Top 5 of 2005: Much Belated

A while back I promised to post my top 5 books of 2005. We're now a long ways from end-of-year recollections, but I'll try to make good on the promise. I don't mean this to be an "objective" list of the best books from last year (as Napolean replied to Kit: "Like anyone could even know that!"). Rather, they're five books that stick out in my memory of a year of reading.

1. Charles Marsh, The Beloved Community: How Faith Shapes Social Justice, From the Civil Rights Movement to Today. Hands down, my favorite book of 2005, and one of the best books I've read in a long time. Marsh does an excellent job rescuing the civil rights movement from liberalism and demonstrating its thick connections to the particularities of the worshipping community. Because of its ecclesiocentric roots, Marsh evaluates the "secularization" of the civil rights movement not as its completion, but rather as precisely that which stunted its effects. This book is also a model of "public" theological writing--that is, theology undertaken as public intellectual discourse without sacrificing the rigor of theological confession and precision. I can't speak highly enough about Marsh's accomplishment.

2. Alan Jacobs, The Narnian: The Life and Imagination of C.S. Lewis. This was an end-of-year treat for me. Jacobs navigates a course between hagiography (all too common in Lewis literature) and cynicism (think A.N. Wilson). It is a solid intellectual biography that helpfully explores interesting tensions in Lewis (particularly the intra-psychic tensions between the worlds of philosophy and literature, logic and fantasy), as well as several curious snippets about Lewis' interest in sado-masochism [that doesn't show up in the hagiographies]. The end of the book felt a little rushed (the movie release date approaching?), but throughout I particularly enjoyed Jacobs' account of "Faery" as central to Lewis' thought. An enjoyable read.

3. Nicole Krauss, The History of Love. As I noted earlier on this blog, a wonderful literary novel.

4. Creston Davis, John Milbank, and Slavoj Zizek, editors, Theology and the Political. This is the only "academic" book I'll include, but I think it is a landmark volume on the boundaries of philosophy, theology, ontology, and politics. It will take a year to digest it all.

5. George Weigel, The Cube and the Cathedral: Europe, America, and Politics Without God. I continue to feel an allergy to Weigel's (Constantinian) politics and (basically neo-con) economic leanings, and yet I find myself often in deep agreement with his diagnoses of what's wrong with the West (in which he echoes much of Benedict XVI's own diagnoses). This book offers a compelling contrast between the poverty of European liberalism and the richness of Catholic social thought.

The Revival of Biography

Since Christmas vacation I've been treating myself to reading some biographies, including Alan Jacobs' The Narnian: The Life and Imagination of C.S. Lewis [more on that in a later post] and a little gem I found at a local used bookshop: Dennis Donoghue's Walter Pater: Lover of Strange Souls.

But it's another little biography that is the occasion for my post: Edmund White's Marcel Proust in The Penguin Lives Series. Or perhaps I should say it is the series itself which has intrigued me--akin to Harper Collins Eminent Lives Series, from which I read Christopher Hitchens on Thomas Jefferson this past summer. These biography series often have a brilliant alchemy, creating a way to bring together potent contemporary voices to produce dense--or rather, economical--portraits of historical figures in ways that are both illuminating and literary. One might hope this represents a renewed place for biography that might finally displace the incessant string of memoirs from twentysomethings! And if they represent a certain rennaissance of biography, one wonders how short the cycle must be, since Evelyn Waugh--in his own 1928 biography of D.G. Rossetti that very much fits this genre--opened by noting:

Biography, as books about the dead are capriciously catalogued, is still very much in the mode.

It has usurped the place held in recent years by the novel, and before that by poetry, as the regular metier of all those young men and women who, in every age, concern themselves with providing the light reading of their more cultured friends. Naturally enough, a new manner has resulted, and, to a great extent, a new method; and polite literature is the less polite for it.

He goes on to, shall we say, confess?--

We have discovered a jollier way of honoring our dead. The corpse has become the marionnette. With bells on its fingers and wires on its toes it is jigged about to a "period dance" of our own piping; and who is not amused? Unfortunately, there is singularly little fun to be got out of Rossetti. (Waugh, Rossetti: His Life and Works, 1928, pp. 11-12)

I take it that Waugh worries that the entertainments of these "Lives" can create anachronistic creations for our own delight--a kind of horizontal Feuerbachian worry that we'll create our subjects in our own image. Fair enough; and in fact, White's little life of Proust probably does just that with its incessant fixation on Proust's homosexuality. And yet, there is an invitation to other worlds embedded in here from which it is always a bit disappointing to have to return.

Sights and Sounds: Brideshead Revisited

Before our longish drive back to Canada for Christmas vacation, I set off to our public library in search of a book on CD with hopes of shortening the trip, as it were. I hit upon a gem: Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited narrated by Jeremy Irons. This turned out to be a spectacular combination. Irons--who, for me, will almost simply be identified with Father Gabriel in The Mission--brings Waugh's very Catholic novel to life in wonderful ways. With a voice much at home on the stage, Irons incarnates Waugh's already remarkably complex and charming characters, creating voices for each (even the 11-year-old girl, Cordelia), and hitting just the right note for Charles Ryder's narrative voice.

But then another wonderful little turn of providence. Our pilgrimage back to family in Canada always takes us to Stratford, Ontario--effectively our hometown (though we're from small villages just south), namesake for Stratford-upon-Avon, and home to the acclaimed Stratford Festival Theatre. All in all, an absolutely charming place that everyone should try to visit at least once. One of the treats of visiting Stratford is returning to some old haunts in local bookshops, particularly two used bookshops from which I've built some important parts of my library. My favorite is The Book Stage, just behind the Avon Theatre and run by a German bibliophile, Manfred Meurer (who does not lack resemblance to Albert Einstein). Manfred and I developed something of a working relationship as I was engaged in graduate studies in phenomenology--first in Toronto, then in Philadelphia. As Manfred learned of my work and interests, and watched my book-buying habits, he started to set aside texts for me in a secret little closet, to be unveiled whenever I returned to Stratford. When I would come back into town from Philadelphia, I would visit Manfred, who would then trot out assorted Husserl and Heidegger books, some even in German. I think he was almost as excited as I was.

Alas, Manfred closes up shop for the winters, so I headed to my other haunt: "Yesterday's Things," a used book shop on Ontario Street just a few doors down from our first apartment after returning from Iowa. (It was a charming space: a second floor flat in a turn-of-the-century home; it will always be remembered as the home to which we brought our firstborn, Grayson.) The philosophy and theology selection at Yesterday's Things does not compare to Manfred's (think multiple copies of A Course in Miracles), but the literature selection is outstanding--and incredibly inexpensive (especially when the American dollar is a little stronger). I first headed to the Wilde section, but found nothing I don't already own. There was a decent edition of Orwell's later journalism and letters, but in paperback. No Chesterton. A volume of C.S. Lewis's letters looked intriguing. But then I noticed, on top of the shelves and out of order, a mint, hardcover edition of Waugh's Brideshead Revisited--a Little, Brown edition from 1979 for just $10 (CDN!). I snapped it up.

I continued to listen to Irons' rendition on the way back to the States, and now back home (and with very little time in the car), I've turned to reading the hard copy. I'm not sure if it is unfortunate or fortunate, but Ryder's narrative voice-in-my-head while I read is Irons', and Irons' wonderful interpretation of the characters continues to echo for me (his rendering of Anthony is spot on). And as new characters come on the scene, I half find myself tempted to hear how Irons plays them out, and perhaps I'll give in to the temptation and check. In any case, Irons' performance of the book has enriched my reading--as if I can hear the book in my hands.

Coming Soon: Top 5 of 2005

I've always been a sucker for year-end retrospectives and so the next couple of weeks are always a highlight for me as all kinds of venues generate their "top 10" lists. (See, for instance, the NYT's 10 Best Books of 2005, o John Wilson's Top 10 Books of 2005 from Books & Culture.) I'm going to be more humble and suggest a "Top 5 of 2005" in the next few days. Stay tuned.

The History of Love

My wife and I just finished Nicole Krauss's remarkable novel, The History of Love. My wife first devoured it, and when she quite quickly and decisively described it as perhaps her favorite book ever (and she doesn't just say this everyday), I splurged, bought the book, and also proceeded to inhale it from the first lines ("When they write my obituary. Tomorrow. Or the next day. It will say, LEO GURSKY IS SURVIVED BY AN APARTMENT FULL OF SHIT.")

Krauss's writing is dynamic, with a wide range. There's no monotone rut of observation. Instead, she manages to inhabit several very diverse characters (how does a 34-year-old write so well in the voice of an old man?). The novel has embedded within it several different genres, and layers upon layers (books within books and translations of books, with journals and letter and poems interspersed). And while it is certainly a meditation on love (both familial and romantic, love lost and love hoped-for), it is also a profound exploration of language and all of our attempts to find "words for everything." The book's impact hovers somewhere between ecstacy and mourning, rapture and heartbreak. And it's a book that keeps haunting you for a while. A must read.

New Left Review: Best Read with Wine

As I think I've confessed before, I'm a journal and magazine junkie. One of my favorite, more 'highbrow' periodicals (without quite being "academic"), is the New Left Review. Each issue always has a few gems, such as Alain Badiou's recent overview of French philosophy, Malcolm Bull's quasi-review of Hardt & Negri's Multitude, Slavoj Zizek's critique of human rights, or Regis Debray's reflections on John Paul II. One of my favorites from a little further back is Mike Davis' chilling account of urban poverty in "Planet of the Slums" (a bit of a precis of his forthcoming book).

And what better way to enjoy reading the New Left Review than with a nice glass of wine? My wife and I have become devoted fans of Riesling, and so I scarfed up the latest issue of the Wine Spectator in which Riesling gets cover story billing. They highlights top Rieslings from Germany, Alsace (in France), Australia, and a few from the States (from Washington and the Finger Lakes region of NY). Our tastebuds are probably a little skewed by our geography, but we thought our favorite Riesling from Chateau Grand Traverse in Michigan deserved a mention!

Calvin e-Journal: Minds in the Making

Nathan Bierma, a relatively new (though returning) face here at Calvin College, was recently appointed the editor of Calvin's web-based zine/mag/journal Minds in the Making. Nathan is one of those people who seems to be doing a hundred different things, and he does them all well! (Nathan is also an author, writes a column for the Chicago Tribune, and now plays a key role at the Calvin Institute of Christian Worship.) His tranformation of the Minds journal if fabulous. In addition to instituting some regular "columns," he regularly collects a wide sampling of some of the intellectually stimulating stuff that happens on our campus almost everyday. And he's done so in a multi-media format, including not only articles and essays, but also audio files of lectures and interviews, as well as visual slides, and more.

Minds in the Making is a wonderful glimpse into the diverse conversations that take place here at Calvin, and we have Nathan to thank for opening the window into that.

A Reply from Vanity Fair

I have earlier confessed on this blog to my weakness for Vanity Fair. Several months ago (July 28 to be exact), I moved from passive voyeur status and sent the following "Letter to the Editor" to Vanity Fair:

Did the VF editorial team miss the chance to read James Wolcott's article ("To Live and Die in Iraq," August 2005)? In the same article that Wolcott rightly scolds "Mr. Media" for showing only American players in Iraq, and only sanitized images at that, the only photos that accompany the article feature, you guessed it, only American soldiers and none that would disturb Mr. Media's picture of the war. Not a single Iraqi "extra" makes an appearance. Left on the cutting room floor, I guess?

Wolcott's article also catalogues the litany of celebrity "events" that consume American media. And then immediately after his article, I have to endure Dominick Dunne's sophmoric romp through recent Hollywood "disasters." This is amplified by the editorial choice to highlight the line about Lana Clarkson's breasts, with the frat-boy touch of highlighting the word "breasts" in red.

If only VF's editorial policies followed more closely James Wolcott's prescriptions.

James K.A. Smith
Grand Rapids, Michigan

To my surprise, I just received this response in reply:

Thank you very much for your letter to the editor. We have received several letters regarding this matter, and I will be sure to address this point with the appropriate editors here. I appreciate your input and hope that you continue expressing your opinions to Vanity Fair.

Sincerely,

Graydon Carter

One can hope.

Hot off the press: Radical Orthodoxy and the Reformed Tradition

It's a bit weird to suggest that I'm reading my own book, but anyone who's an author knows that, in fact, this is strangely true, without being as utterly vain as it sounds. This week I received the first copies of Radical Orthodoxy and the Reformed Tradition, hot off the press from Baker Academic. After a book has been put to bed (about 6 months prior to its appearance), it's always fun for an author to receive it back in this new form. It sometimes feels like someone else's book, and in the case of an edited collection like this, much of it is!

I was honored by the recent blog attention given the book by an astute reader: Byron Borger of Hearts&Minds Books in PA.

Listening as Reading

This blog is supposed to keep some notes on what I'm reading; I'm stretching that a little by noting something I'm listening to, which then got me to reading the lyrics. One of my son's friends turned me on to The Decemberists. They're song "16 Military Wives" is quite a remarkable little piece of cultural critique which masks itself as a "ditty" with a kind of upbeat tune which should create serious cognitive dissonance for anyone who listens to the words. I'll paste the lyrics here, but you really must listen to the song. (For some commentary on the "meaning," visit http://www.songmeanings.net/lyric.php?lid=3530822107858533163 .)

Artists > Decemberists, The > Sixteen Military Wives
Submitted by themunkel on March 1, 2005

sixteen military wives
thirty-two softly-focused, brightly-colored eyes
staring at the natural tan
of thirty-two gently clenching,
wrinkled little hands

seventeen company men
out of which only twelve will make it back again.
sergeant sends a letter to five military wives,
his tears drip down from ten little eyes.

cheer them on to their rivals
cause america can
and america can't say no
and america does if
america says it's so
it's so
and the anchorperson on tv
goes la-di-da-di-da.

fifteen celebrity minds
leading their fifteen sordid, wretched checkered lives
will they find their solution in time?
using fifteen pristine moderate liberal minds
eighteen academy chairs, out of which only seven really even care
doling out a garland to five
celebrity minds
they're humbly taken by surprise

cheer them on to their rivals
cause america can
and america can't say no
and america does if
america says it's so
it's so
and the anchorperson on tv
goes la-di-da-di-da-didi-didi-da
la-di-da-di-da-didi-didi-da

fourteen cannibal kings
wondering blithely what the dinner bell will bring
fifteen celebrity minds served in a leafy bed of sixteen military wives

cheer them on to their rivals
cause america can
and america can't say no
and america does if
america says it's so
it's so
and the anchorperson on tv
goes la-di-da-di-da-didi-didi-da.
la-di-da-di-da-didi-didi-da.

Book Reviews as Crucial Knowledge

[Sorry for the blog silence of late. What little time and energy I've had left for blogging has gone into some discussions at the Generous Orthodoxy "Think Tank."]
I am a passionate devotee of book reviews: I commit to writing quite a few of them, and I make a point of trying to consume them regularly--both the sorts of reviews one finds in the Atlantic and Harper's, as well as the more scholarly review in academic journals. [For the latter, the "table of contents alert services" that many academic journals provide are a godsend. See the Modern Theology site for an example, and click on "Sign-up for e-tocs."]

I think book reviews are a crucial arena for discourse, for both "public" intellectuals and the ivory halls of academe. Sometimes they are pointers, bringing to our attention works that we might not otherwise have encounters; at other times, they provide an arena for debate and provide an opportunity to "listen in" as leading thinkers hash out their commonalities and differences. And there's nothing an author likes more than a good book review (where "good" doesn't just mean praise and adulation, but rather someone who really takes your arguments seriously, thinks along with you, and then takes you places you didn't go in the book).

One rich and free resource that I highly recommend is Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews. A relatively new online review, the editors manage to get some of the best people in philosophy to provide very extensive reviews of works across a range of subdisciplines and even across the disciplines. Sign-up to receive new reviews by email and you'll receive several treasures weekly and browse through the Archives to find much more.

Today I received a review of a fascinating book I hadn't come across: Amy Mullins' Reconceiving Pregnancy and Childcare. This is one of the briefer NDPR reviews, but has got me to put this book on my wish list.

If This Doesn't Scare You...

I must confess to a dirty little secret: I am a regular and avid reader of Vanity Fair. It's not something I like to trumpet. Even my kids bug me about my "girlie magazine," and I must admit that when I'm on the bus, I try to hide the front cover. It's not just the glossy pages of fashion ads that are disconcerting; it is the general bourgeois, "high-society" glitz that VF perpetuates (Graydon Carter and Dominick Dunne can be such whores to celebrity sometimes). It's a bit like my passion for Oscar Wilde: part of me knows the quasi-socialist in me should hate this stuff, but the other part of me would like nothing better than to have been a part of late 19th-century "society." (Someone once asked Wilde why he wasn't a socialist, to which he replied: "I prefer to keep my evenings free.")

But I was attracted to VF for the articles (gee, where have you heard that line before?). In particular, it's one of the places where I can regularly read Christopher Hitchens, including some of his best pieces later collected in Love, Poverty, and War. James Wolcott also regularly contributes some good stuff, including an excellent piece on the skewed coverage of Iraq. And there usually some decent interviews to boot, including a memorable one with Vigo Mortensen (quoting Kant!).

But the August issue included a cover story on poor Martha Stewart's house arrest that included this disturbing little tidbit: Martha chose to spend her confine at a new farm in Bedford. For this project, she was committed to a very simple, but scrupulously uniform color scheme: all the buildings would be a washed gray (now "Bedford Gray" in the Martha Stewart line), and all the accents would be black. Included in the black accents are all of the animals on the farm--including the dog! In fact, her horses, if left in the sun through the day, tend to take on a reddish sheen that upsets this color palette. So Stewart has directed the handlers to keep the horses inside all day in order to preserve the appropriate black accents for the environmental decor. Quite a microcosm of economic power manipulating nature for ridiculous ends.

What I'm Reading: A Sampler

There are a number of books that have moved around the house--from my desk to nighstand to coffee table to front porch and back to my desk--for which I can't provide a proper review, but which deserve some "props." So here's a bit of a clearinghouse post about some great stuff that I've been dipping into since late spring.

Lauren Winner's Real Sex: The Naked Truth about Chastity (Brazos, 2005) is a bold and extremely helpful book. Having worked with "college & career" ministries in several different churches, it became clear to me that many evangelicals lack a really robust, positive theology of sexuality. This book goes a long way toward changing that.

Is the Reformation Over?: An Evangelical Assessment of Contemporary Roman Catholicism, by Mark Noll and Carolyn Nystrom (Baker Academic, 2005). Asks a great question, and then provides a nice blend of journalistic reporting and theological insight. Encouraging and hopeful about where the relationship between Rome and evangelicalism is at, and where it's headed, yet also honest in its assessment and critique.

My thinking here might be slightly biased since the author is a dear friend, but I think that Amos Yong's The Spirit Poured Out on All Flesh: Pentecostalism and the Possibility of Global Theology (Baker Academic, 2005) has just set a new standard for pentecostal theology. Amos' knowlege of theological and philosophical literature is global in its scope, and just downright daunting in its depth. This is the book on pentecostal theology that non-pentecostals should read.

While I'm a bit critical of how glibly and faddishly the notion of "empire" is thrown around by theologians and leftish religious pundits, one will find a judicious, well-researched account from theologian Gary Dorrien in Imperial Designs: Neoconservatism and the New Pax Americana (Routledge, 2004).

Of course, Harry Potter and the Half-blood Prince was also on my nightstand for a few days. I was a bit disappointed with how little the story really moved forward, but was glad to see that Dumbledore confirmed some of my own predictions about prophecy in the series.

Whose Catholic Revolution?

An alluring title made me eager to engage Andrew Greeley's The Catholic Revolution: New Wine, Old Wineskins, and the Second Vatican Council (University of California, 2004). Hoping for some behind-the-scenes insight into the impact of de Lubac, Congar, and the nouvelle theologie, it was disappointing to see that Greeley's "Catholic" church doesn't seem to exist outside of Euro-America, and that the extent of the "revolution" was that American Catholics started using birth control. One will find a more revolutionary vision (though not "all the way down," so to speak), in Pope John Paul II's Memory and Identity (Rizzoli, 2005).

The Sound of Words: A Poem by Coleson

Reading something a little different tonight: a collection of poems by my son, Coleson (10). I was particularly impressed by his "onomatopoeia" poem which tries to find words for sounds, conveying a mood and ambiance. With much pride, I'm happy to share the fruits of his artistic labors:

The deep moo of the cow in his pen
The annoying creak of the barn door as the farmer enters and exits
The light swish of the windmill on top of the barn
The stomp of animals walking around their pen
The loud vurrm of the tractor
The rude "eew" of people smelling the barn
The quiet chomp of the animals as they're eating
That's a farm yard

Coleson Smith, 2005

America's Founding: Another Story

I just finished the first volume in Gore Vidal's "American Chronicle" series--a set of historical novels which tracks the history of America from the revolution up to the 1980s, largely through the variegated and bastardized legacy of America's greatest theologian, Jonathan Edwards. Thus the first novel, Burr, tracks the revolutionary emergence of the Republic through the adventures of Aaron Burr, Edwards' grandson and most famous for the duel in which he killed Alexander Hamilton. (Edwards appears in the story through the figure of Mrs. Townsend, the moralist proprietor of a brothel who is an avid reader of Edwards, particularly on the so-called Freedom of the Will. But the Reformed tradition of the great Edwards does not fare well with his wayward grandson. En route to what would be his final home, accompanied by the Reverend P.J. Van Pelt, Colonel Burr confides to Charlie Schuyler: "If you should hear that I have died in the bosom of the Dutch Reformed Church, you will know that either a noble mind was entirely overturned at the end or a man of the cloth has committed perjury.")

As I was reading this, my oldest son was getting his first dose of the "canonical" account of America's historical mythology from his junior high history book. Being a Canadian, I didn't receive this "orthodox" indoctrination, so I wasn't in much of a position to judge Vidal's slant, but a historian colleague of mine assured me that my son would be better served by Vidal.

Having now read Burr, I can now see that Vidal's Inventing a Nation was a non-fiction (?) return to old haunts in a new context. In Burr, Vidal offers an entertaining, iconoclastic account of the invention of a nation which, for a long time, had ambiguous relations with imperial, monarchic dreams. The "heroes" of American faith--Washington, Jefferson, Hamilton--are cast in less than flattering terms, while the villains of the canonical story (Jackson, even Benedict Arnold) are given a chance to tell their side of the story--particularly in Burr, who variously suffered as the murderer of Hamilton, a traitor to the union, and a would-be emperor of Mexico. But it's hard not to love him.

One of the most fascinating subtexts here is the early republic's continued flirting with monarchy (Washington was addressed as "His Excellency" and held court in Philadelphia) and empire (Bonaparte was admired far and wide, and many of the key players here spent time in France). It is undoubtedly the contemporaneity of these themes which brought back these figures with such force in Vidal's more recent Inventing a Nation. In an age of Newspeak and Thought Police, Vidal's fiction might be the best place to get at "the truth." So I'm looking forward to diving into Lincoln.

Empire for Dummies

I wish I could spend more time with this book but it is WAY overdue from the public library (paying fines is my little way of donating to public services). Arundhati Roy's An Ordinary Person's Guide to Empire is a collection of stinging yet witty editorials which is happy to take aim not only at the American imperial project, but also the lingering British version of this in India. As she puts it, "Empire is on the move, and Democracy is its new war cry" (47). Or better, "Democracy has become Empire's euphemism for neo-liberal capitalism" (56).

Her concerns range from corporate control of the so-called "free press" (see my Fors Clavigera post on this), to the "poverty draft" that fills our military ranks (though increasingly not even that is enough).

One of her more witty tropes is the suggestion of Saddam Hussein's remarkable restraint: "If the Saddam Hussein regime indeed has weapons of mass destruction, it is showing an astonishing degree of responsibility and restraint in the teeth of extreme provocation" (35). With all those threatening WMD in Iraq, you'd think he might have pulled the trigger as American forces bore down on Baghdad.

Hitchens on the Clintons: No One Left to Lie To

As I've indicated before, I secretly want to be Christopher Hitchens (or Bernard-Henri Levy). This was further confirmed this past weekend as I enjoyed one of Hitchens' earlier book, No One Left to Lie To: The Values of the Worst Family. As you might imagine, Hitchens' take on Bubba is somewhat different than the version we heard in Clinton's My Life (which we listened to last summer when we drove home from L.A.).

First published in 1999, Hitchens ruthlessly documents the underside of the teflon-Clinton, including everything from his very intentional pandering to the Right by a method of "triangulation" (and his transformation of the Democratic party as a right of center machine), his unabashed opportunism, his wag-the-dog war crimes, and a serious investigation (and substantiation) of rape charges against Clinton. A very sobering book that we'd expect from Hitchens the contrarian, who was almost alone in unmasking the Clinton menace during a time when even Gore Vidal was coming to William Jefferson's aid.

My only disappointment is that I fear Hitchens--whose contrarian tendencies have now made him a defender of Bush's war in Iraq, and even an endorser of Tony Blair in the upcoming election--might never write such a book on George W. Indeed, it is striking to read this book now, 5 years later, as he seems to let Bush off on matters for which he castigated Clinton (especially on the death penalty). Even if his experience seeing the sufferings of the Kurds at the hands of Saddam Husserin has made Hitchens deeply sympathetic to the campaign in Iraq, I hope Hitchens' biting wit, sharp analysis, independence, and rigorous journalism will at some point be turned on the purchased presidency of Bush the Lesser.

Highlights from Harper's

You'll start to see here and over on Fors Clavigera that I have a new favorite monthly: Harper's magazine. The magazine is part sampler, part essays, with decent selections of art and literature. Lewis Lapham's opening editorials (like "Democracyland") are always incisive and entertaining, and the Harper's Index--curious compilations of culturally-revealing stats--are always a treat. (E.g.: Percentage of born-again U.S. Christians who have been divorced: 35. Percentage of Americans who have been: 35. Chances that the divorce of a born-again Christian happened after he or she accepted Christ: 9 in 10.)

The March 2005 issue included an illuminating essay on desertion ("AWOL in America") and a hilarious account of a leftist journalist who posed as a Bush supporter and worked on grassroots campaigning in Florida ("Bird-Dogging the Bush Vote"). To top it off, the same issue included a surrealist little piece of literature which clearly takes aim at America's reality-TVish culture ("Brad Carrigan, American"), and then a review by Terry Eagleton on accounts of the Enlightenment ("The Enlightenment is Dead! Long Live the Enlightenment!").

All in all, great stuff and well worth your attention. The June issue should be arriving any day now.

French-American War Revisited

An interesting little book I happened upon: Dangerous De-Liaisons (Melville House, 2004) documents several dialogues between two leading editorial figures--Walter Wells (The International Herald Tribune, European outlet of the New York Times) and Jean-Marie Colombani (of Le Monde). While a bit rambling, the book provides interesting insights into what has almost always been a tortured relationship of love and hate (or perhaps better, a passive-aggressive relationship of superficial love and deeper hate). What emerges from the conversation is a sense that, in the days after 9/11, there was a new opportunity for solidarity ("Today, we are all Americans," Chirac announced). When W. asserted an American unilateralism, that possibility was destroyed. But this wasn't something new; it was really just a lapse into old ways. The conversation provides an illuminating account of how different two democracies can be.