The connection of Church doctrine and basic economic assumptions

For, as in all great pagan mythologies, in the Celtic there is throughout an essential reliance on nature; whereas, according to every churchly doctrine, nature had been so corrupted by the Fall of Adam and Eve that there was no virtue in it whatsoever.
-Joseph Campbell, Creative Mythology

In reading this, I instantly thought of the assumption of scarcity in economics. Did this fundamental economic axiom grow out of the Christian world view of corrupted nature? The idea that nature cannot ultimately provide us with full, absolute satisfaction, while technically sort of true, seems to be related back to the notion that the world is both corrupted and a corrupter in that there is no sense seeking this absolute satisfaction from natural sources, only the supernatural sources available through the sacraments of the church. Scrubbed down to secularity, we come to scarcity, opportunity costs, and necessary trade-offs in economic pursuit of some acceptable level of overall group satisfaction through the 'efficient' use of resources (as seen through the prism of the short-term, as human life is relatively short).

I would say that the church's super-natural is nothing more than the natural abilities of the human brain to find a certain human absolute satisfaction in the mystic experience of spirit, mind, god, what have you. Whether such abilities were crafted by some white bearded man or Vishnu or the creator's computer is beside this particular point. The point is that church dogma may have clamped down on the ability of Europe and beyond to experience the divine through the particularly wrong-headed condemnation of nature, and that this dogmatic view was quite possibly the underpinning of the probably enlightenment era idea of scarcity in political economy. Possibly. Who really knows? I just make things up as I go along.

Johnny Staccato and Herzog quotes

John Cassavetes is one of my great heroes. Opening Night and A Woman Under the Influence are two of the most destroyingly beautiful films ever made. Plus, he was notoriously difficult (supposedly punching out Stanley Kramer over creative differences on A Child is Waiting) in that he always strove to stay true to his vision of what artistry was all about. And he was a damn fine actor as well, paying for the movies he made by taking whatever gun for hire acting gigs he could get.

Johnny Staccato was one of those jobs, which paid for Shadows and was made around the same time. It only lasted for one season, possibly because it was too violent for 1959, but from the one episode included on the brilliant but canceled crime dramas DVD, it's so frickin' awesome I can't even begin. It's got to be one of the first mixed genre TV shows ever (a proto 'dramedy' if you will allow the use of such an obnoxious word), with a killer jazz soundtrack. In interviews published in Cassavetes on Cassavetes, he claimed to've wrangled with the writers quite a bit, and that it isn't entirely the show he wanted it to be. Still, I've just now gone and scoured the 'net and found a full set of the entire season from one of the auction websites because that one episode was just that good. Cass smirks his way through the whole thing with greatly silly lines, and Waldo the armchair philosopher/jazz club owner is goofily profound and also hilarious.

So, good stuff. Also some quotes from Bellow's Herzog before I return it. Bellow uses an interesting literary device by switching from third person narration to first person as Moses Herzog composes letters in his head to friends, colleagues, and dead philosophers, and the switches occur constantly for varying lengths, sometimes going back and forth in the same paragraph (the shift is acknowledged through the use of italics). It's a very effective move, giving us an apparent objective view of Herzog and then putting us in his cluttered mind. The book explores notions of sanity as we watch Herzog try to work through the tail end of a nervous breakdown over his ex-wife having left him suddenly to live with one of his formerly closest friends. 'Course Herzog is a respected professor whose written about the romantics and was in the process of writing a book about Hegel's Phenomenology of Mind. Great, deep book.

Anyway, some quotes:

So, thought Herzog, acknowledging that his imagination of the universe was elementary, the novae bursting and the worlds coming into being, the invisible magnetic spokes by means of which bodies kept one another in orbit. Astronomers made it all sound as though the gases were shaken up inside a flask. Then after many billions of years, light-years, this childlike but far from innocent creature, a straw hat on his head, and a heart in his breast, part pure, part wicked, would try to form his own shaky picture of this magnificent web.

Seeking to sustain their own version of existence under the crushing weight of mass. What Marx described as that "material weight". Turning this thing, "my personal life," into a circus, into gladiatoral combat. Or tamer forms of entertainment.

Herr Nietzsche...You make us want to live with the void. Not lie ourselves into good-naturedness, trust, ordinary middling human considerations, but to question as has never been questioned before, relentlessly, with iron determination, into evil, through evil, past evil, accepting no abject comfort. The most absolute, the most piercing questions. Rejecting mankind as it is, that ordinary, practical, thieving, stinking, unilluminated, sodden rabble

That last quote was part of the last twenty-five pages or so of the book. Most of which is in the the form of these mental letter compositions that go on and on about the state of man and society and really seem to capture to some extent the earnest existentialism particular to the early 1960's, and it's in this as well as the theme of getting out of the city and back to a natural surrounding to air out the mind, which are probably why Herzog got love from a wide audience in 1964 and became his first real commercial success.

And a line of Cassavetes' dialogue from Johnny Staccato (which I think he fought to have called just simply Staccato, which would've been a pretty killer name for a TV show):

"I know I got slugged and I got robbed. Now you're making noises as if I did the slugging and the robbing."

In drerd aufn deck

Which is Yiddish for the middle of nowhere. Which is how I'm feeling right now. A little shipwrecked. It happens.

Back to books-Saul Bellow round two is underway with a biography, Victim, and soon to begin Ravelstein. Victim was his second book and it's really got the sensuousness of The Adventures of Auggie March, so I was right originally in thinking that this more Earthy descriptiveness and the wandering philosophy have been two strains of Bellow's style. Dangling Man, his first, was certainly thoughtful but not overtly philosophical. Often, as with Herzog & More Die of Heartbreak, the main character is a professor or in that vein (Mr. Sammler's Planet, Humboldt's gift, etc.).

Before getting into the value of the biographical, I just wanted to mention that Atlas, the one of Bellow's biographers that I'm reading, mentions that they used to have used books in huge barrels outside of Walgreens back in the 1920's, and it made me really sad to think that the modern equivalent is racks of really crappy movies. A couple of the names he mentions Bellow reading from the "Modern Library editions" (Altas, pg. 25) are Flaubert, Dryden, Maupassant, Romain Rolland. I would be such a much happier person if I lived in a time and place where you could get used books like that cheap from a Walgreens. I'm not saying I want to go back to a time before computers and such. I just wish the two weren't mutually exclusive. Can't we have talking color pictures, the internet, and books on equal footing? Does it have to be 140 characters or Maupassant?

So the issue of biographicality. I agree with Derrida to a degree when he says that the biographical is a smokescreen in trying to understand the work of an author or a philosopher (although he may have been intending to respond to the use of deconstructionism in American literary criticism in saying words to this effect [I'm a little confused by his explanation]), but I generally find it edifying, even if it's only a fictional edification. I think it's especially important when looking at the philosophical systems any individual sets up to know a bit about that individual. It helps to see where and why their system might have holes. That's kind of, sort of part of deconstructionism. I think.

In the literary world though, it's a little more gossipy to go and read biographies of famous authors. These are the kinds of books I imagine People magazine readers would read if they read books. And I'm not ashamed to admit that I love biographies, autobios, memoirs, the whole bit. I'm incredibly nosy about the lives of people who's work I enjoy and admire. That's not to say that it's not useful to a writer to compare the life of a writer with his work. It can be helpful but is also probably not the main reason I go for the bio. I'm not immune to that more salacious curiosity. That's not to say that biographies are all gossipy and so forth. It's a spectrum for sure, but there's always that element.

And with Bellow it's about the girls. I mean, that was the thing that I was most curious about. I wanted another opinion beyond his own on his relations with women. That's the one mainstay of his work is this problem with women. And there's almost always an ex-wife or girlfriend (sometimes more than one) who treats him rottenly. You figure, either he is drawn to this type of woman or he just paints himself in a favorable light. It's probably a mixture, but clearly in Atlas' opinion Bellow always romanticizes his past and sweeps over his own flaws. Wow, that got really gossipy. I think I'm gonna break off and try this again some other time. I had intended to talk more about the intersection of writing and life, but I guess with that intro I couldn't help but go right for the idle talk.

Also, Infinite Jest. I'm at the point where the payoffs start to occur. You start to see the tapestry as opposed to just a bunch of little threads. It gets yr mind working with all kinds of conspiracy-like thoughts about what it all means and how it all really, ultimately fits together.

I do have to say, although Bellow is really a straighforward writer, there is a certain mystery to him as well buried in the philosophical musings which are not always light-bright clear. That stuff can kind of wash over you when you read it in a work of fiction, and I can imagine rereading will be eventually quite rewarding with all sorts of unremembered stuff.

Movies and baseball

Since the only things I ever post about are what I'm reading, I thought I'd get off that topic for a brief second and talk about my other two favorite things, movies and baseball. I'm watching Rachel Getting Married just now, and I gotta say I'm not totally into the drama of uncomfortableness. I do like the comedy of uncomfortableness, but that stuff's funny. Rachel is just excruciating. When it got to Kim's wedding toast, I just couldn't watch anymore. Plus, Kim's family is flawlessly perfect so far. How does such a self-obsessed, beyond obnoxious person come from such a place? I get the feeling that the perfection isn't real, and things are gonna break down at some stage, but we'll see.

Also, The Thin Red Line is one of the greatest war movies ever. Grittily real. And Nick Nolte as the coronel or general or whatever he is is just a truly transformative performance. There's a scene where he's seriously pissed and screaming into the phone, and the veins on his neck are popping out. It's seriously crazy.

And, of course, Ernst Lubitch is the master of the screwball comedy, but The Shop Around the Corner (on which You've Got Mail was apparently loosely based) is both funny and beautiful and sad all together. Really one of Jimmy Stewart's most subtle performances (Jimmy was not the most subtle of actors). And Margeret Sullivan is really wonderful. I need to rent more Maraget Sullivan movies. Plus, Frank Morgan as Matuscheck has this really pitch perfect child-like quality to him. It all adds up to a damn fine film.

Well, the Sox are in the top slot in the AL East but just barely. The yanks are breathing down their necks. The Jays are saying they'd consider trading Halladay, but I don't think the Yanks have enough to offer or the Sox would give up their young talent. If Hall went to the yanks, that would be it. Hank'd get his pennant for sure.

Now, no one wants John Smoltz to succeed more than me (except maybe Smoltz himself), but with the East such a tight division, how many sub-par outings can you allow the guy to try and turn himself into a finesse pitcher a la Schill? Especially with Buchholz burning up the rubber down in Pawtucket. Still, I have all the confidence in the world in Tito. And this has been his most creative work with the line-up since he's been the skipper of the Sox. And it's paid great dividends. Seems to be taking a page from Joe Maddon's playbook to good effect.

So, that was mostly rambling, little tidbits moreso than anything useful or considered. It's just good for me to write things down. My memory appears to be really useless. I was watching the preview for Elegy, which I saw in the theaters last year, and I was all, 'This looks so familiar. Have I seen a movie with Sir Ben and Penelope Cruz?' I still can't remember what the whole thing was about beyond a may-december romance. Maybe that was all it was about. It's weird watching something you clearly know and have seen, but can't for the life of you remember at all. I don't enjoy that, but then again having a not so good memory has it's advantages too. Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind and all that. Okay, enough of this. I'm not getting anywhere.

Infinite Jest and all the rest

It feels a little weird to have exactly designated page readings for the collective read of Infinite Jest marked out to the day. Though it has got me to read the book in small bites here and there, mostly in the few minutes before I should be asleep. That way I aim for a zen aproach of non-judgement, which never totally works 'cause Wallace is so damn entertaining. Still, I can clear my mind on it at the end of the day, which sounds a little crazy when you think about the material as 'material for a book', as in the kind of material that would in general make a good novel all things being equal. In that sense, the material would not make for a light read before bed book, but he makes it work. Sure, it's huge and complicated, but it's also hugely engaging and full of humour, and he eases you in so smoothly that you barely even notice how weird and complicated things've gotten. I can see just now in the past few days why there has been talk of getting past the first 200 pages. There is a slight lag toward the 120-35 mark, and the Wardine stuff is written in a way that could be obnoxious to some.

'Course after the Sheep Man's dialogue in both Murakami's A Wild Sheep Chase and Dance, Dance, Dance, which was all caps without spacing between the words (which was itself the translator's idea to signify some linguistic eccentricity Murakami used in the original Japanese), I can handle just about any level of linguistic weirdness. That stuff was obnoxious. Of course, those two books were so good otherwise that I could tolerate the sheep man stuff. In comparison the Wardine stuff so far is easy, and I feel like Wardine's story is absolutely necessary to balance out the novel and a pretty interesting one ta' boot.

So I read Jest in small bites, and I don't think about it and go to sleep. It's seems like I remember the book really well that way (either that or it's Wallace's shorter sectioning in the early chapters, which fits the modern attention span better) because I do seem to have a pretty good sense of what's going on where. The problem is more what hasn't been discovered in just the first 10% of the entire book when including the end notes, which are seemingly both important for the story and quite funny. The M.I.T. language riots set off by a debate between Steven Pinker and some made up person, I believe. Buried in the infamous endnote 24. That made me happy all day and glad I stuck it out through 24 to the end.

If I read 15 pages today, then I'll be at the 75 per week mark at 150 (second week). (editor's note [as this post was started yesterday] I'm actually ten pages behind in Jest). And this whole setting exact page and chapter designations has crept into the rest of my reading, which has actually been not too frenetic but more disciplined and therefore more successful. I've been, at least, reading, if not fully processing some heavier stuff. 'Course Saul Bellow has got to be one of the more directly philosophical successful novel writers of all time. His fiction has substantial weight, although in the existential direction which is a field both madly important and of so little practical use to the moneygrabbers of this world (in fact, it's a downright hindrance to have to think about the very thing [mortality] that you are grabbing all this money to avoid thinking about [probably]) and probably ultimately a bit on the tautological side. Okay, that was a set of bald speculative generalizations, but, well, if economists are allowed to make wild philosophical assumptions, then why not I.

Just a brief record for myself of my progress up to July 6th: half way thru W. James, One chpter Joe Campbell's Creative Mythology, two chptrs Macroeconomics (the fallacious assumptions in the field are worse than I suspected), finished Dangling Man, 1/3 thru Herzog. Going to the library today for a biography on Bellow and possibly Ravelstein. That one's gotten some interesting praise and was his last book finished at age 85 (the same year his wife gave birth to his last kid!). Anyway, this is how I'm processing the progress thru various reading this summer mainly because of the collective read. This idea of exactly scheduled reads has really got into my head, and frankly it's pretty helpful when trying to juggle multiple books.

A quick word on macroeconomics. My neighbor gave me his textbook after he took the class, and I've been reading it slowly in bits and pieces in the mornings with my breakfast. Already, the clear lack of philosophic rigor is soooo clear. I said this about behavior economics, but it's even more so true of econ proper. There were several small little assumptive choices that I picked up on but didn't register enough to remember exactly other than the writer's poor explanation of the use and value of behavior econ, but the fundamental assumption of scarcity as existing everywhere at all times because human beings can't satisfy every possible desire they might ever possibly have at every moment of their lives...You guys don't see why having that as the fundamental assumption of yr field might result in some freaked out outcomes? If you really can't see the problem here, then I really don't think there's a whole lot anybody can do about it? I mean, that is astoundingly asinine. Just astoundingly.

I can't even be bothered to deconstruct it again. I ran it in my head in a frustrated half-muttered yelling at the book while pounding the text with my finger, but I'm really not going there again. So, this next few years of intensive econ study is gonna be a slog on some levels, but necessary. Alternative economics producing a practical system and the philosophical reformation of the field proper (opening it to the social sciences [and not letting jerk-off intro writers cop to 'that's not part of the field of economics' as an excuse for ignoring the wider ranges and mountaintops of knowledge]) is work that needs to be done, and maybe I can do something useful in that direction.

So, there's all of that. Otherwise, things're good. Beautiful day, don't have to work. Going to spend some time wandering the city today and writing descriptive stuff for the real places for my novel. That'll also be good. Life is good. I feel good. Going running now.