be more capable of dealing with it than Amy was. Fame, unfortunately, destroyed the wonder Amy found in her music, becoming a burden more than a means to an end. Ultimately, she was, even with all her beauty, talent, and generosity, pathetic, and that’s a real shame. I feel sorry that she couldn’t have made better choices and learned to be happy. Her story is dramatic, but I wish it could have been less so, and that she could have survived.
There are many people who destroy themselves in similar ways, but aren’t as visible as she was. There are also many who undramatically make better choices, survive, and become a blessing to people around them. Heather and Michelle are two such people. There are many more whom we know nothing about unless we know them personally. Heroes need not be dramatic. But what a shame about Amy and so many other self-destructive people. She gave the world beauty. I wish she could have given us more of it.