New Orleans—An Autopsy
By Ben C. Toledano
From Commentary issue: September 2007
Reports of the death of New Orleans as a major American city have not been greatly exaggerated; they have only been greatly delayed. Although the funeral was not conducted until Katrina struck, the death took place several decades ago.
Since the disastrous storm, there has been much lamenting over the lost joys of the city’s cuisine, music, and architecture, and ringing proclamations of the need to “save” and “rebuild” New Orleans. For at least the prior 50 years, however, these undeniable charms and graces had masked problems of major proportions, unexposed until over half of the city’s residents were forced by the hurricane to leave town.
The fact is that the majority of New Orleans’s citizens were poor, black, uneducated, unemployed or underemployed, and living in near slum conditions. Today, the city is a very, very different place. Along with everything else Katrina did, it eliminated some of the sub-marginal public and private housing, reduced unemployment, lessened (somewhat) the sale of illegal drugs, lowered the number of illegitimate births among teenage girls, and drastically cut the number of victims of the public-school system. New Orleans will henceforth be closer to the mythmakers’ idealized notion of it: smaller, whiter, and more dedicated than ever to its main sources of commerce: tourism, the port, and conventions.
Yet no comfort can be taken from what a forced mass exodus has done. The city, or what remains of it, continues to suffer from what it is, from what it was, and from how it arrived at this catastrophic end. Since history is ignored only at one’s peril, it might be of interest to consider what caused the death of old New Orleans before Katrina struck: a story of destruction not from without but from within.
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Ultimately, no doubt, the problem that became New Orleans grew out of the social system set up by the Creoles, the early French and Spanish families who in the late 18th century established in this unlikely locale a vestige of European class hierarchy.1 Among their core beliefs, one element was noblesse oblige—a certain sense of responsibility toward even those among their fellow human beings who were black, and slaves. But another was that aristocrats were born, not made. Aptitude and achievement made no difference; the top rung belonged to those to the manner born.
The Civil War put a crimp into the New Orleans style of living as an aristocratic European oasis within the otherwise upstart experiment known as American democracy. Control of the city passed to federal troops, who occupied it from April 1862 until April 1877. But after the inauguration of Rutherford B. Hayes as President, the old ruling class returned to power once again, both socially and commercially. Blacks, though free, returned to their “place”; even without the foul element of legal ownership, they remained dependent on whites.
A complicating factor now was the carpetbaggers. While under military occupation, New Orleans had exercised a particular appeal to outside opportunists from the North, mostly Republicans, no less, who journeyed south toward the end of the war and thereafter to fatten (as Lincoln said of a different class of Civil War profiteers) on the city’s misfortunes. Surely they were impressed by a system in which there was no necessary relationship between effort and reward.
Carpetbaggers, by their very nature, knew a good thing when they saw it. Perhaps their quintessential act was securing a charter in 1868 from the Reconstruction legislature, itself made up almost entirely of carpetbaggers, for the Louisiana State Lottery Company. The lottery, which appears to have been the brain child of Charles T. Howard, made so much money for its promoters that in 1890 the company offered to pay the state $1,250,000 annually to renew its charter for 25 years. (The offer was declined.)
After 1877, the carpetbaggers mounted an effort to court social acceptability. The process took a while: as long as the Creoles and other prominent pre-Civil War families could hold the fort, the newcomers, mainly descendants of people from the British Isles (i.e., Americans), would have to wait. But having witnessed the 1862 “defense” of New Orleans—the city’s resistance to occupation was comically brief—they knew the wait would not be very long.
It lasted no more than 40 years. For the most part, the return of the aristocrats to power amounted to but a brief flexing of tired, inelastic muscles. They could not adjust to the new way of doing business introduced by the carpetbaggers, and once they lost what was left of their recovered money, they also lost their influence. Though no armistice was signed, the old guard in New Orleans finally fell at about the same time as hostilities ceased in World War I. And it was just as well; there was no place left in America for a quasi-agrarian, Old World aristocratic order that had for too long controlled a city without being part of a nation. “Gentlemen” had been replaced by producers—just as, in time, producers would be replaced by manipulators and influence-peddlers.
For the victors in New Orleans, the question became one of organization. How would the nouveaux riches and the newly powerful structure their social system? Would they simply expropriate the traditional outfit and tailor it to their needs, or would they start anew? They were far too clever for the latter. The trappings of respectability were theirs for the taking, and there was no obvious need to earn what could be seized. But they did see a benefit in reserving some positions of influence for the deposed aristocrats themselves, for the sake not only of continuity but of legitimacy. Whether in a law firm, a brokerage house, or a club, the economic value of social credentials continued to be axiomatic.
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To anyone unfamiliar with institutions like Mardi Gras and Carnival, it is extremely difficult to explain how such practices actually work. Most outsiders still view them as a series of festive events, and as such, indeed, they may have begun. But before long they became a means of distinguishing those who were socially acceptable in New Orleans from those who were not.
To put it differently: by the terms Mardi Gras and Carnival, I do not mean the celebrations of the week or two preceding Ash Wednesday, but rather the four men’s luncheon clubs and seven or so private organizations that annually sponsored balls or parades or both. Systematically excluded from membership in these institutions were Jews, Italians, Latin Americans, Asians, women, and, of course, blacks.2 Almost all newcomers to the city were also excluded. The social organizations also tightly controlled business, professional, and civic activities.
While the system lasted—roughly through the 1970’s, though the attitudes linger on—an individual’s ability to become successful by local standards depended largely upon the simple factor of inclusion in or exclusion from these organizations, and not upon such things as talent, energy, accomplishment, or integrity. Personal merit was not a consideration. Nor—in contrast to the old Creole insistence on noblesse oblige—did belonging any longer confer a special sense of civic responsibility upon persons within the cherished inner sanctums.
The grossly debilitating nature of the system cannot be exaggerated, although its truly fatal effects did not rise to the surface until after World War II. Without vision, without competent leadership, above all without an ethic of upward mobility by virtue of merit, New Orleans could not prepare itself to enter that period of great national growth and prosperity. In fact, it actively chose not to. Given the demands of exclusivity, only a few were permitted to participate, to profit, and, sadly enough, to plunder. Bankers lent money to two groups, those who did not need it and those who were fellow club members; in most instances the two were one. Lawyers were engaged by virtue not of their talents but of their associations; so it went in the fields of insurance and financial services, and so it went across the board, in a daisy chain of “class.”
A friend of mine, a specialist in adolescent psychiatry, observed the effects of all this on children at both ends of the social ladder. According to his report, those whose parents were “out” tended to view their prospects in life as practically nil; to succeed as individuals, they would have to leave New Orleans. Those whose parents were “in” suffered in other ways: deeply troubled by the lack of any need to accomplish anything, they felt weakened, deprived of nerve and force. Though membership in the “in” group provided a sense of identity, a self-esteem derived mainly from devaluing those outside, it also imposed a stifling conformity that crippled the development of the in-group itself.
Thus did the new elites in New Orleans, masquerading as the old, come to trade the vitality, energy, and productivity characteristic of a dynamic merchant class for safety and security—ostensibly, the same safety and security ensured by the social credentials of the group over whom they had triumphed. But real social credentials are like those loans from a New Orleans bank; you can only have them if you don’t need them. As potentially productive businessmen surrendered their natural advantages in exchange for royal status, they undermined and ultimately destroyed their own effectiveness. The “reestablishment,” in short, killed the horses it rode in on.
How, one might ask, did the Jewish community in particular get along in such a system? In some ways well, in others poorly. By dint of intellect, talent, and work ethic, the Jews of New Orleans were more than able to satisfy their material needs. Doing so, however, often meant joining forces with their designated social superiors in ways that compromised their self-respect. Virtually every successful law firm, for instance, had at least one named Jewish partner, usually the second name in the firm. Though the Jewish lawyers brought in many of the best clients and did a large part of the serious work, they were not allowed to dine with their partners at the men’s luncheon clubs.
In this connection, a wonderful story, possibly apocryphal, concerns the press mogul S.I. (“Si”) Newhouse, who among his many newspapers owned the New Orleans Times Picayune, the city’s leading daily. Allegedly, Newhouse appeared one day, just before noon, in the office of the paper’s publisher, Ashton Phelps, Sr. “Si,” said Phelps, “I was just leaving for lunch at the Boston Club and wish I could invite you to join me, but the club doesn’t admit Jews.” “That’s perfectly all right, Ashton,” replied Newhouse, “just be back by 1:00.” Whether the tale is true or not, Newhouse had the right attitude.
Sadly, New Orleans Jews paid a price for their patience and tolerance. Many of their children, either unwilling to wait or realizing there was nothing worth waiting for, left town. Three of my good friends at grammar school in the late 1930’s and early 1940’s were Benji (Benjamin M.) Rosen, Shorty (Francis) Fraenkel, and Carmel Cohen. Rosen became a founding developer of Lotus Development Corporation and chairman of the board of Compaq Computer. Fraenkel became president of Shearson Loeb and served on the boards of other major corporations. Cohen is a renowned surgeon and gynecological oncologist.
Today all three live in New York. Each of them would probably deny that his leaving New Orleans had anything to do with the discriminatory social system, but the fact remains that they had to go somewhere else to do what they were capable of doing. The same applies, in a later generation, to such ex-New Orleanians as the journalist Nicholas Lemann and the writer Walter Isaacson.
In 1970, the city had 10,000 Jewish residents; today there are probably fewer than half that number. In May 1989, a handful of the handful held its annual fund-raising dinner for its favorite charity, which provides in-patient care for people with respiratory disorders. At the black-tie event, the 1989 Humanitarian Award was presented to a Gentile who belonged to as many clubs and organizations that still excluded Jews from membership as did any person in the state of Louisiana. All four previous honorees, including Edwin Edwards, former governor of Louisiana, were Gentiles as well.
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No doubt, when my wiser friends left New Orleans, I should have gone, too. But I lacked the energy, or sense, or whatever, and deep down I may have thought I could make some meaningful contribution by staying. I was wrong. Maybe everyone’s time for making a difference had passed.
Although I had the opportunity to be part of the system, and was a part of it for much too long, I gradually chose to move outside. I can’t say it was easy to say no; very few could and did. But neither did my essentially negative decision provide me with a sense of purpose or accomplishment. The really hard thing was to find something worthwhile and productive to say yes to.
In 1970, I ran for mayor of New Orleans. One of the most volatile campaign issues was the city’s then-proposed “Public Accommodations Ordinance.” Its purpose was to include private drinking establishments—bars, in other words—within the scope of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, even though Congress had specifically exempted them. The principal argument in favor of passage was that Super Bowls and other major national events would not come to New Orleans unless the bars were integrated. To the bill’s proponents, this was mainly a question of good business; for the same reason or for others, the measure also had the support of the city’s social bigwigs and “good government” forces.
As it happened, however, every bar that catered to tourists and other visitors had already opened its doors to everyone. Hence, the only businesses that would be affected by the bill were the neighborhood bars, both black and white, which, for generations, had functioned as working-class social clubs, the places ordinary New Orleanians frequented to play cards, to drink, to watch television, to be with friends.
I agreed with Congress. I did not believe bars were a proper setting for forced integration and social experimentation; there were far more significant areas for such efforts. I worked myself up over what I perceived as hypocrisy, and one day, toward the end of the campaign, in a speech to the Sertoma Club, I declared that if social clubs were indeed a proper setting for such action, it was the responsibility of community leaders to lead the way and set an example. In the presence of reporters from the city’s two newspapers and three television stations, I called upon several of the more prominent citizens supporting the ordinance to resign from any club or organization to which they belonged that excluded others from membership because of race, religion, or nationality.
It was a big moment in my life—or so I thought. As soon as I finished speaking, Herbert Garon, a lawyer prominent in Jewish and civic affairs, came up to me, very visibly moved, and said: “I didn’t think I’d live long enough to hear anyone say publicly the things you’ve said today.” Otherwise, though, the general response in the room was mixed, with shock seeming to prevail over approval. And that was the end of it. No one reported the story. It was as if it never happened.
The experience confirmed what I had believed for some time: control of the news in New Orleans was another critical factor contributing to the city’s problems. The media, and particularly the newspapers, were in the hands of the same people who had charge of social and business activities, the same people who either would not or could not provide leadership.
If I had won the mayoral election, would it have made any important difference regarding the destiny of New Orleans? All things fairly considered, I think not. Moon Landrieu, the man who beat me, mounted a serious effort to keep the ship afloat, and many of his intentions were good. But too much was beyond his control. It would have been the same for me. We both cared about our city, but that was nowhere near enough to save it. The excesses, the exclusivity, the rejection of any sort of system based on ability, the greed, the indifference, the rewarded laziness, the well-mannered nastiness, the gently disguised pettiness—these were the pallbearers who brought New Orleans to the cemetery.
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In any case—and here we come to the denouement of the story—many of Mayor Landrieu’s good intentions did not turn out well. Though he was firmly committed to racial justice and equal opportunity, he could not seriously influence the actions of the black politicians who now felt their time had come. And they seized their opportunities with a vengeance. In all probability, Landrieu thought or at least hoped that once he placed black powerbrokers in charge of the distribution of federal funds—readily available at the time—they would allocate at least some of these monies to much-needed services for poor blacks. He was wrong.
In fact, very little effort was made by the new black power elites to conceal their goals or their motivation. As one of them told me: “It’s our turn now, baby. You guys have been at the trough since the beginning. Move over, all the way over. Whatever’s left belongs to us.”
Ever since 1978, when Moon Landrieu completed his second term of office, New Orleans has had black mayors. Eight years of Ernest “Dutch” Morial; eight years of Sidney Barthelemy; eight years of Dutch’s son, Marc Morial; and five years of Ray Nagin, who was elected to a second term in 2006, the year after Katrina. Over the same three decades, most of the significant public officials have also been black. Many of them and their cronies have grown rich through various city contracts for all kinds of services, some “legal,” others questionable at best. How have poor blacks fared in such areas as public education, employment opportunities, and housing? No better. In fact, worse.
According to census figures as of 2000, 35 percent of blacks in New Orleans were poor; the national figure was then 25 percent. It has been reported that, pre-Katrina, 45 percent of black families in New Orleans with children under the age of eighteen were headed by unmarried mothers; 96 percent of births to black teenagers were to unmarried girls; and 58 percent of black high-school students dropped out before they graduated. Better known is the fact that the city boasted the highest homicide rate in the United States; in the majority of cases, both the perpetrators and the victims were black.
Control of the New Orleans public-school system was taken over by Congressman William Jefferson (of cash-in-the-refrigerator fame), his family and friends. They made the Visigoths look like pikers. One year, the auditors, unable to account for where all the money had gone, refused to sign their own audit report. By 2006, so bad had the condition of public education become that the state of Louisiana took over control of the New Orleans system. When management by Louisiana becomes the preferred alternative, things can hardly get worse.
In early December 2005, three months after Katrina, Mayor Nagin, in comments directed at the mostly black evacuees, said: “I want you all to come back, and we can work this out.” When it was suggested to Cynthia Hedge-Morrell, a city councilwoman, that New Orleans might better be reduced to a smaller scale, her response was: “You are underestimating the intelligence of the people of New Orleans. They know what they are doing.”
So the mayor says “we can work this out,” whatever “this” is, and the councilwoman says the people of New Orleans know what they are doing. These comments need to be considered in light of the fact that most of the living conditions in New Orleans before the hurricane were—unlivable. Today the question is, come back to what? Harsh though it may sound, what these politicians are saying is: come back and make our city 70-percent black again so we can continue to elect blacks to almost every public office.
How can we account for the fact that the black leaders of New Orleans have so callously ignored the needs of their poor, uneducated, under- and unemployed brothers and sisters? To a certain extent, fault rests with the black class structure, itself modeled in significant measure on the white. For many years, the socialites within the black community have donned their full-dress suits and evening gowns to pay tribute to their debutante daughters, relatives, and friends. In almost all respects, the events are the same as those held by white society. And so are the social attitudes, particularly with regard to the black poor (who also tend to be of darker skin pigmentation).
There is much resistance to discussing why this should be so, but can anyone seriously believe that wealthy and influential descendants of slaves avoid helping poor and destitute descendants of slaves because of the legacy of slavery? The real reasons are assuredly complex, but the consequences have been plain to see—the combined handiwork of the benign neglect of whites, the harsh indifference of prosperous blacks, and a thirty-year succession of black officialdom.
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When cities die, there is no formal cremation or burial, no bang, hardly even a whimper. Buses keep running and garbage gets collected—sometimes. People go on eating, drinking, sleeping, relieving themselves, cursing, murdering, even loving. But they do so as individuals who are no longer a part of a larger family, a community with legitimate cultural, economic, and human traditions. Such was the death of New Orleans as, over the years, tourists continued to eat, drink, and merrily clap their hands to the music. Beneath the mask of those activities, reality struggled vainly for recognition.
The question of whether New Orleans was doomed to die as a major American city continues to be debated after the fact. Those who think the end was inescapable argue that the original reasons for the city’s location and prosperity had ceased to exist. As the nation’s transportation network changed, the port of New Orleans, the southernmost habitable spot on America’s greatest river, lost much of its life’s blood. Without the port, New Orleans, built in a swamp, could only degenerate into a theme park for conventioneers.
Not so, say others. Every city has to be somewhere; look at where Dallas and Houston are. At the end of World War II, they argue, there was still time to turn things around if the Whitney National Bank, then the largest in the South, had become an active force in the city; if New Orleans had become an air hub; if “The Gateway to the Americas” had become a fact rather than a slogan; if new businesses had been vigorously sought for the area; if the oil and gas industry had been welcomed and accommodated. If, if, if.
Still others blame the death of New Orleans on the vicissitudes of the oil and gas industry itself, or resort to the contention that New Orleans’s problems—poverty, ignorance, joblessness, corruption, sloth—were to be regarded as facts of life, and never anyone’s actual fault. For if nothing was anyone’s fault, there could be no accountability. Sure enough, there wasn’t.
I am not so naive as to believe that there will not always be forms of class structure. For the foreseeable future there will be rich people, poor people, and, one hopes, those in between. But the genius of the United States has always been its openness, its flexibility, its invitation to mobility based upon merit. In New Orleans, these qualities were notable for their absence long before the city’s demise.
In an October 1971 article, Charles Y.W. Chai, then teaching political science at Tulane, analyzed the city’s most serious problems and the response to them by those in positions of power and authority. He found an inadequate tax base due to unfair, corrupt assessment practices; a gross inability to attract new industry; and, most importantly, a social system that stifled new leadership and was hostile to able newcomers. Concluding that the city was headed in a “disastrous direction,” Chai forecast “both political and economic stagnation.”
In 1975, James R. Bobo, then a professor of economics at the University of New Orleans, published a research study entitled The New Orleans Economy: Pro Bono Publico? His ironic subtitle was taken from the motto of Rex, the Carnival organization that parades on Mardi Gras “for the public good.” Bobo’s study predicted that New Orleans would die unless steps were taken at once to counteract its diseased conditions. These included a disproportionately large number of impoverished, uneducated, and unemployed people; the relative absence of a dynamic, business-oriented middle-class; the persistence of a narrowly based social and economic oligarchy.
Bobo’s recommendations were not followed in 1975 when they were offered, and were not followed thereafter. The large, uneducated, unemployed lower class increased. The small, business-oriented, middle class all but disappeared. The narrowly based, controlling social and economic oligarchy alone remained unchanged. Bobo left town. So did Chai.
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Was the system in New Orleans really different from that in other American cities? I believe the answer is yes. There are power structures and establishments elsewhere, but membership in them is based significantly on a rough standard of merit, measured in part by financial success. However distasteful that last criterion may be to some, almost everyone is eligible to get in, and such eligibility is not foreordained from birth or by bloodline, real or imaginary.
We should assume that most people at the top of New Orleans’s deeply discriminatory social system were not naturally mean or contemptuous toward those who, for reasons of race, religion, nationality, or economic circumstances, were excluded from full social participation. But a system that is itself evil or vile (depending upon the arrangement of those four letters) affects those in control in many detrimental ways, giving vent to the most objectionable characteristics of its individual members. Higher aspirations, a sense of duty, the propensity for outrage become dulled, ultimately disappearing from consciousness.
Many poor people who were forced by Katrina to move to other cities now really know what it means to miss—as in to escape or to avoid—New Orleans. It means the availability of good schools, of decent housing with clean living conditions, of good job opportunities, of safe streets, and of some minimum quotient of competent, honest, and hard-working public officials. Of course, they may have to go without exotic cuisine and all that jazz, but that is surely a fair price to pay for living far away from what has long passed for pro bono publico in the Crescent City.
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1 In The Creoles of Louisiana (1884), George Washington Cable pointed out that the term “Creole,” which applied at first only to French settlers, “came early to include any native of French or Spanish descent by either parent, whose non-alliance with the slave race entitled him to social rank.” Later on, Cable adds, “the term was adopted by—not conceded to—the natives of mixed blood, and is still so used among themselves.”
2 Prior to World War I, but not thereafter, a number of Jews of Sephardi or German origin were in fact granted membership in the Boston Club, New Orleans’s most selective and exclusive. Among them was Judah P. Benjamin, secretary of state of the Confederacy.
About Me
- Xerxes
- New Orleans, Louisiana, United States
- Admire John McPhee, Bill Bryson, David Remnick, Thomas Merton, Richard Rohr and James Martin (and most open and curious minds)
30.9.07
Pinker on Word Derivation
September 30, 2007
We live in an age in which you can Google, BlackBerry, blog, podcast and spam -- yet none of these words existed (at least in their current senses) just a few years ago. The addition of vocabulary to the English language is, of course, nothing new. Every word in the dictionary was originally the brainchild of some wordsmith, lost in the mists of history, whose coinage caught on and was passed down the generations. Words can be coined in several ways. Most new words are simply assembled out of old ones. We can figure out what a defragmenter is thanks to our familiarity with de-, fragment and -er. The last decade has also given us deshopping (buying something to use it once and return it), gripesite (where you post comments about deficient products) and green washing (in which companies cover up polluting practices with eco-friendly PR). But where do the raw ingredients of words come from? The most obvious source, of course, is onomatopoeia -- when a word resembles what it sounds like, as in oink, tinkle, barf and woofer and tweeter. But onomatopoeia only applies to noisy things, and the resemblance is usually in the ear of the beholder. A more fertile source of new words is the phenomenon called phonesthesia, "the feeling of sound," in which snippets of vowels and consonants vaguely remind people of something because of the way they are pronounced. Many words beginning with sn-, for example, have something to do with the nose, because you can almost feel your nose wrinkle when you pronounce it. They include words for things associated with the nose (sneeze, sniff, snore and Snuffleupagus) and for looking down your nose at someone (snarky, sneer, snicker, snippy, snooty). Another example: cl- for a cohesive aggregate or a pair of surfaces in contact: clam, clamp, clap, clasp, cleave, clench, cluster, etc. Why do words that share a teeny snatch of sound also sometimes share a teeny shred of meaning? These clusters grow from a nucleus of similar words that have coalesced for any number of reasons. They may be fossils of a linguistic rule that was active in an earlier period, or in a language from which the words were borrowed, or they might arise by sheer chance. But once similar words find themselves rubbing shoulders, they can attract or spawn new members owing to the associative nature of human memory.We can infer that phonesthesia was the source of recent words like bling, bungee, glitzy, glom, gonzo, grunge, humongous, scuzzy, skank and wonk. They are not built out of preexisting parts like prefixes, suffixes and roots, and their sounds either remind people of their referents (as in bungee and glom) or vaguely resemble words with related meanings (as in glitter, glamour and ritzy for glitzy, or scum, scuff and fuzzy for skuzzy).What kinds of things call out to be named? New words, one might guess, should materialize to name a concept that people need to talk about. That's why every hobby and profession quickly develops a jargon. Even casual computer users command an impressive lexicon of new technical terms like modem, reboot and upload. And in an age that professes to treat women and men as equals, what would we have done without Ms.?But strangely enough, many concepts we long to name remain stubbornly nameless. We still don't have a good word for unmarried romantic partners, or for the current decade, nor a gender-neutral pronoun to replace "he or she." And wouldn't it be handy to have a word for a fact you can learn a hundred times without remembering it, or the early morning insomnia in which your bladder is too full to allow you to fall back to sleep but you're too tired to get up to go to the bathroom? Every year, the American Dialect Society predicts which new words will catch on. But a follow-up of their picks from the 1990s shows they are about as accurate as tabloid psychics. Some of the words were political barbs that died with the careers of their targets (the verb to gingrich). Others were bets on the wrong name for an innovation, like W3 (that's what they thought we'd call the World Wide Web), information superhighway (waytoo Al Gore) and Infobahn (yuck). Though most whimsical neologisms go nowhere, others, mysteriously, can take root. Blog, from "Web log," taps the amorphousness of blob and bog and insouciantly cuts a word against its syllabic grain in the style of 1970s slang like shroom (mushroom), strawb (strawberry) and burb (suburb). Earlier decades gave us yuppie (young urban professional, a play on hippie, yippie and preppy), couch potato, palimony, qwerty (technological inertia, from the keys on the top row of a typewriter) and, the strangest of all, spam.This technical term for bulk e-mail is not a metaphor for something cheap, plentiful and unwanted. It was inspired by a Monty Python skit in which a waitress recites a menu: "There's egg and spam; egg bacon and spam; spam bacon sausage and spam; spam egg spam spam bacon and spam," and so on. The mindless repetition inspired 1980s hackers to use spam as a verb for flooding newsgroups with identical messages. A decade later, it spread to the populace. Silly coinages are not a new phenomenon. Soap opera is from the 1930s, hot dog from the 1890s (from a campus joke about its alleged ingredient) and gerrymander from an 1812 cartoon showing a political district that had been crafted by Gov. Elbridge Gerry into a tortuous shape resembling a salamander. With most new words, it's up to the community of English speakers -- not the word's coiner -- to decide whether a word catches on. But there's one kind of naming in which the namer has a big say: naming a baby. Yet even here, chance plays a big role, as we see in the changing fashions in baby names -- the reason you can guess that Ethel is a senior citizen, Linda is a baby boomer, Jennifer a thirtysomething and Chloe a child.Many people assume these fads are inspired by celebrities (Marilyn Monroe made Marilyn popular) or social trends (biblical names are popular during religious revivals; androgynous names are a legacy of feminism). But sociologist Stanley Lieberson has pored through naming data and disproved every one of these hypotheses. The cause of baby names is other baby names. Parents have an ear for names that are a bit distinctive (as if to follow Sam Goldwyn's advice not to name your son William because every Tom, Dick and Harry is named William) without being too distinctive (only celebrities can get away with naming their children Moon Unit or Banjo). The trends arise when everyone tries to be moderately distinctive and ends up being moderately distinctive in the same way. Pundits often treat a culture as if it were a superorganism that pursues goals and finds meaning, just like a person. But the fortunes of words, a cultural practice par excellence, don't fit that model. Names change with the times, yet they don't fulfill needs, don't reflect other social trends and aren't driven by role models or Madison Avenue. A "trend" is shorthand for the aggregate effects of millions of people making decisions while anticipating and reacting to the decisions made by others, and these dynamics can be stubbornly chaotic.This unpredictability holds a lesson for our understanding of culture more generally. Like the words in a language, the practices in a culture -- every fashion, ritual, common belief -- must originate with an innovator, must then appeal to the innovator's acquaintances and then to the acquaintance's acquaintances, until it becomes endemic to a community. The caprice in names suggests we should be skeptical of most explanations for other mores and customs.
Steven Pinker is a professor in the department of psychology at Harvard University and author of "The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window into Human Nature."
We live in an age in which you can Google, BlackBerry, blog, podcast and spam -- yet none of these words existed (at least in their current senses) just a few years ago. The addition of vocabulary to the English language is, of course, nothing new. Every word in the dictionary was originally the brainchild of some wordsmith, lost in the mists of history, whose coinage caught on and was passed down the generations. Words can be coined in several ways. Most new words are simply assembled out of old ones. We can figure out what a defragmenter is thanks to our familiarity with de-, fragment and -er. The last decade has also given us deshopping (buying something to use it once and return it), gripesite (where you post comments about deficient products) and green washing (in which companies cover up polluting practices with eco-friendly PR). But where do the raw ingredients of words come from? The most obvious source, of course, is onomatopoeia -- when a word resembles what it sounds like, as in oink, tinkle, barf and woofer and tweeter. But onomatopoeia only applies to noisy things, and the resemblance is usually in the ear of the beholder. A more fertile source of new words is the phenomenon called phonesthesia, "the feeling of sound," in which snippets of vowels and consonants vaguely remind people of something because of the way they are pronounced. Many words beginning with sn-, for example, have something to do with the nose, because you can almost feel your nose wrinkle when you pronounce it. They include words for things associated with the nose (sneeze, sniff, snore and Snuffleupagus) and for looking down your nose at someone (snarky, sneer, snicker, snippy, snooty). Another example: cl- for a cohesive aggregate or a pair of surfaces in contact: clam, clamp, clap, clasp, cleave, clench, cluster, etc. Why do words that share a teeny snatch of sound also sometimes share a teeny shred of meaning? These clusters grow from a nucleus of similar words that have coalesced for any number of reasons. They may be fossils of a linguistic rule that was active in an earlier period, or in a language from which the words were borrowed, or they might arise by sheer chance. But once similar words find themselves rubbing shoulders, they can attract or spawn new members owing to the associative nature of human memory.We can infer that phonesthesia was the source of recent words like bling, bungee, glitzy, glom, gonzo, grunge, humongous, scuzzy, skank and wonk. They are not built out of preexisting parts like prefixes, suffixes and roots, and their sounds either remind people of their referents (as in bungee and glom) or vaguely resemble words with related meanings (as in glitter, glamour and ritzy for glitzy, or scum, scuff and fuzzy for skuzzy).What kinds of things call out to be named? New words, one might guess, should materialize to name a concept that people need to talk about. That's why every hobby and profession quickly develops a jargon. Even casual computer users command an impressive lexicon of new technical terms like modem, reboot and upload. And in an age that professes to treat women and men as equals, what would we have done without Ms.?But strangely enough, many concepts we long to name remain stubbornly nameless. We still don't have a good word for unmarried romantic partners, or for the current decade, nor a gender-neutral pronoun to replace "he or she." And wouldn't it be handy to have a word for a fact you can learn a hundred times without remembering it, or the early morning insomnia in which your bladder is too full to allow you to fall back to sleep but you're too tired to get up to go to the bathroom? Every year, the American Dialect Society predicts which new words will catch on. But a follow-up of their picks from the 1990s shows they are about as accurate as tabloid psychics. Some of the words were political barbs that died with the careers of their targets (the verb to gingrich). Others were bets on the wrong name for an innovation, like W3 (that's what they thought we'd call the World Wide Web), information superhighway (waytoo Al Gore) and Infobahn (yuck). Though most whimsical neologisms go nowhere, others, mysteriously, can take root. Blog, from "Web log," taps the amorphousness of blob and bog and insouciantly cuts a word against its syllabic grain in the style of 1970s slang like shroom (mushroom), strawb (strawberry) and burb (suburb). Earlier decades gave us yuppie (young urban professional, a play on hippie, yippie and preppy), couch potato, palimony, qwerty (technological inertia, from the keys on the top row of a typewriter) and, the strangest of all, spam.This technical term for bulk e-mail is not a metaphor for something cheap, plentiful and unwanted. It was inspired by a Monty Python skit in which a waitress recites a menu: "There's egg and spam; egg bacon and spam; spam bacon sausage and spam; spam egg spam spam bacon and spam," and so on. The mindless repetition inspired 1980s hackers to use spam as a verb for flooding newsgroups with identical messages. A decade later, it spread to the populace. Silly coinages are not a new phenomenon. Soap opera is from the 1930s, hot dog from the 1890s (from a campus joke about its alleged ingredient) and gerrymander from an 1812 cartoon showing a political district that had been crafted by Gov. Elbridge Gerry into a tortuous shape resembling a salamander. With most new words, it's up to the community of English speakers -- not the word's coiner -- to decide whether a word catches on. But there's one kind of naming in which the namer has a big say: naming a baby. Yet even here, chance plays a big role, as we see in the changing fashions in baby names -- the reason you can guess that Ethel is a senior citizen, Linda is a baby boomer, Jennifer a thirtysomething and Chloe a child.Many people assume these fads are inspired by celebrities (Marilyn Monroe made Marilyn popular) or social trends (biblical names are popular during religious revivals; androgynous names are a legacy of feminism). But sociologist Stanley Lieberson has pored through naming data and disproved every one of these hypotheses. The cause of baby names is other baby names. Parents have an ear for names that are a bit distinctive (as if to follow Sam Goldwyn's advice not to name your son William because every Tom, Dick and Harry is named William) without being too distinctive (only celebrities can get away with naming their children Moon Unit or Banjo). The trends arise when everyone tries to be moderately distinctive and ends up being moderately distinctive in the same way. Pundits often treat a culture as if it were a superorganism that pursues goals and finds meaning, just like a person. But the fortunes of words, a cultural practice par excellence, don't fit that model. Names change with the times, yet they don't fulfill needs, don't reflect other social trends and aren't driven by role models or Madison Avenue. A "trend" is shorthand for the aggregate effects of millions of people making decisions while anticipating and reacting to the decisions made by others, and these dynamics can be stubbornly chaotic.This unpredictability holds a lesson for our understanding of culture more generally. Like the words in a language, the practices in a culture -- every fashion, ritual, common belief -- must originate with an innovator, must then appeal to the innovator's acquaintances and then to the acquaintance's acquaintances, until it becomes endemic to a community. The caprice in names suggests we should be skeptical of most explanations for other mores and customs.
Steven Pinker is a professor in the department of psychology at Harvard University and author of "The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window into Human Nature."
29.9.07
MICHAELMAS
September 29th
Born: John Tillotson, archbishop of Canterbury, 1630, Sowerby, Yorkshire; Thomas Chubb, freethinking author, 1679, East Harnham, Wilts; Robert, Lord Clive, founder of the British empire in India, 1725, Styche, Shropshire; William Julius Mickle, translator of Camaens's Lusiad, 1734, Langholm, Scotland; Admiral Horatio Nelson, naval hero, 1758, Burnham-Thorpe, Norfolk.
Died: Pompey the Great, killed in Egypt 48 B. c.; Gustavus Vasa, king of Sweden, 1560, Stockholm; Conrad Vorstins, German divine, 1622, Toningen, Holstein; Lady Rachel Russell, heroic wife of William, Lord Russell, 1723, Southampton House; Charles Franqois Dupuis, astronomer and author, 1809, Is-sur-Til
Feast Day: St. Michael and all the Holy Angels. St. Theodota, martyr, 642.
MICHAELMAS DAY
Michaelmas Day, the 29th of September, properly named the day of St. Michael and All Angels, is a great festival of the Church of Rome, and also observed as a feast by the Church of England. In England, it is one of the four quarterly terms, or quarter-days, on which rents are paid, and in that and other divisions of the United Kingdom, as well as perhaps in other countries, it is the day on which burgal magistracies and councils are re-elected. The only other remarkable thing connected with the day is a widely prevalent custom of marking it with a goose at dinner.
Michael is regarded in the Christian world as the chief of angels, or archangel. His history is obscure. In Scripture, he is mentioned five times, and always in a warlike character; namely, thrice by Daniel as fighting for the Jewish church against Persia; once by St. Jude as fighting With the devil about the body of Moses; and once by St. John as fighting at the head of his angelic troops against the dragon and his host. Probably, on the hint thus given by St. John the Romish church taught at an early period that Michael was employed, in command of the loyal angels of God, to overthrow and consign to the pit of perdition Lucifer and his rebellious associates—a legend which was at length embalmed in the sublimest poetry by Milton.
Sometimes Michael is represented as the sole arch-angel, sometimes as only the head of a fraternity of archangels, which includes likewise Gabriel, Raphael, and some others. He is usually represented in coat-armour, with a glory round his head, and a dart in his hand, trampling on the fallen Lucifer. He has even been furnished, like the human warriors of the middle ages, with a heraldic ensign—namely, a banner hanging from a cross. We obtain a curious idea of the religious notions of those ages, when we learn that the red velvet-covered buckler worn by Michael in his war with Lucifer used to be shewn in a church in Normandy down to 1607, when the bishop of Avranches at length forbade its being any longer exhibited.
Angels are held by the Church of Rome as capable of interceding for men; wherefore it is that prayers are addressed to them and a festival appointed in their honour. Wheatley, an expositor of the Book of Common Prayer, probably expresses the limited view of the subject which is entertained in the Church of England, when he says, that 'I the feast of St. Michael and All Angels is observed that the people may know what blessings are derived from the ministry of angels.'
Amongst Catholics, Michael, or, as he has been named, St. Michael, is invoked as 'a most glorious and warlike prince,' chief officer of paradise,' I captain of God's hosts,' receiver of souls,' 'the vanquisher of evil spirits,' and 'the admirable general.' It may also be remarked, that in the Sarum missal, there is a mass to St. Raphael, as the protector of pilgrims and travellers, and a skilful worker with medicine; likewise an office for the continual intercession of St. Gabriel and all the heavenly militia. Protestant writers trace a connection between the ancient notion of tutelar genii and the Catholic doctrine respecting angels, the one being, they say, ingrafted on the other.
As to the soundness of this view we do not give any opinion, but it seems certain that in early ages there was a prevalent notion that the affairs of men were much under the direction of angels, good and bad, and men prayed to angels both to obtain good and to avoid evil. Every human being was supposed to have one of these spiritual existences watching over him, aiming at his good, and ready to hear his call when he was in affliction. And, however we may judge this to be a delusion, we must certainly own that, as establishing a connection between the children of earth and something above and beyond the earth, as leading men's minds away from the grossness of worldly pursuits and feelings into the regions of the beautiful and the infinite, it is one of by no means the worst tendency. We must be prepared, however, to find simplicity amidst all the more aspiring ideas of our forefathers.
In time, the sainted spirits of pious persons came to stand in the place of the generally name-less angels, and each place and person had one of these as a special guardian and protector. Not only had each country its particular patron or tutelar saint, but there was one for almost every town and church. Even trades and corporations had their special saints. And there was one more specially to be invoked for each particular ail that could afflict humanity. It will be curious here to descend a little into particulars.
First, as to countries, England had St. George; Scotland, St. Andrew; Ireland, St. Patrick; Wales, St. David; France, St. Dennis and (in a less degree) St. Michael; Spain, St. James (Jago); Portugal, St. Sebastian; Italy, St. Anthony; Sardinia, St. Mary; Switzerland, St. Gall and the Virgin Mary; Germany, St. Martin, St. Boniface, and St. George Cataphractus; Hungary, St. Mary of Aquisgrana and St. Lewis; Bohemia, St. Winceslaus; Austria, St. Colman and St. Leopold; Flanders, St. Peter; Holland, St. Mary; Denmark, St. Anscharius and St. Canute; Sweden, St. Anscharius, St. Eric, and St. John; Norway, St. Olaus and St. Anscharius; Poland, St. Stanislaus and St. Hederiga; Prussia, St. Andrew and St. Albert; Russia, St. Nicholas, St. Mary, and St. Andrew.
Then as to cities, Edinburgh had St. Giles, Aberdeen St. Nicholas, and Glasgow St. Mungo; Oxford had St. Frideswide; Paris, St. Genevieve; Rome, Feast Day: St. Peter and St. Paul; Venice, St. Mark; Naples, St. Januarius and St. Thomas Aquinas; Lisbon, St. Vincent; Brussels, St. Mary and St. Gudula; Vienna, St. Stephen; Cologne, the three kings, with St. Ursula and the eleven thousand virgins
Born: John Tillotson, archbishop of Canterbury, 1630, Sowerby, Yorkshire; Thomas Chubb, freethinking author, 1679, East Harnham, Wilts; Robert, Lord Clive, founder of the British empire in India, 1725, Styche, Shropshire; William Julius Mickle, translator of Camaens's Lusiad, 1734, Langholm, Scotland; Admiral Horatio Nelson, naval hero, 1758, Burnham-Thorpe, Norfolk.
Died: Pompey the Great, killed in Egypt 48 B. c.; Gustavus Vasa, king of Sweden, 1560, Stockholm; Conrad Vorstins, German divine, 1622, Toningen, Holstein; Lady Rachel Russell, heroic wife of William, Lord Russell, 1723, Southampton House; Charles Franqois Dupuis, astronomer and author, 1809, Is-sur-Til
Feast Day: St. Michael and all the Holy Angels. St. Theodota, martyr, 642.
MICHAELMAS DAY
Michaelmas Day, the 29th of September, properly named the day of St. Michael and All Angels, is a great festival of the Church of Rome, and also observed as a feast by the Church of England. In England, it is one of the four quarterly terms, or quarter-days, on which rents are paid, and in that and other divisions of the United Kingdom, as well as perhaps in other countries, it is the day on which burgal magistracies and councils are re-elected. The only other remarkable thing connected with the day is a widely prevalent custom of marking it with a goose at dinner.
Michael is regarded in the Christian world as the chief of angels, or archangel. His history is obscure. In Scripture, he is mentioned five times, and always in a warlike character; namely, thrice by Daniel as fighting for the Jewish church against Persia; once by St. Jude as fighting With the devil about the body of Moses; and once by St. John as fighting at the head of his angelic troops against the dragon and his host. Probably, on the hint thus given by St. John the Romish church taught at an early period that Michael was employed, in command of the loyal angels of God, to overthrow and consign to the pit of perdition Lucifer and his rebellious associates—a legend which was at length embalmed in the sublimest poetry by Milton.
Sometimes Michael is represented as the sole arch-angel, sometimes as only the head of a fraternity of archangels, which includes likewise Gabriel, Raphael, and some others. He is usually represented in coat-armour, with a glory round his head, and a dart in his hand, trampling on the fallen Lucifer. He has even been furnished, like the human warriors of the middle ages, with a heraldic ensign—namely, a banner hanging from a cross. We obtain a curious idea of the religious notions of those ages, when we learn that the red velvet-covered buckler worn by Michael in his war with Lucifer used to be shewn in a church in Normandy down to 1607, when the bishop of Avranches at length forbade its being any longer exhibited.
Angels are held by the Church of Rome as capable of interceding for men; wherefore it is that prayers are addressed to them and a festival appointed in their honour. Wheatley, an expositor of the Book of Common Prayer, probably expresses the limited view of the subject which is entertained in the Church of England, when he says, that 'I the feast of St. Michael and All Angels is observed that the people may know what blessings are derived from the ministry of angels.'
Amongst Catholics, Michael, or, as he has been named, St. Michael, is invoked as 'a most glorious and warlike prince,' chief officer of paradise,' I captain of God's hosts,' receiver of souls,' 'the vanquisher of evil spirits,' and 'the admirable general.' It may also be remarked, that in the Sarum missal, there is a mass to St. Raphael, as the protector of pilgrims and travellers, and a skilful worker with medicine; likewise an office for the continual intercession of St. Gabriel and all the heavenly militia. Protestant writers trace a connection between the ancient notion of tutelar genii and the Catholic doctrine respecting angels, the one being, they say, ingrafted on the other.
As to the soundness of this view we do not give any opinion, but it seems certain that in early ages there was a prevalent notion that the affairs of men were much under the direction of angels, good and bad, and men prayed to angels both to obtain good and to avoid evil. Every human being was supposed to have one of these spiritual existences watching over him, aiming at his good, and ready to hear his call when he was in affliction. And, however we may judge this to be a delusion, we must certainly own that, as establishing a connection between the children of earth and something above and beyond the earth, as leading men's minds away from the grossness of worldly pursuits and feelings into the regions of the beautiful and the infinite, it is one of by no means the worst tendency. We must be prepared, however, to find simplicity amidst all the more aspiring ideas of our forefathers.
In time, the sainted spirits of pious persons came to stand in the place of the generally name-less angels, and each place and person had one of these as a special guardian and protector. Not only had each country its particular patron or tutelar saint, but there was one for almost every town and church. Even trades and corporations had their special saints. And there was one more specially to be invoked for each particular ail that could afflict humanity. It will be curious here to descend a little into particulars.
First, as to countries, England had St. George; Scotland, St. Andrew; Ireland, St. Patrick; Wales, St. David; France, St. Dennis and (in a less degree) St. Michael; Spain, St. James (Jago); Portugal, St. Sebastian; Italy, St. Anthony; Sardinia, St. Mary; Switzerland, St. Gall and the Virgin Mary; Germany, St. Martin, St. Boniface, and St. George Cataphractus; Hungary, St. Mary of Aquisgrana and St. Lewis; Bohemia, St. Winceslaus; Austria, St. Colman and St. Leopold; Flanders, St. Peter; Holland, St. Mary; Denmark, St. Anscharius and St. Canute; Sweden, St. Anscharius, St. Eric, and St. John; Norway, St. Olaus and St. Anscharius; Poland, St. Stanislaus and St. Hederiga; Prussia, St. Andrew and St. Albert; Russia, St. Nicholas, St. Mary, and St. Andrew.
Then as to cities, Edinburgh had St. Giles, Aberdeen St. Nicholas, and Glasgow St. Mungo; Oxford had St. Frideswide; Paris, St. Genevieve; Rome, Feast Day: St. Peter and St. Paul; Venice, St. Mark; Naples, St. Januarius and St. Thomas Aquinas; Lisbon, St. Vincent; Brussels, St. Mary and St. Gudula; Vienna, St. Stephen; Cologne, the three kings, with St. Ursula and the eleven thousand virgins
Lenny & George Dance
West Side Story at 50
Could it be?Yes, it couldSomething's ComingSomething good...
Pauline Kael was the most respected film critic in America, but she had her off days. "I would guess that in a few decades," she wrote in 1963, "the dances in West Side Story will look as much like hilariously limited, dated period pieces as Busby Berkeley's 'Remember My Forgotten Man' number in Gold Diggers of 1933."
Guess again. West Side Story opened 50 years ago tonight - September 26th 1957 - at the Winter Garden on Broadway, and half-a-century on, when the Jets take off, in blue jeans and sneakers, thrusting up from the stage, arms stretching out to make their huge signature Ts in the air, audiences still thrill, in the theatre, at the ballet, and, pace Miss Kael, film and video audiences. West Side Story is the trick so many musicals since have never quite pulled off: great storytelling in American dance.
The year before West Side, My Fair Lady opened, cleaving to the rules of the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical play and doing it so spectacularly that, afterwards, the form had nowhere else to go. West Side symbolised the possibilities of the future: New stories told in new ways. West Side doesn't have an opening number as such, just a wordless musical "Prologue" to accompany the Sharks and Jets as they dance out - or mime - their increasing hostility until, finally, the Shark leader cuts off the ear of a Jet. Never mind waiting for Pauline Kael to pronounce it dated, on its very opening night it risked sniggers: the gentlemen of the chorus nancying about pretending to be tough guys. But the audience bought it: Jerome Robbins, Broadway's master stager, proved you could tell a story about gang warfare through show dancing.
Could it be?Yes, it couldSomething's ComingSomething good...
Pauline Kael was the most respected film critic in America, but she had her off days. "I would guess that in a few decades," she wrote in 1963, "the dances in West Side Story will look as much like hilariously limited, dated period pieces as Busby Berkeley's 'Remember My Forgotten Man' number in Gold Diggers of 1933."
Guess again. West Side Story opened 50 years ago tonight - September 26th 1957 - at the Winter Garden on Broadway, and half-a-century on, when the Jets take off, in blue jeans and sneakers, thrusting up from the stage, arms stretching out to make their huge signature Ts in the air, audiences still thrill, in the theatre, at the ballet, and, pace Miss Kael, film and video audiences. West Side Story is the trick so many musicals since have never quite pulled off: great storytelling in American dance.
The year before West Side, My Fair Lady opened, cleaving to the rules of the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical play and doing it so spectacularly that, afterwards, the form had nowhere else to go. West Side symbolised the possibilities of the future: New stories told in new ways. West Side doesn't have an opening number as such, just a wordless musical "Prologue" to accompany the Sharks and Jets as they dance out - or mime - their increasing hostility until, finally, the Shark leader cuts off the ear of a Jet. Never mind waiting for Pauline Kael to pronounce it dated, on its very opening night it risked sniggers: the gentlemen of the chorus nancying about pretending to be tough guys. But the audience bought it: Jerome Robbins, Broadway's master stager, proved you could tell a story about gang warfare through show dancing.
Glen Gould
A Portrait of the Artist as a Failure
A review by Jill Owens
I was initially interested in reading The Loser, at least in part,because of its fictionalized depiction of Glenn Gould. But evenfor music lovers, that is one of the most minor pleasures in ThomasBernhard's brilliant, hypnotic, and mesmerizing novel. The Loseris a long, unbroken monologue (with no chapters, and written asone enormous paragraph) about the recent suicide of the narrator'sfriend Wertheimer, and about both of their lives in the shadowof the genius Glenn Gould. In their youth, the three men werepiano students together for a master summer course in Germany.The relationships formed there both invigorated and, ultimately,according to the narrator, destroyed at least the two inferiorstudents -- the narrator stopped playing the piano shortly afterward,and Wertheimer continued to play for years and then finally committedsuicide -- and possibly Gould as well, through the nature of hisgift.This triangle of friendship forms the underlying structure ofthe book. The narrator sees himself as far superior to Wertheimer,who didn't know enough to quit music altogether after realizinghe'd never be as good as Gould, and inferior in every measureto Gould, whose gifts he would never be able to match. The readerlearns about the narrator, an intelligent, tortured, twisted creature,almost exclusively through the filters of these two exaggeratedfigures, one an abject caricature of artistic failure, the othera secluded and supremely confident artist at the top of his game.Along the way, Bernhard exhaustively explores the nature of genius,art, despair, and the age-old existential crisis of trying tolive with meaning and meaninglessness.
A review by Jill Owens
I was initially interested in reading The Loser, at least in part,because of its fictionalized depiction of Glenn Gould. But evenfor music lovers, that is one of the most minor pleasures in ThomasBernhard's brilliant, hypnotic, and mesmerizing novel. The Loseris a long, unbroken monologue (with no chapters, and written asone enormous paragraph) about the recent suicide of the narrator'sfriend Wertheimer, and about both of their lives in the shadowof the genius Glenn Gould. In their youth, the three men werepiano students together for a master summer course in Germany.The relationships formed there both invigorated and, ultimately,according to the narrator, destroyed at least the two inferiorstudents -- the narrator stopped playing the piano shortly afterward,and Wertheimer continued to play for years and then finally committedsuicide -- and possibly Gould as well, through the nature of hisgift.This triangle of friendship forms the underlying structure ofthe book. The narrator sees himself as far superior to Wertheimer,who didn't know enough to quit music altogether after realizinghe'd never be as good as Gould, and inferior in every measureto Gould, whose gifts he would never be able to match. The readerlearns about the narrator, an intelligent, tortured, twisted creature,almost exclusively through the filters of these two exaggeratedfigures, one an abject caricature of artistic failure, the othera secluded and supremely confident artist at the top of his game.Along the way, Bernhard exhaustively explores the nature of genius,art, despair, and the age-old existential crisis of trying tolive with meaning and meaninglessness.
28.9.07
California is Discovered
On This Day
San Diego, California
1542:
California discovered.
Explorer Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo, known as the discoverer of California, landed this day in 1542 near what is now San Diego and became the first European to set foot on the west coast of what would become the United States.
San Diego, California
1542:
California discovered.
Explorer Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo, known as the discoverer of California, landed this day in 1542 near what is now San Diego and became the first European to set foot on the west coast of what would become the United States.
$$$$$$$$$$$$$
Hardly good news to those of us not doing our Christmas shopping at Fortnum & Mason or Fauchon this year.
Concern is growing in New York, in the wake of last week's meeting of the Federal Reserve Board, over the quickening collapse of the value of the dollar, as foreign investors proclaim that a "for sale" sign has been hung on the city and economists and analysts warn that a collapsing currency bodes ill for the economy.
In the week since the Fed's meeting, the soundness of the dollar has been ebbing rapidly, with the greenback's value plunging to a 732nd of an ounce of gold from a 708th of an ounce when the Fed moved to ease the money supply in hopes of preventing a collapse of the credit markets. It was the dollar's lowest level since 1980, with some analysts expecting it to drop even further, to 800th of an ounce in the next six months.
For the first time in three decades, the dollar is now equal in value to the Canadian loonie, and the euro, which is trading at a high of $1.41 this week, is the strongest it has ever been against the dollar in its eight-year history. This is not good news for America's economy, experts say. "No country in the world has ever fought itself to prosperity by weakening its currency," the manager of the Merk Hard Currency Fund, Axel Merk, said. "The Fed decision to cut rates last week was wrong."
Some economists argue that a weak dollar, particularly against other currencies, helps American exporters, at least in the short term. "But on the whole, a cheap, and cheapening, dollar exchange rate is bad medicine. It's bad medicine for Americans," the editor of Grant's Interest Rate Observer and author of four books on finance, James Grant, said. "It reduces the value of American wealth in terms of other currencies, and of the nations that print them. It tends to mean a rise in the cost of imported goods and services — that is, it's inflationary."
The Federal Reserve chairman, Ben Bernanke, has not shied away from talking about an increased risk of inflation, but has argued that this risk will be kept in check, and that the Fed first must tackle the current liquidity crisis.
"The inflation rate is something we pay close attention to," Mr. Bernanke said last week. "An economy cannot grow in a healthy, stable way when inflation is out of control, and we will certainly make sure that that doesn't happen."
Despite these assurances, a number of analysts argue a weak dollar is already hurting Americans by curtailing their purchasing power. "Among the big losers are American households that buy imports as part of their everyday shopping," the director of the Center of Trade and Policy Studies at the CATO Institute, Daniel Griswold, said. "All things being equal, we are better off with a stronger dollar."
The image of the dollar as the benchmark currency for the world is also taking a bashing. Several large central banks — such as those in Russia, China, and some Middle East countries — hold billions of dollars in cash in their reserves. Since the greenback has been falling in value, however, many of these institutions are starting to diversify their holdings, dumping the dollars for other, stronger currencies, such as the euro.
Russia, for example, now holds only about 40% of its reserves in dollars; at one point it held more than 70%. The United Arab Emirates converted 8% of its dollar reserves to euros in December. China, which doesn't release data on its foreign currency holdings, has said it is slowly diversifying its dollar-dominated reserves.
"Reserve diversification is a inevitable gradual process, and the world economy can no longer be dependent on America as the only reserve economy," a senior economist for Moody's Economy.com, Tu Packard, said.
This diversification process acts like a sell-off, because by holding dollars in their reserves, these central banks are in essence buying shares in the American economy. As they sell the dollars, they are selling their interest in our economy, Ms. Packard said.
"The dollar is the world's currency — most greenbacks circulate outside the 50 states — but America's monetary policy is designed for America and no other country. That is certainly a nice convenience for us. But it will tend to weaken foreigners' confidence in our Fed and our Treasury," Mr. Grant said. "You've got to remember that this country produces much less than it consumes. It finances the difference with dollars. Here is one of the sweetest arrangements on the face of the earth, but it will last only so long as non-Americans willingly accept our dollars, these green pieces of paper of no intrinsic value."
Still, the administration in Washington is exuding confidence. "I think I've been pretty clear on this — a strong dollar is in our nation's interest," the treasury secretary, Henry Paulson, said in a press briefing Friday. "And our currency values are always determined — and I believe they should be determined — in a fair, competitive marketplace based upon underlying economic fundamentals. And so what we do in the United States and what I very much advocate is policies that are going to increase confidence, maintain confidence in the U.S. dollar and in our economy."
Concern is growing in New York, in the wake of last week's meeting of the Federal Reserve Board, over the quickening collapse of the value of the dollar, as foreign investors proclaim that a "for sale" sign has been hung on the city and economists and analysts warn that a collapsing currency bodes ill for the economy.
In the week since the Fed's meeting, the soundness of the dollar has been ebbing rapidly, with the greenback's value plunging to a 732nd of an ounce of gold from a 708th of an ounce when the Fed moved to ease the money supply in hopes of preventing a collapse of the credit markets. It was the dollar's lowest level since 1980, with some analysts expecting it to drop even further, to 800th of an ounce in the next six months.
For the first time in three decades, the dollar is now equal in value to the Canadian loonie, and the euro, which is trading at a high of $1.41 this week, is the strongest it has ever been against the dollar in its eight-year history. This is not good news for America's economy, experts say. "No country in the world has ever fought itself to prosperity by weakening its currency," the manager of the Merk Hard Currency Fund, Axel Merk, said. "The Fed decision to cut rates last week was wrong."
Some economists argue that a weak dollar, particularly against other currencies, helps American exporters, at least in the short term. "But on the whole, a cheap, and cheapening, dollar exchange rate is bad medicine. It's bad medicine for Americans," the editor of Grant's Interest Rate Observer and author of four books on finance, James Grant, said. "It reduces the value of American wealth in terms of other currencies, and of the nations that print them. It tends to mean a rise in the cost of imported goods and services — that is, it's inflationary."
The Federal Reserve chairman, Ben Bernanke, has not shied away from talking about an increased risk of inflation, but has argued that this risk will be kept in check, and that the Fed first must tackle the current liquidity crisis.
"The inflation rate is something we pay close attention to," Mr. Bernanke said last week. "An economy cannot grow in a healthy, stable way when inflation is out of control, and we will certainly make sure that that doesn't happen."
Despite these assurances, a number of analysts argue a weak dollar is already hurting Americans by curtailing their purchasing power. "Among the big losers are American households that buy imports as part of their everyday shopping," the director of the Center of Trade and Policy Studies at the CATO Institute, Daniel Griswold, said. "All things being equal, we are better off with a stronger dollar."
The image of the dollar as the benchmark currency for the world is also taking a bashing. Several large central banks — such as those in Russia, China, and some Middle East countries — hold billions of dollars in cash in their reserves. Since the greenback has been falling in value, however, many of these institutions are starting to diversify their holdings, dumping the dollars for other, stronger currencies, such as the euro.
Russia, for example, now holds only about 40% of its reserves in dollars; at one point it held more than 70%. The United Arab Emirates converted 8% of its dollar reserves to euros in December. China, which doesn't release data on its foreign currency holdings, has said it is slowly diversifying its dollar-dominated reserves.
"Reserve diversification is a inevitable gradual process, and the world economy can no longer be dependent on America as the only reserve economy," a senior economist for Moody's Economy.com, Tu Packard, said.
This diversification process acts like a sell-off, because by holding dollars in their reserves, these central banks are in essence buying shares in the American economy. As they sell the dollars, they are selling their interest in our economy, Ms. Packard said.
"The dollar is the world's currency — most greenbacks circulate outside the 50 states — but America's monetary policy is designed for America and no other country. That is certainly a nice convenience for us. But it will tend to weaken foreigners' confidence in our Fed and our Treasury," Mr. Grant said. "You've got to remember that this country produces much less than it consumes. It finances the difference with dollars. Here is one of the sweetest arrangements on the face of the earth, but it will last only so long as non-Americans willingly accept our dollars, these green pieces of paper of no intrinsic value."
Still, the administration in Washington is exuding confidence. "I think I've been pretty clear on this — a strong dollar is in our nation's interest," the treasury secretary, Henry Paulson, said in a press briefing Friday. "And our currency values are always determined — and I believe they should be determined — in a fair, competitive marketplace based upon underlying economic fundamentals. And so what we do in the United States and what I very much advocate is policies that are going to increase confidence, maintain confidence in the U.S. dollar and in our economy."
MUSIC
The Wall Street Journal yesterday ran a review of Oliver Sack's latest book which catalogues some quite amazing case histories of severely impaired persons' reaction to music. It perhaps may well quiet the savage breast. In light of this, I found interesting the following review.
The Musical Century
BY ADAM KIRSCH
The poet Philip Larkin, who grew up in England loving the American jazz of the 1930s and 1940s, wrote a newspaper column about jazz for many years. Eventually, however, around the time Charlie Parker replaced Louis Armstrong as the presiding god of jazz, Larkin began to loathe the new records he was being sent. Even the way the music was written about had changed, he complained: "there was something about the books I was now reading that seemed oddly familiar. This development, this progress, this new language that was more difficult, more complex, that required you to work hard at appreciating it...Of course! This was the language of criticism of modern painting, modern poetry, modern music." Parker was to jazz what Picasso was to painting and Pound was to poetry: in Larkin's eyes, they all shared "a quality of irresponsibility peculiar to this century, known sometimes as modernism."
In the 20th century, all of the arts suffered a version of the modernist crisis, sundering their connection with their traditional audience while becoming exponentially more complex. But none of the genres Larkin mentions, not even poetry, was more traumatized by this rupture than classical music. For 200 years — say, from Bach to Shostakovich — European art music was one of the glories of civilization. Music enjoyed new masters and new masterpieces in every generation, a devoted and serious audience, and a vital connection with the wider intellectual world. Living in Vienna in the 19th century must have been rather like living in Athens in the 5th century B.C.E., or in Renaissance Florence: The ordinary concertgoer was fed on a steady diet of masterpieces. Then, after World War II, it all stopped. People still go to concerts of classical music, and thanks to recording technologies, it has never been easier to experience even the most minor works in the repertory. But the repertory itself is essentially closed. The problem is not that most people cannot name a single living composer, since, in a mass-media age, celebrity and genius will only find each other by accident. The problem is that even people who can name living composers — who have heard about Glass and Gorecki, or even Golijov and Gubaidulina — don't particularly want to listen to their work. What composers need to say does not seem to be what audiences want to hear. Educated people, who will happily read a new novel or look at a new painting, leave the concert hall when a piece of new music is on the schedule. As the Sun's Fred Kirshnit noted in a review of a Mostly Mozart concert this summer, you could tell there was a contemporary work on the bill because all the best seats were empty.
In such a climate, the role of the critic becomes especially important, and exceptionally difficult. The critic of the serious arts — poetry, painting, music — is addressing readers who are not just indifferent to new work, but feel justified in their indifference. The critic's first job, then, even before he evaluates individual works, is to make the reader feel uneasy about his ignorance—to convince him that the art in question is vital and serious, deserving of complex attention. A reader who has always heard that classical music is dead must first be convinced that it is alive.
No critic at work today does this better than Alex Ross, who writes about music for the New Yorker. The tone of belligerent defensiveness that afflicts so many classical-music writers — see Norman Lebrecht, author of "Who Killed Classical Music?" — is never to be heard from Mr. Ross. He knows that this sort of raise-the-drawbridge, circle-the-wagons mentality, while it may afford a mournful, self-righteous pleasure to those inside the classical music world, is designed to drive everyone else away. Instead, Mr. Ross takes the opposite approach: he writes about even recondite works and obscure composers with intelligent absorption. He offers a skeptical world living proof that a smart, curious listener can find pleasures and challenges in new music — whether that music is opera or free jazz or avant-garde pop. As a result, he is one of the few critics in any genre whose recommendations always carry weight. If Mr. Ross likes Björk and Milton Babbitt, you at least want to try to like them too.
In his long-awaited first book, "The Rest Is Noise" (Farrar Straus Giroux, 640 pages, $30), Mr. Ross brings his gift for authoritative enthusiasm to a whole century's worth of music. The book opens with Richard Strauss's "Salome" and concludes with John Adams's "Nixon in China," emblematic operas from the beginning and the end of a challenging musical epoch. Along the way, Mr. Ross shows us Mahler earning a fortune in New York and Schoenberg scraping by in Los Angeles; takes us to the premieres of "The Rite of Spring," which caused a riot in Paris, and of Shostakovich's "Leningrad" Symphony, broadcast defiantly over noman's-land to the city's Nazi besiegers; introduces us to the avant-garde cabals of Darmstadt's Summer Courses for New Music and the trippy California experiments of Harry Partch. Wherever music has flourished or struggled valiantly for survival, over the last hundred years, Mr. Ross is there.
The result is a massively erudite book that takes care to wear its learning lightly. There are no musical examples in "The Rest Is Noise," and while Mr. Ross discusses some technical points — the polyrhythms of Stravinsky, the atonality of Schoenberg — it is not necessary to read music to understand his larger themes. Rather than delving deep into a particular composition, like a musicologist, Mr. Ross aims for synthesis, placing each work against the background of its composer's life and times. This is music history for readers who know more history than music.
And as Mr. Ross shows, in the 20th century, the two could never be separated; each pressed against the other with terrible force. In an age of historicism, composers became extremely self-conscious about their place in the evolution of music. The pressure to make it new, to invent a technique or principle that had never been thought of before, could be constructive: Claude Debussy went to Javanese music for new harmonies, Igor Stravinsky mined Russian folk music for new rhythms. But it also prompted a kind of musical arms race, in which composers competed to make their works as harshly up-to-date as possible. The key figure here was Arnold Schoenberg, whom Mr. Ross presents as a vain, unpleasant, dictatorial genius. When Schoenberg wrote that tonality had decayed through "inbreeding and incest," that "the end of the system is brought about with ... inescapable cruelty by its own functions," he was using the kind of apocalyptic rhetoric favored by racist cranks in turn-of-the-century Vienna. The obsession of German music with ideas of degradation and redemption was perfectly captured by Thomas Mann in his novel "Doctor Faustus" (1947); no wonder Mr. Ross titles his chapter on Schoenberg "Doctor Faust."
At the same time as music grew obsessed with history, history took a sinister interest in music. Mr. Ross shows that both Hitler and Stalin were dangerously interested in music, though in ideologically divergent ways. To Hitler, who saw Gustav Mahler conduct "Tristan und Isolde" in 1906 and never forgot it, music was a mystical emanation of the German spirit. He made regular pilgrimages to Bayreuth, and held forth at dinner on the merits of various conductors (he did not like Herbert von Karajan, even though he was a Nazi). When Hitler came to power, Richard Strauss, for one, was delighted: "Thank God," he said, "finally a Reich Chancellor who is interested in art!" Yet the Nazis' purge of Jewish musicians, and their bullying use of Beethoven and Wagner to whip up patriotic emotions, left a permanent taint on the German musical tradition. Since 1945, Mr. Ross writes, German composers have been trying to purge themselves of that guilt: "Sixty years after the Wagner-loving Hitler killed himself in Berlin, pundits could still be heard declaring that clear-cut repetition of material or a non-ironic use of triads betrayed a fascist mentality."
By the last third of the 20th century, it seems clear that the pressure of history had driven composers a little bit insane. Much of the music Mr. Ross discusses in the later chapters of "The Rest Is Noise" is strictly conceptual, noteworthy only for the ways it violates tradition or expectation. Elliott Carter's Piano Concerto is scored for 50 strings, each playing a different part simultaneously; Karlheinz Stockhausen's "Gruppen" splits the orchestra into three groups, situated at different spots in the concert hall; Alvin Lucier's "Music for Solo Performer" is a translation of his brain's alpha waves into patterns of percussion; most famously, John Cage's "4'33"" is "performed" as an interval of pure silence. Experiments like this can also be found in visual art and literature, and in every case they are purely parasitic; without the prior existence of positive artistic achievements, their purposeful vandalism would be meaningless.
Mr. Ross, in keeping with his usual practice, almost never says a skeptical word about even the most extreme musical absurdities. But it is clear that he is much happier writing about recent composers who use tradition creatively, not destructively, and whose accomplishments are more than theoretical. Mr. Ross devotes more space to Benjamin Britten's opera "Peter Grimes" than to any other single work, relishing both its sound and its psychosexual subtlety. And he is reverently curious about Olivier Messïaen, who fused Catholic masses and birdsong to create a new sound of holiness. These artists are the rare, inspiriting exceptions in a period whose "overall trajectory," as Mr. Ross admits, looks like "one of steep decline." "The Rest Is Noise" does not exactly overturn that conventional verdict, but it proves that even in the 20th century, there is more than enough music for a lifetime of thinking and listening.
The Musical Century
BY ADAM KIRSCH
The poet Philip Larkin, who grew up in England loving the American jazz of the 1930s and 1940s, wrote a newspaper column about jazz for many years. Eventually, however, around the time Charlie Parker replaced Louis Armstrong as the presiding god of jazz, Larkin began to loathe the new records he was being sent. Even the way the music was written about had changed, he complained: "there was something about the books I was now reading that seemed oddly familiar. This development, this progress, this new language that was more difficult, more complex, that required you to work hard at appreciating it...Of course! This was the language of criticism of modern painting, modern poetry, modern music." Parker was to jazz what Picasso was to painting and Pound was to poetry: in Larkin's eyes, they all shared "a quality of irresponsibility peculiar to this century, known sometimes as modernism."
In the 20th century, all of the arts suffered a version of the modernist crisis, sundering their connection with their traditional audience while becoming exponentially more complex. But none of the genres Larkin mentions, not even poetry, was more traumatized by this rupture than classical music. For 200 years — say, from Bach to Shostakovich — European art music was one of the glories of civilization. Music enjoyed new masters and new masterpieces in every generation, a devoted and serious audience, and a vital connection with the wider intellectual world. Living in Vienna in the 19th century must have been rather like living in Athens in the 5th century B.C.E., or in Renaissance Florence: The ordinary concertgoer was fed on a steady diet of masterpieces. Then, after World War II, it all stopped. People still go to concerts of classical music, and thanks to recording technologies, it has never been easier to experience even the most minor works in the repertory. But the repertory itself is essentially closed. The problem is not that most people cannot name a single living composer, since, in a mass-media age, celebrity and genius will only find each other by accident. The problem is that even people who can name living composers — who have heard about Glass and Gorecki, or even Golijov and Gubaidulina — don't particularly want to listen to their work. What composers need to say does not seem to be what audiences want to hear. Educated people, who will happily read a new novel or look at a new painting, leave the concert hall when a piece of new music is on the schedule. As the Sun's Fred Kirshnit noted in a review of a Mostly Mozart concert this summer, you could tell there was a contemporary work on the bill because all the best seats were empty.
In such a climate, the role of the critic becomes especially important, and exceptionally difficult. The critic of the serious arts — poetry, painting, music — is addressing readers who are not just indifferent to new work, but feel justified in their indifference. The critic's first job, then, even before he evaluates individual works, is to make the reader feel uneasy about his ignorance—to convince him that the art in question is vital and serious, deserving of complex attention. A reader who has always heard that classical music is dead must first be convinced that it is alive.
No critic at work today does this better than Alex Ross, who writes about music for the New Yorker. The tone of belligerent defensiveness that afflicts so many classical-music writers — see Norman Lebrecht, author of "Who Killed Classical Music?" — is never to be heard from Mr. Ross. He knows that this sort of raise-the-drawbridge, circle-the-wagons mentality, while it may afford a mournful, self-righteous pleasure to those inside the classical music world, is designed to drive everyone else away. Instead, Mr. Ross takes the opposite approach: he writes about even recondite works and obscure composers with intelligent absorption. He offers a skeptical world living proof that a smart, curious listener can find pleasures and challenges in new music — whether that music is opera or free jazz or avant-garde pop. As a result, he is one of the few critics in any genre whose recommendations always carry weight. If Mr. Ross likes Björk and Milton Babbitt, you at least want to try to like them too.
In his long-awaited first book, "The Rest Is Noise" (Farrar Straus Giroux, 640 pages, $30), Mr. Ross brings his gift for authoritative enthusiasm to a whole century's worth of music. The book opens with Richard Strauss's "Salome" and concludes with John Adams's "Nixon in China," emblematic operas from the beginning and the end of a challenging musical epoch. Along the way, Mr. Ross shows us Mahler earning a fortune in New York and Schoenberg scraping by in Los Angeles; takes us to the premieres of "The Rite of Spring," which caused a riot in Paris, and of Shostakovich's "Leningrad" Symphony, broadcast defiantly over noman's-land to the city's Nazi besiegers; introduces us to the avant-garde cabals of Darmstadt's Summer Courses for New Music and the trippy California experiments of Harry Partch. Wherever music has flourished or struggled valiantly for survival, over the last hundred years, Mr. Ross is there.
The result is a massively erudite book that takes care to wear its learning lightly. There are no musical examples in "The Rest Is Noise," and while Mr. Ross discusses some technical points — the polyrhythms of Stravinsky, the atonality of Schoenberg — it is not necessary to read music to understand his larger themes. Rather than delving deep into a particular composition, like a musicologist, Mr. Ross aims for synthesis, placing each work against the background of its composer's life and times. This is music history for readers who know more history than music.
And as Mr. Ross shows, in the 20th century, the two could never be separated; each pressed against the other with terrible force. In an age of historicism, composers became extremely self-conscious about their place in the evolution of music. The pressure to make it new, to invent a technique or principle that had never been thought of before, could be constructive: Claude Debussy went to Javanese music for new harmonies, Igor Stravinsky mined Russian folk music for new rhythms. But it also prompted a kind of musical arms race, in which composers competed to make their works as harshly up-to-date as possible. The key figure here was Arnold Schoenberg, whom Mr. Ross presents as a vain, unpleasant, dictatorial genius. When Schoenberg wrote that tonality had decayed through "inbreeding and incest," that "the end of the system is brought about with ... inescapable cruelty by its own functions," he was using the kind of apocalyptic rhetoric favored by racist cranks in turn-of-the-century Vienna. The obsession of German music with ideas of degradation and redemption was perfectly captured by Thomas Mann in his novel "Doctor Faustus" (1947); no wonder Mr. Ross titles his chapter on Schoenberg "Doctor Faust."
At the same time as music grew obsessed with history, history took a sinister interest in music. Mr. Ross shows that both Hitler and Stalin were dangerously interested in music, though in ideologically divergent ways. To Hitler, who saw Gustav Mahler conduct "Tristan und Isolde" in 1906 and never forgot it, music was a mystical emanation of the German spirit. He made regular pilgrimages to Bayreuth, and held forth at dinner on the merits of various conductors (he did not like Herbert von Karajan, even though he was a Nazi). When Hitler came to power, Richard Strauss, for one, was delighted: "Thank God," he said, "finally a Reich Chancellor who is interested in art!" Yet the Nazis' purge of Jewish musicians, and their bullying use of Beethoven and Wagner to whip up patriotic emotions, left a permanent taint on the German musical tradition. Since 1945, Mr. Ross writes, German composers have been trying to purge themselves of that guilt: "Sixty years after the Wagner-loving Hitler killed himself in Berlin, pundits could still be heard declaring that clear-cut repetition of material or a non-ironic use of triads betrayed a fascist mentality."
By the last third of the 20th century, it seems clear that the pressure of history had driven composers a little bit insane. Much of the music Mr. Ross discusses in the later chapters of "The Rest Is Noise" is strictly conceptual, noteworthy only for the ways it violates tradition or expectation. Elliott Carter's Piano Concerto is scored for 50 strings, each playing a different part simultaneously; Karlheinz Stockhausen's "Gruppen" splits the orchestra into three groups, situated at different spots in the concert hall; Alvin Lucier's "Music for Solo Performer" is a translation of his brain's alpha waves into patterns of percussion; most famously, John Cage's "4'33"" is "performed" as an interval of pure silence. Experiments like this can also be found in visual art and literature, and in every case they are purely parasitic; without the prior existence of positive artistic achievements, their purposeful vandalism would be meaningless.
Mr. Ross, in keeping with his usual practice, almost never says a skeptical word about even the most extreme musical absurdities. But it is clear that he is much happier writing about recent composers who use tradition creatively, not destructively, and whose accomplishments are more than theoretical. Mr. Ross devotes more space to Benjamin Britten's opera "Peter Grimes" than to any other single work, relishing both its sound and its psychosexual subtlety. And he is reverently curious about Olivier Messïaen, who fused Catholic masses and birdsong to create a new sound of holiness. These artists are the rare, inspiriting exceptions in a period whose "overall trajectory," as Mr. Ross admits, looks like "one of steep decline." "The Rest Is Noise" does not exactly overturn that conventional verdict, but it proves that even in the 20th century, there is more than enough music for a lifetime of thinking and listening.
The Words, Meg, Show Me the Words.
In a Nation essay this year about the wave of successful books vaunting atheism, critic Daniel Lazare wrote the following:
For a long time, religion had been doing quite nicely as a kind of minor entertainment. Christmas and Easter were quite unthinkable without it, not to mention Hanukkah and Passover. But then certain enthusiasts took things too far by crashing airliners into office towers in the name of Allah, launching a global crusade to rid the world of evil, and declaring the jury still out on Darwinian evolution. As a consequence, religion now looks nearly as bad as royalism did in the late 18th century.
That might sound predictably snide coming from the wontedly secular Nation, but listen to a middle-of-the-road piece of journalism, an Associated Press article this May by religion writer Rachel Zoll. In the article, headlined "Angry Atheists Are Hot Authors," Zoll describes the success of such books as "a sign of widespread resentment among nonbelievers over the influence of religion in the world."
She quotes from Christopher Hitchens, whose God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything rocketed to No. 1 on the New York Times best-seller list in its first week out of the block. "There is something like a change in the zeitgeist," Hitchens told Zoll, positing "a lot of people, in this country in particular, who are fed up with endless lectures by bogus clerics and endless bullying." Zoll writes that atheists like Hitchens are tired of believers "using fairy tales posing as divine scripture to justify their lust for power."
Atheism is on a roll, if not a holy roll, in the book world. Last year philosopher Daniel Dennett published Breaking the Spell (Viking), British scientist Richard Dawkins followed with The God Delusion (Houghton Mifflin), and writer Sam Harris, described by Zoll as "a little-known graduate student" until his successes, has been grabbing middlebrow readers with his The End of Faith (Norton, 2004) and Letter to a Christian Nation (Knopf, 2006).
This fall's second wave comes at the culture under the banner of secularism, even under the gentler light of irony. Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor, in his massive A Secular Age (Harvard University Press), seeks to understand what that title means for us — he's so ecumenical and thoughtful in his struggle to understand what he dubs "secularity" that you might not realize he's a believing Catholic. Columbia University's Mark Lilla, in The Stillborn God (Knopf), offers a rich intellectual etiology of how religion and politics realigned themselves within "political theology" to usher in our putatively secular modernity. From France, Olivier Roy's Secularism Confronts Islam (Columbia University Press) acknowledges the hostility to Islam marked by its title, while arguing against it.
Atheism now flourishes even in the form of the gift book, the kind stackable by the register, as in Joan Konner's collection of quotations, The Atheist's Bible (Ecco/HarperCollins, 2007). Polls show that 98 percent of Americans believe in God. But if atheism is going mass in some small way, an easily portable gift text is just as important as a sacred one.
For almost everyone involved in the believer/atheist debate, atheism consists in denying the existence of God, then philosophically evaluating the consequences in the spirit (if not according to the exact program) of a contemporary Nietzsche or Grand Inquisitor. Yet, to a literary critic's eye, many of these books ignore, for the most part, a crucial question: What should the atheist's position be on "sacred texts"?
Think of it as another "death of the author" problem.
The first difficulty for atheists is glaringly apparent. Unlike the situation with God, atheists can't deny the existence of sacred texts, at least as texts. There's indisputably something on hand to deal with. They can only deny to such texts the quality of sacredness. That behooves atheists, then, to have a clear definition of the sacred — object of veneration, say, or "something related to the holy," or "something set apart from the non-holy," or "something worthy of extreme respect" — and also a clear definition of text or book. Many atheists who have a relatively clear idea of what they mean by "God" when they reject His, Her, or Its existence, possess little knowledge of the sacred texts that animate religions. Indeed, Jacques Berlinerblau, in his book The Secular Bible: Why Nonbelievers Must Take Religion Seriously (Cambridge University Press, 2005), opens his study by declaring, "In all but exceptional cases, today's secularists are biblically illiterate."
Exploring what these books are as texts, then — take the Old Testament, New Testament, and Koran as representative — is the first step toward pondering the atheist's proper behavior in regard to them. Happily, one can get help from non-sacred texts, since critical scholarship on sacred texts, which includes what was once widely known as biblical criticism, continues apace.
For a long time, religion had been doing quite nicely as a kind of minor entertainment. Christmas and Easter were quite unthinkable without it, not to mention Hanukkah and Passover. But then certain enthusiasts took things too far by crashing airliners into office towers in the name of Allah, launching a global crusade to rid the world of evil, and declaring the jury still out on Darwinian evolution. As a consequence, religion now looks nearly as bad as royalism did in the late 18th century.
That might sound predictably snide coming from the wontedly secular Nation, but listen to a middle-of-the-road piece of journalism, an Associated Press article this May by religion writer Rachel Zoll. In the article, headlined "Angry Atheists Are Hot Authors," Zoll describes the success of such books as "a sign of widespread resentment among nonbelievers over the influence of religion in the world."
She quotes from Christopher Hitchens, whose God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything rocketed to No. 1 on the New York Times best-seller list in its first week out of the block. "There is something like a change in the zeitgeist," Hitchens told Zoll, positing "a lot of people, in this country in particular, who are fed up with endless lectures by bogus clerics and endless bullying." Zoll writes that atheists like Hitchens are tired of believers "using fairy tales posing as divine scripture to justify their lust for power."
Atheism is on a roll, if not a holy roll, in the book world. Last year philosopher Daniel Dennett published Breaking the Spell (Viking), British scientist Richard Dawkins followed with The God Delusion (Houghton Mifflin), and writer Sam Harris, described by Zoll as "a little-known graduate student" until his successes, has been grabbing middlebrow readers with his The End of Faith (Norton, 2004) and Letter to a Christian Nation (Knopf, 2006).
This fall's second wave comes at the culture under the banner of secularism, even under the gentler light of irony. Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor, in his massive A Secular Age (Harvard University Press), seeks to understand what that title means for us — he's so ecumenical and thoughtful in his struggle to understand what he dubs "secularity" that you might not realize he's a believing Catholic. Columbia University's Mark Lilla, in The Stillborn God (Knopf), offers a rich intellectual etiology of how religion and politics realigned themselves within "political theology" to usher in our putatively secular modernity. From France, Olivier Roy's Secularism Confronts Islam (Columbia University Press) acknowledges the hostility to Islam marked by its title, while arguing against it.
Atheism now flourishes even in the form of the gift book, the kind stackable by the register, as in Joan Konner's collection of quotations, The Atheist's Bible (Ecco/HarperCollins, 2007). Polls show that 98 percent of Americans believe in God. But if atheism is going mass in some small way, an easily portable gift text is just as important as a sacred one.
For almost everyone involved in the believer/atheist debate, atheism consists in denying the existence of God, then philosophically evaluating the consequences in the spirit (if not according to the exact program) of a contemporary Nietzsche or Grand Inquisitor. Yet, to a literary critic's eye, many of these books ignore, for the most part, a crucial question: What should the atheist's position be on "sacred texts"?
Think of it as another "death of the author" problem.
The first difficulty for atheists is glaringly apparent. Unlike the situation with God, atheists can't deny the existence of sacred texts, at least as texts. There's indisputably something on hand to deal with. They can only deny to such texts the quality of sacredness. That behooves atheists, then, to have a clear definition of the sacred — object of veneration, say, or "something related to the holy," or "something set apart from the non-holy," or "something worthy of extreme respect" — and also a clear definition of text or book. Many atheists who have a relatively clear idea of what they mean by "God" when they reject His, Her, or Its existence, possess little knowledge of the sacred texts that animate religions. Indeed, Jacques Berlinerblau, in his book The Secular Bible: Why Nonbelievers Must Take Religion Seriously (Cambridge University Press, 2005), opens his study by declaring, "In all but exceptional cases, today's secularists are biblically illiterate."
Exploring what these books are as texts, then — take the Old Testament, New Testament, and Koran as representative — is the first step toward pondering the atheist's proper behavior in regard to them. Happily, one can get help from non-sacred texts, since critical scholarship on sacred texts, which includes what was once widely known as biblical criticism, continues apace.
Life Begins at Ninety
Blind Ambition
A review by Ron Charles
Once you reach a certain age, the appearance of yet another brilliantnovel by someone barely old enough to vote is deeply irritating.It's akin to that moment when you realize while brushing yourteeth before bed: "By the time Byron was my age, he'd been deadfor 10 years."Well, buck up. Here's a shot of adrenaline for middle-aged hopes,and it comes, of all places, from McSweeney's, that insufferablyyouthful publishing company in San Francisco run by Dave Eggers.Their lead title this fall is Bowl of Cherries, a smart, zanycomedy by a first-time novelist who's 90 years old. A few filmbuffs may recognize the name Millard Kaufman -- he was nominatedfor two screenwriting Oscars in the 1950s ("Take the High Ground!"and "Bad Day at Black Rock") -- but everybody knows Mr. Magoo,the nearsighted cartoon klutz he created with John Hubley in 1949.Now, almost 60 years later, Kaufman is back with another haplesshero who wanders around falling into mischief. Judd Breslau isan impossibly brilliant 14-year-old boy who's trying to finishhis doctorate in English literature. When his father disappearsand his mother waltzes off to Colorado to work for a poetry magazinethat publishes her "dilapidated rhymes," Judd is left to fendfor himself. And so begins one of the strangest journeys in Americanfiction, which, after all, specializes in the strange journeysof teenage boys.
A review by Ron Charles
Once you reach a certain age, the appearance of yet another brilliantnovel by someone barely old enough to vote is deeply irritating.It's akin to that moment when you realize while brushing yourteeth before bed: "By the time Byron was my age, he'd been deadfor 10 years."Well, buck up. Here's a shot of adrenaline for middle-aged hopes,and it comes, of all places, from McSweeney's, that insufferablyyouthful publishing company in San Francisco run by Dave Eggers.Their lead title this fall is Bowl of Cherries, a smart, zanycomedy by a first-time novelist who's 90 years old. A few filmbuffs may recognize the name Millard Kaufman -- he was nominatedfor two screenwriting Oscars in the 1950s ("Take the High Ground!"and "Bad Day at Black Rock") -- but everybody knows Mr. Magoo,the nearsighted cartoon klutz he created with John Hubley in 1949.Now, almost 60 years later, Kaufman is back with another haplesshero who wanders around falling into mischief. Judd Breslau isan impossibly brilliant 14-year-old boy who's trying to finishhis doctorate in English literature. When his father disappearsand his mother waltzes off to Colorado to work for a poetry magazinethat publishes her "dilapidated rhymes," Judd is left to fendfor himself. And so begins one of the strangest journeys in Americanfiction, which, after all, specializes in the strange journeysof teenage boys.
15th Day of the 8th Month
Moon Cakes in Shanghai
By Anne-Marie Slaughter
Anne-Marie Slaughter, a political scientist and the dean of the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University. She is the author “The Idea that is America,” and she is spending this academic year in Shanghai.
Tuesday was Moon Festival Day – the 15th moon day of the 8th Chinese Lunar Month. For weeks now, billboards all over Shanghai have been advertising different varieties of moon cakes (yue bing), the traditional holiday food.
One of the many stories surrounding the Moon Festival, which is also known as the Mid-Autumn Festival, is that during the Yuan Dynasty (A.D. 1280-1368) Chinese rebels against the ruling Mongols ordered the making of special cakes for the Moon Festival and baked a message with a call to action and the outline of the planned attack into each cake. The rebellion succeeded and established the Ming Dynasty. Moon cakes continue to have elaborate designs stamped into them.
On the taste side, however, a friend says that moon cakes are the Chinese equivalent of fruit cake at Christmas – tradition demands that you have one, but no one actually eats one. The result is everyone buys them in all sorts of fancy packages, to give them to everyone else. This practice is encouraged by discount coupons for moon cakes from specific bakeries that are given out by employers.
I had a chance to witness the results yesterday afternoon when I walked by the Godly Bakery, which is attached to a Buddhist vegetarian restaurant. The Godly Bakery bears the logo “since 1922” and a plaque on the wall proclaims that it is a “time-honored Chinese brand.”
Yesterday, its time-honored history notwithstanding, it resembled Zabar’s on the day before Thanksgiving. The mob of people spilled out into the street; when I peeked in I saw that what must usually be a storeroom adjoining the bakery itself had been opened and some twenty sales assistants stood in the center behind a hastily constructed L-shaped counter unloading moon cake tins of various shapes and sizes and shovingthem in bags as fast as they could to hand out to the crowd of customers calling out orders and waving coupons. Cardboard boxes were piled almost to the ceiling all around the walls, emptying at a dizzying rate. On the wall was a poster with pictures of the various tins available, with prices ranging from 55 RMB (roughly $7.50) to over 200 RMB ($30).
After making several passes through the room trying to figure out what was going on, I finally managed to get to the counter myself – the Chinese have NO compunction about pushing past you in line, even when youtry to stare them down, so at the first sign of hesitation you are lost – and to buy a gold tin with a Buddha on it containing 8 individually wrapped moon cakes.
When I got them home we had a chance to compare them with a set of moon cakes that a friend had bought for us the previous week. We discovered, thanks in part to an article in the Shanghai Daily News on “do it yourself” moon cake kits, that the traditional mooncakes were “crisp and flaky,” as opposed to the “greasy” version currently being marketed everywhere, including a Starbucks version and a Haagen-Dazs ice cream version). Godly’s apparently favors the traditional version, which is made with an Asian version of phyllo pastry and which has fillings of chopped nuts, red and green bean paste, poppy seed and lotus seed paste, as well as a number of more savory fillings, one of which smells a great deal like truffle. I gather that there are also lots of regional variations, which I welcome hearing about from readers.
The Shanghai Daily News article advertised the virtues of making your own moon cakes as a great way to “de-stress,” another sign of modern Chinese times. We have heard from a number of Chinese friends and acquaintances that urban Chinese are catching “Western disease,” working ever longer hours and chasing an ever more expensive standard of living. An article this morning noted that the Moon Festival was a sad time for seniors, many of whom no longer had the opportunity to eat moon cakes with their families in the traditional celebration because the festival falls on a work day and their working children could not manage to visit them. By contrast, the ever-present billboards portray the perfect modern white-collar Chinese one-child-policy compliant family (and lucky, i.e. male, child) getting mass-marketed mooncakes from grandma. I’m assuming that, like fruitcakes, these tins of mooncakes will be around for a long time to come.
By Anne-Marie Slaughter
Anne-Marie Slaughter, a political scientist and the dean of the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University. She is the author “The Idea that is America,” and she is spending this academic year in Shanghai.
Tuesday was Moon Festival Day – the 15th moon day of the 8th Chinese Lunar Month. For weeks now, billboards all over Shanghai have been advertising different varieties of moon cakes (yue bing), the traditional holiday food.
One of the many stories surrounding the Moon Festival, which is also known as the Mid-Autumn Festival, is that during the Yuan Dynasty (A.D. 1280-1368) Chinese rebels against the ruling Mongols ordered the making of special cakes for the Moon Festival and baked a message with a call to action and the outline of the planned attack into each cake. The rebellion succeeded and established the Ming Dynasty. Moon cakes continue to have elaborate designs stamped into them.
On the taste side, however, a friend says that moon cakes are the Chinese equivalent of fruit cake at Christmas – tradition demands that you have one, but no one actually eats one. The result is everyone buys them in all sorts of fancy packages, to give them to everyone else. This practice is encouraged by discount coupons for moon cakes from specific bakeries that are given out by employers.
I had a chance to witness the results yesterday afternoon when I walked by the Godly Bakery, which is attached to a Buddhist vegetarian restaurant. The Godly Bakery bears the logo “since 1922” and a plaque on the wall proclaims that it is a “time-honored Chinese brand.”
Yesterday, its time-honored history notwithstanding, it resembled Zabar’s on the day before Thanksgiving. The mob of people spilled out into the street; when I peeked in I saw that what must usually be a storeroom adjoining the bakery itself had been opened and some twenty sales assistants stood in the center behind a hastily constructed L-shaped counter unloading moon cake tins of various shapes and sizes and shovingthem in bags as fast as they could to hand out to the crowd of customers calling out orders and waving coupons. Cardboard boxes were piled almost to the ceiling all around the walls, emptying at a dizzying rate. On the wall was a poster with pictures of the various tins available, with prices ranging from 55 RMB (roughly $7.50) to over 200 RMB ($30).
After making several passes through the room trying to figure out what was going on, I finally managed to get to the counter myself – the Chinese have NO compunction about pushing past you in line, even when youtry to stare them down, so at the first sign of hesitation you are lost – and to buy a gold tin with a Buddha on it containing 8 individually wrapped moon cakes.
When I got them home we had a chance to compare them with a set of moon cakes that a friend had bought for us the previous week. We discovered, thanks in part to an article in the Shanghai Daily News on “do it yourself” moon cake kits, that the traditional mooncakes were “crisp and flaky,” as opposed to the “greasy” version currently being marketed everywhere, including a Starbucks version and a Haagen-Dazs ice cream version). Godly’s apparently favors the traditional version, which is made with an Asian version of phyllo pastry and which has fillings of chopped nuts, red and green bean paste, poppy seed and lotus seed paste, as well as a number of more savory fillings, one of which smells a great deal like truffle. I gather that there are also lots of regional variations, which I welcome hearing about from readers.
The Shanghai Daily News article advertised the virtues of making your own moon cakes as a great way to “de-stress,” another sign of modern Chinese times. We have heard from a number of Chinese friends and acquaintances that urban Chinese are catching “Western disease,” working ever longer hours and chasing an ever more expensive standard of living. An article this morning noted that the Moon Festival was a sad time for seniors, many of whom no longer had the opportunity to eat moon cakes with their families in the traditional celebration because the festival falls on a work day and their working children could not manage to visit them. By contrast, the ever-present billboards portray the perfect modern white-collar Chinese one-child-policy compliant family (and lucky, i.e. male, child) getting mass-marketed mooncakes from grandma. I’m assuming that, like fruitcakes, these tins of mooncakes will be around for a long time to come.
27.9.07
China
China's economy How fit is the panda?
From The Economist print edition
China's booming economy is helping to support global growth as America turns sickly. So now it has to keep up the pace
NO COUNTRY in history has sustained such a blistering rate of growth over three decades as China. Its economy grew by a staggering 11.9% in the year to the second quarter. Since 1978 it has grown by an average of almost 10% a year—more than Japan or the Asian tigers achieved over similar periods when their economies took off. But eventually every sprinter trips. Japan's growth averaged 9.5% in the two decades to 1970, but slowed to 4.7% in the 1970s and to only 1% by the 1990s.
As China has grown, it has come to matter much more to the rest of the world. For the first time it is now contributing more to global GDP growth (measured at market exchange rates) than the United States is. Yet, even as growth forecasts for China are being revised upwards, America is looking at a downturn caused by falling house prices, which threaten to clobber consumer spending. The fate of the world economy now hinges not just on America, but also on China's economic fitness continuing over at least the next two years.
So what immediate threats does China face? The biggest worry is that the economy is overheating and inflation surging out of control. In August consumer-price inflation jumped to 6.5%, up from 1.3% a year earlier and its highest for more than a decade. If China slams on the brakes, its economy could suffer a hard landing, as happened after past episodes of inflation.
But inflation is nowhere near previous danger levels in 1988 and 1994, when it soared above 25% (see chart 1). Moreover, the leap in inflation does not seem to be a symptom of overheating caused by excess demand, as it was in the past. It is due entirely to the rise in food prices caused by supply-side problems. Excluding food, inflation is only 0.9%. This does not mean that food is unimportant: it accounts for one-third of the inflation basket, and rising prices could trigger social unrest. But it is not something that China's central bank can easily fix by raising interest rates. The bank has raised interest rates five times this year, but they still remain low relative to the country's growth rate.
Growing public concerns over inflation recently prompted Beijing to introduce a freeze until the end of 2007 on a wide range of government-controlled prices, such as oil, electricity and water. A more effective way to curb inflation would be to allow the Chinese currency to rise faster. This would reduce import prices of food and raw materials and also curb the build-up of liquidity as a result of rising foreign-exchange inflows.
Unless checked, excessive monetary growth combined with over-rapid GDP growth could eventually lead to more general inflationary pressures. In its latest “China Quarterly Update”, the World Bank says that in the first half of 2007 China grew faster than its potential growth rate (currently estimated at around 10.5%) for the first time in a decade (see chart 2). However, excess demand is tiny compared with previous phases of overheating so the risk of soaring inflation causing a hard landing in the near future is remote.
Bubble trouble
A second much-talked-about threat is the bursting of China's stockmarket bubble. Share prices have risen by 400% in just over two years, and average price-earnings ratios based on historic profits are around 50 (based on forecast 2008 profits they are a still-racy 30). Even though almost everyone reckons this is a bubble, history suggests that a bust is not imminent and that share prices could continue to rise for a lot longer: both Japan's Nikkei and America's NASDAQ saw p-e ratios well above 100 at their peaks.
Even if share prices did tumble this year, the impact on the economy would probably be relatively modest. The total value of tradable shares—that is, excluding those held by the government—is only 35% of GDP compared with 180% in America at its peak in 2000. Equities account for less than 20% of Chinese households' total financial assets, compared with half in America, so price swings have less impact on spending. When Chinese share prices collapsed by 55% from 2001 to 2005, GDP growth remained robust. Over the past year there has been little sign that people are saving less and spending their capital gains, so a slump in share prices should not have much impact either.
Share prices can also affect the cost of capital. But only a small proportion of Chinese companies are listed on the stock exchange and those that are rely mainly on internal finance. Only 10% of total financing for investment this year has come from equities. A more serious problem is that because firms have invested in other companies' stocks, a slump in share prices could directly hurt their profits and hence their investment. According to a study by Morgan Stanley, one-third of listed companies' profits in the first half of 2007 came from share-price gains and other investment income. If share prices sink, so will profits, which would make shares look even more overvalued.
Some analysts also worry that a sharp plunge in equity prices could seriously hurt banks' balance sheets, causing them to squeeze their lending. Chinese banks are officially not allowed to lend to investors to buy shares, but anecdotal evidence suggests that households and firms have taken out loans disguised as mortgages to buy shares. If so, the effect of the bubble bursting could be larger than the direct impact on consumers' wealth—especially if, as seems more likely, the bubble continues to swell for another couple of years before it finally bursts.
In many ways China today looks ominously similar to Japan before its bubble burst at the start of the 1990s, resulting in a decade of stagnation. Like Japan, China has high rates of saving and investment, low real interest rates, soaring asset prices, a big current-account surplus and upward pressure on its currency. After the Plaza accord between the big industrial countries in 1985, the Japanese yen rose by 80% against the dollar in three years.
Many in China have concluded that the blame for Japan's economic malaise in the 1990s lay largely with the appreciation of the yen. Beijing has therefore allowed the yuan to rise by only 10% since July 2005. But Japan's real mistake was its loose monetary policy to offset the impact of the rising yen—which further inflated the bubble—and then its failure to ease policy once the bust had happened. By holding down the value of the yuan and allowing a consequent build-up of excess liquidity, China risks repeating the same error.
However, Paul Cavey, a China economist at Macquarie Securities, suggests that China may have more in common with Taiwan in the 1980s than with Japan. Taiwan's bubble was even bigger, with share prices rocketing by 1,800% between 1985 and 1990. In Japan, reserve accumulation did not play a big role in the bubble. By contrast, the foreign-exchange inflows into Taiwan were greater in relation to its GDP than those seen recently in China. Taiwan, like Japan, saw a big rise in its exchange rate, by 60% in the four years to 1989.
In 1990-91 the Taipei stockmarket slumped by 75%, even more than the Tokyo market did. But Taiwan's growth remained fairly strong because policy was eased much sooner than it was in Japan. In other words, contrary to Beijing's fears, a big exchange-rate rise does not inevitably lead to economic depression.
The other big difference between China and Japan in the late 1980s is that Japan had a serious property bubble against which banks had lent heavily. Although a house-price crash would have much nastier consequences for China's economy than a share-price crash, because 80% of China's urban households now own their home, there is no evidence of a nationwide housing bubble. Average house prices across China are rising at an annual rate of 8%, with double-digit gains in some cities, such as Shenzhen and Beijing.
In a developed economy such increases might seem a little bubbly, but not in one in which nominal GDP is growing at an annual pace of 15%. The ratio of house prices to average income has fallen by 25% in China since 1999. In contrast, at their peak last year American house prices had risen by 45% relative to incomes. A collapse in house prices therefore seems unlikely in China.
If America sneezes
If neither a surge in inflation nor a bust in asset prices seem likely to derail China's economy over the next year or two, what about a recession in America? Exports account for over 40% of China's GDP, so some economists predict that a fall in exports as a result of a downturn in America would create massive excess capacity and a sharp fall in profits and investment—the making of a nasty hard landing. But the popular notion that China is dependent on export-led growth is a myth; domestic demand is much more important. This year the increase in China's net exports (ie, less imports) is likely to account for about one quarter of its growth—a record amount. But even without this external boost, GDP growth would still have been a respectable 9%.
During America's 2001 recession, China's export growth fell by 25 percentage points, but imports also slowed sharply, so GDP growth (as officially reported) remained strong. Since then, the share of its exports to America has shrunk; the European Union and other emerging economies are now more important markets. In the three months to August, Chinese exports to America increased by 14% compared with a year earlier, whereas those to the EU grew by 40%.
America's slowdown so far largely reflects a collapse in house-building, but if consumers cut their spending, the impact on Chinese exports would be harsher. The World Bank estimates that if American consumption falls by the equivalent of 1% of GDP, this could knock 0.2-0.5 percentage points off China's GDP growth, depending on how much the Federal Reserve does to cushion the downturn.
A recession in America would reduce China's growth, but since Beijing's policy-makers are fretting that the economy is starting to overheat, weaker exports and hence slower GDP growth might be a good thing. Not only would it reduce the risk of inflation, but it would also help to trim China's embarrassing trade surplus.
If a fall in exports threatens to slow growth by more than desired, the government's strong fiscal position means that it has plenty of room to boost domestic demand by spending more on infrastructure, education or health. The budget was in small deficit in 2006, but may now be in surplus—even excluding the large surpluses of state-owned enterprises. China's public-sector debt is only 18% of GDP, much lower than the 75% average in developed economies, giving the government ample room for a fiscal stimulus.
In the short term, therefore, an American downturn is more likely to cause sniffles in China than a heavy cold. Indeed, an American recession might be a blessing in disguise to China: if weaker exports forced the government to do more to boost domestic demand it would help to rebalance the economy and make growth more sustainable in the long run.
The bigger danger is that an American recession would inflame America's increasingly protectionist mood and make trade sanctions against China more likely. In an election year, politicians will need a scapegoat. But import barriers would do more harm to America's economy than China's. If China was forced to depend less on exports and more on consumption it would gain in the long run.
Running out of fuel?
In recent months there has been much talk about a new threat. China, it is claimed, is running short of cheap labour—the main source of its extraordinary growth. This is nonsense. It is true that average wages have risen by around 15% over the past year, but labour productivity in manufacturing has risen even faster. Indeed, wages have been rising at double-digit rates for a decade with no harmful impact on growth, because higher labour productivity has actually reduced wage costs (see chart 3). There are localised skill shortages, but it is hard to believe that China's labour surplus is exhausted when almost 60% of the population still lives in rural areas. The wide income gap between rural and urban areas will continue to attract workers from farms to factories.
In any case, it is not true that China's growth has been based primarily on cheap labour. Over the past decade, the increase in the labour force has contributed an average of only 1% a year, or one-tenth of its GDP growth. It is true that the population of working age will peak by 2015 and then start to shrink. But an analysis by the World Bank argues that China is unlikely to face a labour shortage for many years. The decline in the working-age population can be offset by making it easier for surplus labour to migrate into cities.
One thing China does not seem short of is capital investment. Indeed, some economists have long predicted that overinvestment as a result of an artificially cheap cost of capital will lead to China's downfall. Sooner or later, it is argued, overcapacity will lead to a plunge in capital spending, bringing the economy crashing to earth.
According to government figures, China's investment amounts to over 45% of GDP and is growing at 25% a year. But many economists reckon that is grossly overstated. For example, land purchases are wrongly counted as new investment when they are really just a transfer of ownership. If China were massively overinvesting, one would expect the return on capital to be falling. Instead, corporate profit margins have been rising. Mr Cavey estimates that average capacity utilisation, measured by the ratio of sales to assets, has been rising not falling—in strong contrast to Japan during its 1980s bubble.
Worries about rising excess capacity feed another long-standing concern that China's banks, groaning under the weight of non-performing loans, are heading for a crisis. Official figures show that non-performing loans had fallen to 7% of all loans early this year from almost 30% in 2001. But independent analysts suggest the true figure may be closer to 20% (down from over 50% at its peak). The fear is that an economic downturn and falling profits could lead to a surge in new bad loans.
China's fragile and inefficient banking system is certainly a drag on its economy, but the risk that a banking crisis could bring down the economy seems small. China has huge foreign-exchange reserves available to protect its banking system. Capital controls limit capital flight. And the government, unlike Japan's in the 1990s, has plenty of money if necessary to write off bad loans.
The list of potential threats to China's economy is long and some might shave a couple of percentage points off its growth rate (leaving it close to 10%). But none seems likely by itself to cause the economy to collapse in the next two years—ie, during the time when America's economy is likely to stumble. But what if several blows land at the same time? For example, an American recession breeds greater protectionism, global financial turmoil unnerves Chinese stockmarket investors, share prices collapse and a downturn creates social unrest. The overall impact on the economy would then be more painful.
China's best insurance against this is that its budget finances are in better shape than those of any other big economy. China's leaders are acutely aware of the risks of social unrest and they will be willing and able to try to spend their way out of trouble. That makes a sharp downturn in China less likely in the near future. But what about farther ahead?
China's economic success has been based on the essential ingredients of growth: high savings, openness to trade, good education and strong productivity growth. This means its long-term prospects remain strong, although its trend growth rate will inevitably slow as its economy matures and its labour force starts to shrink.
Tao Wang, Bank of America's economist in Beijing, says she is optimistic about China's economy in the short term and the long term, but thinks the medium term looks risky. There is a high chance of a sharp slowdown sometime within the next ten years. The problem with years of rapid growth is that it hides problems that are then painfully exposed when times are hard. But for the time being, the chances are that China can keep sprinting even if America takes to its sick bed. That is good news for the world.
From The Economist print edition
China's booming economy is helping to support global growth as America turns sickly. So now it has to keep up the pace
NO COUNTRY in history has sustained such a blistering rate of growth over three decades as China. Its economy grew by a staggering 11.9% in the year to the second quarter. Since 1978 it has grown by an average of almost 10% a year—more than Japan or the Asian tigers achieved over similar periods when their economies took off. But eventually every sprinter trips. Japan's growth averaged 9.5% in the two decades to 1970, but slowed to 4.7% in the 1970s and to only 1% by the 1990s.
As China has grown, it has come to matter much more to the rest of the world. For the first time it is now contributing more to global GDP growth (measured at market exchange rates) than the United States is. Yet, even as growth forecasts for China are being revised upwards, America is looking at a downturn caused by falling house prices, which threaten to clobber consumer spending. The fate of the world economy now hinges not just on America, but also on China's economic fitness continuing over at least the next two years.
So what immediate threats does China face? The biggest worry is that the economy is overheating and inflation surging out of control. In August consumer-price inflation jumped to 6.5%, up from 1.3% a year earlier and its highest for more than a decade. If China slams on the brakes, its economy could suffer a hard landing, as happened after past episodes of inflation.
But inflation is nowhere near previous danger levels in 1988 and 1994, when it soared above 25% (see chart 1). Moreover, the leap in inflation does not seem to be a symptom of overheating caused by excess demand, as it was in the past. It is due entirely to the rise in food prices caused by supply-side problems. Excluding food, inflation is only 0.9%. This does not mean that food is unimportant: it accounts for one-third of the inflation basket, and rising prices could trigger social unrest. But it is not something that China's central bank can easily fix by raising interest rates. The bank has raised interest rates five times this year, but they still remain low relative to the country's growth rate.
Growing public concerns over inflation recently prompted Beijing to introduce a freeze until the end of 2007 on a wide range of government-controlled prices, such as oil, electricity and water. A more effective way to curb inflation would be to allow the Chinese currency to rise faster. This would reduce import prices of food and raw materials and also curb the build-up of liquidity as a result of rising foreign-exchange inflows.
Unless checked, excessive monetary growth combined with over-rapid GDP growth could eventually lead to more general inflationary pressures. In its latest “China Quarterly Update”, the World Bank says that in the first half of 2007 China grew faster than its potential growth rate (currently estimated at around 10.5%) for the first time in a decade (see chart 2). However, excess demand is tiny compared with previous phases of overheating so the risk of soaring inflation causing a hard landing in the near future is remote.
Bubble trouble
A second much-talked-about threat is the bursting of China's stockmarket bubble. Share prices have risen by 400% in just over two years, and average price-earnings ratios based on historic profits are around 50 (based on forecast 2008 profits they are a still-racy 30). Even though almost everyone reckons this is a bubble, history suggests that a bust is not imminent and that share prices could continue to rise for a lot longer: both Japan's Nikkei and America's NASDAQ saw p-e ratios well above 100 at their peaks.
Even if share prices did tumble this year, the impact on the economy would probably be relatively modest. The total value of tradable shares—that is, excluding those held by the government—is only 35% of GDP compared with 180% in America at its peak in 2000. Equities account for less than 20% of Chinese households' total financial assets, compared with half in America, so price swings have less impact on spending. When Chinese share prices collapsed by 55% from 2001 to 2005, GDP growth remained robust. Over the past year there has been little sign that people are saving less and spending their capital gains, so a slump in share prices should not have much impact either.
Share prices can also affect the cost of capital. But only a small proportion of Chinese companies are listed on the stock exchange and those that are rely mainly on internal finance. Only 10% of total financing for investment this year has come from equities. A more serious problem is that because firms have invested in other companies' stocks, a slump in share prices could directly hurt their profits and hence their investment. According to a study by Morgan Stanley, one-third of listed companies' profits in the first half of 2007 came from share-price gains and other investment income. If share prices sink, so will profits, which would make shares look even more overvalued.
Some analysts also worry that a sharp plunge in equity prices could seriously hurt banks' balance sheets, causing them to squeeze their lending. Chinese banks are officially not allowed to lend to investors to buy shares, but anecdotal evidence suggests that households and firms have taken out loans disguised as mortgages to buy shares. If so, the effect of the bubble bursting could be larger than the direct impact on consumers' wealth—especially if, as seems more likely, the bubble continues to swell for another couple of years before it finally bursts.
In many ways China today looks ominously similar to Japan before its bubble burst at the start of the 1990s, resulting in a decade of stagnation. Like Japan, China has high rates of saving and investment, low real interest rates, soaring asset prices, a big current-account surplus and upward pressure on its currency. After the Plaza accord between the big industrial countries in 1985, the Japanese yen rose by 80% against the dollar in three years.
Many in China have concluded that the blame for Japan's economic malaise in the 1990s lay largely with the appreciation of the yen. Beijing has therefore allowed the yuan to rise by only 10% since July 2005. But Japan's real mistake was its loose monetary policy to offset the impact of the rising yen—which further inflated the bubble—and then its failure to ease policy once the bust had happened. By holding down the value of the yuan and allowing a consequent build-up of excess liquidity, China risks repeating the same error.
However, Paul Cavey, a China economist at Macquarie Securities, suggests that China may have more in common with Taiwan in the 1980s than with Japan. Taiwan's bubble was even bigger, with share prices rocketing by 1,800% between 1985 and 1990. In Japan, reserve accumulation did not play a big role in the bubble. By contrast, the foreign-exchange inflows into Taiwan were greater in relation to its GDP than those seen recently in China. Taiwan, like Japan, saw a big rise in its exchange rate, by 60% in the four years to 1989.
In 1990-91 the Taipei stockmarket slumped by 75%, even more than the Tokyo market did. But Taiwan's growth remained fairly strong because policy was eased much sooner than it was in Japan. In other words, contrary to Beijing's fears, a big exchange-rate rise does not inevitably lead to economic depression.
The other big difference between China and Japan in the late 1980s is that Japan had a serious property bubble against which banks had lent heavily. Although a house-price crash would have much nastier consequences for China's economy than a share-price crash, because 80% of China's urban households now own their home, there is no evidence of a nationwide housing bubble. Average house prices across China are rising at an annual rate of 8%, with double-digit gains in some cities, such as Shenzhen and Beijing.
In a developed economy such increases might seem a little bubbly, but not in one in which nominal GDP is growing at an annual pace of 15%. The ratio of house prices to average income has fallen by 25% in China since 1999. In contrast, at their peak last year American house prices had risen by 45% relative to incomes. A collapse in house prices therefore seems unlikely in China.
If America sneezes
If neither a surge in inflation nor a bust in asset prices seem likely to derail China's economy over the next year or two, what about a recession in America? Exports account for over 40% of China's GDP, so some economists predict that a fall in exports as a result of a downturn in America would create massive excess capacity and a sharp fall in profits and investment—the making of a nasty hard landing. But the popular notion that China is dependent on export-led growth is a myth; domestic demand is much more important. This year the increase in China's net exports (ie, less imports) is likely to account for about one quarter of its growth—a record amount. But even without this external boost, GDP growth would still have been a respectable 9%.
During America's 2001 recession, China's export growth fell by 25 percentage points, but imports also slowed sharply, so GDP growth (as officially reported) remained strong. Since then, the share of its exports to America has shrunk; the European Union and other emerging economies are now more important markets. In the three months to August, Chinese exports to America increased by 14% compared with a year earlier, whereas those to the EU grew by 40%.
America's slowdown so far largely reflects a collapse in house-building, but if consumers cut their spending, the impact on Chinese exports would be harsher. The World Bank estimates that if American consumption falls by the equivalent of 1% of GDP, this could knock 0.2-0.5 percentage points off China's GDP growth, depending on how much the Federal Reserve does to cushion the downturn.
A recession in America would reduce China's growth, but since Beijing's policy-makers are fretting that the economy is starting to overheat, weaker exports and hence slower GDP growth might be a good thing. Not only would it reduce the risk of inflation, but it would also help to trim China's embarrassing trade surplus.
If a fall in exports threatens to slow growth by more than desired, the government's strong fiscal position means that it has plenty of room to boost domestic demand by spending more on infrastructure, education or health. The budget was in small deficit in 2006, but may now be in surplus—even excluding the large surpluses of state-owned enterprises. China's public-sector debt is only 18% of GDP, much lower than the 75% average in developed economies, giving the government ample room for a fiscal stimulus.
In the short term, therefore, an American downturn is more likely to cause sniffles in China than a heavy cold. Indeed, an American recession might be a blessing in disguise to China: if weaker exports forced the government to do more to boost domestic demand it would help to rebalance the economy and make growth more sustainable in the long run.
The bigger danger is that an American recession would inflame America's increasingly protectionist mood and make trade sanctions against China more likely. In an election year, politicians will need a scapegoat. But import barriers would do more harm to America's economy than China's. If China was forced to depend less on exports and more on consumption it would gain in the long run.
Running out of fuel?
In recent months there has been much talk about a new threat. China, it is claimed, is running short of cheap labour—the main source of its extraordinary growth. This is nonsense. It is true that average wages have risen by around 15% over the past year, but labour productivity in manufacturing has risen even faster. Indeed, wages have been rising at double-digit rates for a decade with no harmful impact on growth, because higher labour productivity has actually reduced wage costs (see chart 3). There are localised skill shortages, but it is hard to believe that China's labour surplus is exhausted when almost 60% of the population still lives in rural areas. The wide income gap between rural and urban areas will continue to attract workers from farms to factories.
In any case, it is not true that China's growth has been based primarily on cheap labour. Over the past decade, the increase in the labour force has contributed an average of only 1% a year, or one-tenth of its GDP growth. It is true that the population of working age will peak by 2015 and then start to shrink. But an analysis by the World Bank argues that China is unlikely to face a labour shortage for many years. The decline in the working-age population can be offset by making it easier for surplus labour to migrate into cities.
One thing China does not seem short of is capital investment. Indeed, some economists have long predicted that overinvestment as a result of an artificially cheap cost of capital will lead to China's downfall. Sooner or later, it is argued, overcapacity will lead to a plunge in capital spending, bringing the economy crashing to earth.
According to government figures, China's investment amounts to over 45% of GDP and is growing at 25% a year. But many economists reckon that is grossly overstated. For example, land purchases are wrongly counted as new investment when they are really just a transfer of ownership. If China were massively overinvesting, one would expect the return on capital to be falling. Instead, corporate profit margins have been rising. Mr Cavey estimates that average capacity utilisation, measured by the ratio of sales to assets, has been rising not falling—in strong contrast to Japan during its 1980s bubble.
Worries about rising excess capacity feed another long-standing concern that China's banks, groaning under the weight of non-performing loans, are heading for a crisis. Official figures show that non-performing loans had fallen to 7% of all loans early this year from almost 30% in 2001. But independent analysts suggest the true figure may be closer to 20% (down from over 50% at its peak). The fear is that an economic downturn and falling profits could lead to a surge in new bad loans.
China's fragile and inefficient banking system is certainly a drag on its economy, but the risk that a banking crisis could bring down the economy seems small. China has huge foreign-exchange reserves available to protect its banking system. Capital controls limit capital flight. And the government, unlike Japan's in the 1990s, has plenty of money if necessary to write off bad loans.
The list of potential threats to China's economy is long and some might shave a couple of percentage points off its growth rate (leaving it close to 10%). But none seems likely by itself to cause the economy to collapse in the next two years—ie, during the time when America's economy is likely to stumble. But what if several blows land at the same time? For example, an American recession breeds greater protectionism, global financial turmoil unnerves Chinese stockmarket investors, share prices collapse and a downturn creates social unrest. The overall impact on the economy would then be more painful.
China's best insurance against this is that its budget finances are in better shape than those of any other big economy. China's leaders are acutely aware of the risks of social unrest and they will be willing and able to try to spend their way out of trouble. That makes a sharp downturn in China less likely in the near future. But what about farther ahead?
China's economic success has been based on the essential ingredients of growth: high savings, openness to trade, good education and strong productivity growth. This means its long-term prospects remain strong, although its trend growth rate will inevitably slow as its economy matures and its labour force starts to shrink.
Tao Wang, Bank of America's economist in Beijing, says she is optimistic about China's economy in the short term and the long term, but thinks the medium term looks risky. There is a high chance of a sharp slowdown sometime within the next ten years. The problem with years of rapid growth is that it hides problems that are then painfully exposed when times are hard. But for the time being, the chances are that China can keep sprinting even if America takes to its sick bed. That is good news for the world.
Shakespeare in the Tube
The ingenious idea of a Shakespeare tube map sponsored by the Royal Shakespeare Company, and advertising its activities on T-shirts, bags and mugs, has its dangers. I have horrible visions of Japanese visitors, the world their Oyster, taking it seriously and triumphantly working out that they have reached Tottenham Court Road when they see a sign for Hotspur, and Baker Street when they are at Titus Andronicus station. And wouldn't they be puzzled not to find Lear or Antony at the end of a line?As for the signs, should there be a public urinal for Lance's pissing dog, and a toilet for Lady Macbeth to wash her hands in? I should have expected to find a Pentameter Line, and perhaps an Iambic Junction. The executioner Abhorson, from Measure for Measure, might reasonably inhabit Hanger Lane, but perhaps Shylock should be closer to Bond Street, and Cleopatra to her Needle on the Embankment. The boy princes of Richard III, who travelled to London "with some little train", would certainly end up at Tower Hill, and Richmond from the same play is a no-change area. John of Gaunt, "time-honoured Lancaster", is a natural for Lancaster Gate, and Othello might be closer to Cyprus on the Docklands Light Railway.
That notorious bear from The Winter's Tale must surely pursue passengers from Paddington and Macduff undoubtedly gets off at Caledonian Road, while the Falstaff of the final scene of The Merry Wives would more naturally alight at Royal Oak, to be plagued by street urchins. The "base football player" Oswald clearly sets off for Arsenal, minding the gap as he goes. As for the three Witches, they fit in anywhere on the underground, where we might naturally expect also to encounter that old mole, the Ghost of Hamlet's father.
Even as it is, this entertaining and imaginative enterprise finds a new and lively way of literally mapping Shakespeare on to the popular consciousness.
Naipul & Powell
I never got much joy from A Dance to the Music of Time, Anthony Powell's 12-novel sequence depicting a certain type of English life—the type Powell knew best—in the middle years of the last century. I enjoyed other novels by Powell—his first, Afternoon Men, and his last, The Fisher King—but the series that was said to be his masterpiece seemed to depend for its effect on the reader already knowing the kind of people the author was writing about. Today Powell and his characters would be called "toffs," but I don't think it was the social difference between the reader and the read-about that stood as a barrier to the books' pleasure; Evelyn Waugh wrote from and about the same territory and made it sharp, funny and sad to people who had never heard of Jermyn Street or White's. Powell, by contrast, looked to be engaged in a long-winded private satire, with footmen posted at the door to keep the wrong sort of reader out. Anthony Powell befriended VS Naipaul in 1957. It was a generous act. Powell was 52 and approaching his great years as a country gentleman and distinguished litterateur. Naipaul was 25, had just published his first novel, and was scraping a living from book reviews. We don't know quite what attracted Powell to the young Trinidadian; Powell, according to Naipaul, was a generous "collector of people." But his kindness was seized by Naipaul and returned with affection and admiration. Powell represented a way of living and talking that Naipaul had been seeking ever since he came to Oxford from his small colony. Naipaul writes that Oxford, and later the BBC, provided fellow students and colleagues who were "for the most part provincial and mean and common." Powell was none of those things. To quote Naipaul: "He was proud of being an English writer; he thought it something delicate and special." He represented the worth of the journey. As Diana Athill, Naipaul's first editor, has written elsewhere, Naipaul was "a man raised in, and frightened by, a somewhat disorderly, inefficient and self-deceiving society, who therefore longed for order, clarity and competence." And so, according to Athill, he "overvalued a sense of history and respect for tradition, choosing to romanticise their results rather than to see the complex and far from admirable scenes with which they often coexist.'"The two writers remained friends until Powell died in 2000. Then a terrible thing happened. Naipaul (pictured, right) was commissioned to write a piece about Powell, and for the first time started to work his way through A Dance to the Music of Time. He was—and this is his word—appalled. The books displayed no narrative skill, the characters were one-dimensional, everything was over-explained, there were too many words. English social life was left "just where the writer found it." The friendship had endured because the younger writer, by now a very considerable author, had never examined the older man's work.
MEMORY
We used to have a system in which we forgot things easily and had to invest energy in remembering," says Viktor Mayer-Schönberger, an associate professor of public policy at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. "Now we're switching to a system in which we remember everything and have to invest energy in order to forget. That's an enormous transformation."
Jorge Luis Borges envisioned the risks of perfect memory in his famous story "Funes the Memorious," about a man gifted with unlimited recall, and paralyzed by it. Perhaps not even Borges, however, could have imagined our present capacity to accumulate and preserve memory in digital form - or the powerful impact it is already having on individual lives, as temporary indiscretions become part of the permanent record. "What you do online is potentially there forever," says Coye Cheshire, an assistant professor at the School of Information at the University of California, Berkeley. "Delete if you want; ask Google to take down that one unflattering photo - but it's still saved, archived, somewhere."
The personal costs of this reality are clear, but there may be broader social costs as well. "What a lot of people forget - no pun intended - is that forgetting is hard-wired," says Mayer-Schönberger. "Cognitively and sociologically, we've never had to develop the capacity to forget or to put things in temporal perspective, because forgetting was built in biologically."
In a working paper posted online last spring, "Useful Void: The Art of Forgetting in the Age of Ubiquitous Computing," Mayer-Schönberger hypothesized a number of future big-picture costs of an unforgetting era. The assumption that every online comment and transaction is preserved somewhere, never to be forgotten, could suppress public speech and civic participation in ways that we could never calculate. There is also the contradiction whereby "personal" information - from private e-mails to sensitive identifying data - is indefinitely available on a remote server.We used to have a system in which we forgot things easily and had to invest energy in remembering," says Viktor Mayer-Schönberger, an associate professor of public policy at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. "Now we're switching to a system in which we remember everything and have to invest energy in order to forget. That's an enormous transformation."
Jorge Luis Borges envisioned the risks of perfect memory in his famous story "Funes the Memorious," about a man gifted with unlimited recall, and paralyzed by it. Perhaps not even Borges, however, could have imagined our present capacity to accumulate and preserve memory in digital form - or the powerful impact it is already having on individual lives, as temporary indiscretions become part of the permanent record. "What you do online is potentially there forever," says Coye Cheshire, an assistant professor at the School of Information at the University of California, Berkeley. "Delete if you want; ask Google to take down that one unflattering photo - but it's still saved, archived, somewhere."
The personal costs of this reality are clear, but there may be broader social costs as well. "What a lot of people forget - no pun intended - is that forgetting is hard-wired," says Mayer-Schönberger. "Cognitively and sociologically, we've never had to develop the capacity to forget or to put things in temporal perspective, because forgetting was built in biologically."
In a working paper posted online last spring, "Useful Void: The Art of Forgetting in the Age of Ubiquitous Computing," Mayer-Schönberger hypothesized a number of future big-picture costs of an unforgetting era. The assumption that every online comment and transaction is preserved somewhere, never to be forgotten, could suppress public speech and civic participation in ways that we could never calculate. There is also the contradiction whereby "personal" information - from private e-mails to sensitive identifying data - is indefinitely available on a remote server.
Jorge Luis Borges envisioned the risks of perfect memory in his famous story "Funes the Memorious," about a man gifted with unlimited recall, and paralyzed by it. Perhaps not even Borges, however, could have imagined our present capacity to accumulate and preserve memory in digital form - or the powerful impact it is already having on individual lives, as temporary indiscretions become part of the permanent record. "What you do online is potentially there forever," says Coye Cheshire, an assistant professor at the School of Information at the University of California, Berkeley. "Delete if you want; ask Google to take down that one unflattering photo - but it's still saved, archived, somewhere."
The personal costs of this reality are clear, but there may be broader social costs as well. "What a lot of people forget - no pun intended - is that forgetting is hard-wired," says Mayer-Schönberger. "Cognitively and sociologically, we've never had to develop the capacity to forget or to put things in temporal perspective, because forgetting was built in biologically."
In a working paper posted online last spring, "Useful Void: The Art of Forgetting in the Age of Ubiquitous Computing," Mayer-Schönberger hypothesized a number of future big-picture costs of an unforgetting era. The assumption that every online comment and transaction is preserved somewhere, never to be forgotten, could suppress public speech and civic participation in ways that we could never calculate. There is also the contradiction whereby "personal" information - from private e-mails to sensitive identifying data - is indefinitely available on a remote server.We used to have a system in which we forgot things easily and had to invest energy in remembering," says Viktor Mayer-Schönberger, an associate professor of public policy at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. "Now we're switching to a system in which we remember everything and have to invest energy in order to forget. That's an enormous transformation."
Jorge Luis Borges envisioned the risks of perfect memory in his famous story "Funes the Memorious," about a man gifted with unlimited recall, and paralyzed by it. Perhaps not even Borges, however, could have imagined our present capacity to accumulate and preserve memory in digital form - or the powerful impact it is already having on individual lives, as temporary indiscretions become part of the permanent record. "What you do online is potentially there forever," says Coye Cheshire, an assistant professor at the School of Information at the University of California, Berkeley. "Delete if you want; ask Google to take down that one unflattering photo - but it's still saved, archived, somewhere."
The personal costs of this reality are clear, but there may be broader social costs as well. "What a lot of people forget - no pun intended - is that forgetting is hard-wired," says Mayer-Schönberger. "Cognitively and sociologically, we've never had to develop the capacity to forget or to put things in temporal perspective, because forgetting was built in biologically."
In a working paper posted online last spring, "Useful Void: The Art of Forgetting in the Age of Ubiquitous Computing," Mayer-Schönberger hypothesized a number of future big-picture costs of an unforgetting era. The assumption that every online comment and transaction is preserved somewhere, never to be forgotten, could suppress public speech and civic participation in ways that we could never calculate. There is also the contradiction whereby "personal" information - from private e-mails to sensitive identifying data - is indefinitely available on a remote server.
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