Did you notice that Clooney says very early on that he specializes in real estate transactions but when later asked by his daughter what papers he's pouring over, he says he's reviewing a deposition? I don't think so: that's for litigators not real estate transaction lawyers. (The rule against perpetuities brought back memories, mind you; I got a A in estates in law school.)
I've been arguing that Clooney suffers from being a Johnny one note as an actor, which is to say, unlike for instance the great Sean Penn, Clooney can never transcend himself in his roles. Here, he breaks out, showing real emotion and tense restraint throughout the movie, culminating in his tearful goodbye to his wife, which worked. This is the best acting I've ever seen him do. I didn't find Clooney wooden either, just nicely understated.
This was a good, quiet movie, albeit predictable, that never dragged but rather had the competent feel of taking its time. Robert Forster was a winner as the cantankerous, flinty and single minded father in law. (You could imagine his daughter as a chip off the old block.) Clooney was understatedly powerful in falsely conceding his wife's fidelity, when that was so pesistently insisted on by her father.
His eldest daughter and her more complicated than expected boy friend--president of the chess club after all, whose own father had just died--came approporiately to Clooney's defence with his wife's father. And Judy Greer playing Speer's wife was really good in yelling at Elizabeth, while purporting to forgive her, for trying to take her husband away from her and break her family. I could her rage.
And Clooney was deglamorized for how pretty he is--dowdy, frumpy clothes, dowdy car for all his wealth, slouching odd walk and run. He breathed no inner charismatic fire all of a piece with, I think, him being a good looking (for sure) frumpy, high minded, middle aged guy immersed in his work and letting himself go.
You could understand his wife--apparently, like me, an extreme sports firebrand and single minded too--being dissatisfied, though Speer the real estate guy seemed somewhat of a let down of a choice by her in my books.
I knew about 2/3s of the way through that he wasn't going to sell the land. But I didn't mind that one bit, so much of a lesser part of the movie did it feel like to me.
All in all, it had a good beat and you could dance to it, and I'd give it 3 out of 5 and recommend it.
Tuesday, November 29, 2011
A Slight Comparison Between Camus's The Stranger and The Brothers Karamazov
I must be getting older. For whatever I thought of The Stranger about 45 years ago, I've just reread it to speak with some people about it and think its theme is absurd (no pun intended) and incoherent, though the story is interesting and well written.
For example, Camus in his afterward makes a big deal about Mersault's unflinching honesty and committment to his own truths, even at the possible cost of his life--he's an atheist; nothing really matters; he has no real feelings of remorse; we all die, so what's the point. But if it doesn't matter, as the world is absurd since we all die, then what matters this unflinching integrity that has Camus likening Mersault to a kind of Algerian Christ? What is the ground for virtue; why even privilege integrity? Isn't this the very fundamental and obvious contradiction in asburdism or nihilism? It's an intellectual abstraction entirely belied by our, all people's, experience and necessarily leads to its own reductio ad absurdum.
This absurd theme of absurdity contrasts with the dashing of it--if God does not exist, all is permitted--in the climactic scene between Ivan and Smerdyakov that I've touched on before, arguing that The Brothers Karamazov has it that this evisceration of it does not need faith to anchor it, our common humanity and innate though imperfect impulses toward human sympathy will do fine.
For example, Camus in his afterward makes a big deal about Mersault's unflinching honesty and committment to his own truths, even at the possible cost of his life--he's an atheist; nothing really matters; he has no real feelings of remorse; we all die, so what's the point. But if it doesn't matter, as the world is absurd since we all die, then what matters this unflinching integrity that has Camus likening Mersault to a kind of Algerian Christ? What is the ground for virtue; why even privilege integrity? Isn't this the very fundamental and obvious contradiction in asburdism or nihilism? It's an intellectual abstraction entirely belied by our, all people's, experience and necessarily leads to its own reductio ad absurdum.
This absurd theme of absurdity contrasts with the dashing of it--if God does not exist, all is permitted--in the climactic scene between Ivan and Smerdyakov that I've touched on before, arguing that The Brothers Karamazov has it that this evisceration of it does not need faith to anchor it, our common humanity and innate though imperfect impulses toward human sympathy will do fine.
Friday, November 25, 2011
George Eliot to Harriet Beecher Stowe on the Jewish Element in Daniel Deronda
As to the Jewish element in ‘Deronda,’ I expected from first to last, in writing it, that it would create much stronger resistance, and even repulsion, than it has actually met with. But precisely because I felt that the usual attitude of Christians towards Jews is — I hardly know whether to say more impious or more stupid, when viewed in the light of their professed principles, I therefore felt urged to treat Jews with such sympathy and understanding as my nature and knowledge could attain to.
Moreover, not only towards the Jews, but towards all Oriental peoples with whom we English come in contact, a spirit of arrogance and contemptuous dictatorialness is observable which has become a national disgrace to us. There is nothing I should care more to do, if it were possible, than to rouse the imagination of men and women to a vision of human claims in those races of their fellow-men who most differ from them in customs and beliefs.
But towards the Hebrews we western people, who have been reared in Christianity, have a peculiar debt, and, whether we acknowledge it or not, a peculiar thoroughness of fellowship in religious and moral sentiment. Can anything be more disgusting than to hear people called "educated" making small jokes about eating ham, and showing themselves empty of any real knowledge as to the relation of their social and religious life to the history of the people they think themselves witty in insulting? They hardly know that Christ was a Jew.
And I find men, educated, supposing that Christ spoke Greek. To my feeling, this deadness to the history which has prepared half our world for us, this inability to find interest in any form of life that is not clad in the same coat-tails and flounces as our own, lies very close to the worst kind of irreligion.
The best that can be said of it is that it is a sign of the intellectual narrowness — in plain English, the stupidity — which is still the average mark of our culture.
“Yes, I expected more aversion than I have found. But I was happily independent in material things, and felt no temptation to accommodate my writing to any standard except that of trying to do my best in what seemed to me most needful to be done; and I sum up with the writer of the Book of Maccabees, — "If I have done well, and as befits the subject, it is what I desired; and if I have done ill, it is what I could attain unto.”
Moreover, not only towards the Jews, but towards all Oriental peoples with whom we English come in contact, a spirit of arrogance and contemptuous dictatorialness is observable which has become a national disgrace to us. There is nothing I should care more to do, if it were possible, than to rouse the imagination of men and women to a vision of human claims in those races of their fellow-men who most differ from them in customs and beliefs.
But towards the Hebrews we western people, who have been reared in Christianity, have a peculiar debt, and, whether we acknowledge it or not, a peculiar thoroughness of fellowship in religious and moral sentiment. Can anything be more disgusting than to hear people called "educated" making small jokes about eating ham, and showing themselves empty of any real knowledge as to the relation of their social and religious life to the history of the people they think themselves witty in insulting? They hardly know that Christ was a Jew.
And I find men, educated, supposing that Christ spoke Greek. To my feeling, this deadness to the history which has prepared half our world for us, this inability to find interest in any form of life that is not clad in the same coat-tails and flounces as our own, lies very close to the worst kind of irreligion.
The best that can be said of it is that it is a sign of the intellectual narrowness — in plain English, the stupidity — which is still the average mark of our culture.
“Yes, I expected more aversion than I have found. But I was happily independent in material things, and felt no temptation to accommodate my writing to any standard except that of trying to do my best in what seemed to me most needful to be done; and I sum up with the writer of the Book of Maccabees, — "If I have done well, and as befits the subject, it is what I desired; and if I have done ill, it is what I could attain unto.”
Me on Leavis on Daniel Deronda
The great English critic F.R. Leavis, a high Anglican by the way, wrote a famously provocative essay on George Eliot’s Daniel Deronda, itself controversial in its time—the eighteen seventies—for being the first overwhelmingly sympathetic work of English literature towards Jews.
Leavis’s argument, with which I agree just having finished the novel, is that:
1. the sections of the novel dealing with the Jewish story—Deronda’s journey to learning he’s a Jew, his evolving commitment to his Judaism and the blossoming of his relationship with the young Jewish girl he rescues from drowning herself—are bad art;
2. the sections dealing with the story of the other main character Gwendolen Harleth are the most superb in all of Eliot’s work, and particularly the presentation of her character, psychologically penetrating, complexly whole and utterly compelling in her vivacity and egotism; and
3. if the novel could excise the Jewish story save minimally to serve Gwen’ story , being titled Gwendolen Harleth instead of Daniel Deronda, it could lay claim to being a masterpiece of English literature.
Leavis’s argument, with which I agree just having finished the novel, is that:
1. the sections of the novel dealing with the Jewish story—Deronda’s journey to learning he’s a Jew, his evolving commitment to his Judaism and the blossoming of his relationship with the young Jewish girl he rescues from drowning herself—are bad art;
2. the sections dealing with the story of the other main character Gwendolen Harleth are the most superb in all of Eliot’s work, and particularly the presentation of her character, psychologically penetrating, complexly whole and utterly compelling in her vivacity and egotism; and
3. if the novel could excise the Jewish story save minimally to serve Gwen’ story , being titled Gwendolen Harleth instead of Daniel Deronda, it could lay claim to being a masterpiece of English literature.
On Leavis On Daniel Deronda
(From an anonymous comment on the internet as slightly adapted, i.e. not mine but I adopt a lot of it.)
....I'm firmly on the side of F.R. Leavis. The problem is not that the Jewish sections are Jewish, it's that they're bad -- boring, didactic, unsubtle -- while Gwendolen's sections are some of Eliot's best work. One oughtn't to accuse Leavis of anti-Semitism by virtue of this review, but I've seen that accusation implied in other essays about Daniel Deronda, and I don't think there's any reason for it. Leavis just wanted to salvage the better half of a book that's clearly uneven.
I think the main problem with the Jewish half is that Eliot, determined philo-semite though she is, simply does not know how to write Jewish characters as if they're real people. So Mirah is a timid, saintly epitome of well-bred Jewish womanhood, despite her upbringing in the theatre, and Mordecai is practically a stereotype -- at any rate, he's firmly in the tradition of intellectual Jewish mystics.
Meanwhile, all the lower class Jewish characters are greasy, vulgar, money-grubbing, etc., and while Eliot is careful to assure us that poor urban Gentiles are vulgar as well, she never actually shows us any.
The only Jewish character who is not in some way either a philo-semitic or an anti-semitic stereotype is Deronda, and he is a terribly boring character when left to his own devices. He works best as the mysterious figure occasionally popping up in Gwendolen's life, since Gwendolen's imagination invests him with much more interest and personality than he actually has.
Meanwhile, Gwendolen is over in her half of the book, being one of the most interesting and human characters Eliot ever created, but every time you get immersed in her story you're suddenly yanked back over to the Jewish half and forced to read pages-long paragraphs about Zionism.
If Eliot had merged the two halves of her book a little more the discrepancy wouldn't be quite as obvious, but since she essentially wrote two books and joined them at the hip, it's easy to see why Leavis would be tempted to perform surgery on them.
Me: The only part of this comment I disagree with is that the presentaton of the Cohen family is more rounded and sympathetic than suggested above. And, ironically, by not being ideal types, they and Mirah's father, too, are more resonant and interesting than the idealized Jews, including Deronda.
....I'm firmly on the side of F.R. Leavis. The problem is not that the Jewish sections are Jewish, it's that they're bad -- boring, didactic, unsubtle -- while Gwendolen's sections are some of Eliot's best work. One oughtn't to accuse Leavis of anti-Semitism by virtue of this review, but I've seen that accusation implied in other essays about Daniel Deronda, and I don't think there's any reason for it. Leavis just wanted to salvage the better half of a book that's clearly uneven.
I think the main problem with the Jewish half is that Eliot, determined philo-semite though she is, simply does not know how to write Jewish characters as if they're real people. So Mirah is a timid, saintly epitome of well-bred Jewish womanhood, despite her upbringing in the theatre, and Mordecai is practically a stereotype -- at any rate, he's firmly in the tradition of intellectual Jewish mystics.
Meanwhile, all the lower class Jewish characters are greasy, vulgar, money-grubbing, etc., and while Eliot is careful to assure us that poor urban Gentiles are vulgar as well, she never actually shows us any.
The only Jewish character who is not in some way either a philo-semitic or an anti-semitic stereotype is Deronda, and he is a terribly boring character when left to his own devices. He works best as the mysterious figure occasionally popping up in Gwendolen's life, since Gwendolen's imagination invests him with much more interest and personality than he actually has.
Meanwhile, Gwendolen is over in her half of the book, being one of the most interesting and human characters Eliot ever created, but every time you get immersed in her story you're suddenly yanked back over to the Jewish half and forced to read pages-long paragraphs about Zionism.
If Eliot had merged the two halves of her book a little more the discrepancy wouldn't be quite as obvious, but since she essentially wrote two books and joined them at the hip, it's easy to see why Leavis would be tempted to perform surgery on them.
Me: The only part of this comment I disagree with is that the presentaton of the Cohen family is more rounded and sympathetic than suggested above. And, ironically, by not being ideal types, they and Mirah's father, too, are more resonant and interesting than the idealized Jews, including Deronda.
Friday, November 18, 2011
The Nature of Will and the Difference Between Will and Wilful
We so often speak of will without thinking carefully about what it means even as it is such a fundamental idea in understanding ourselves. In my own thinking about will I have ultimately conceptualized it as determination in the merging of two different ideas of determination: the singling out of something as a kind of judgment as in ...“I have determined that…” or “it is my determination that…;” and the single minded implementation of that determined judgment.
What I have in my own mind added to that conceptualization is that that determination must struggle—the more, the greater the exercise of will—against what stands in its way. Without straining against difficulty will does not operate; it doesn’t have to because it doesn't emerge. So I would add to the second meaning of determination-- "the single minded implementation of that judgment"—"against difficulty."
That addition needs refinement. Difficulty need not be external obstacles; it may inhere in the very project which is will’s object. So if a formidable man blocks my way to my destination and I need to steel myself to the difficulty of overcoming him, that is one mode of will. If my project requires great discipline in achieving it—practice, training, rehearsal, physical effort, exertion, creative effort and the like—that is another mode of will. The first may be thought of as self against the world; the second may be thought of as self against self.
These thoughts also lead me to want to distinguish between will and willful. The latter may be understood as “the unrelenting intent on having one's own way; being headstrong, obstinate; being habitually disposed to disobedience and opposition.” Determination is common to these meanings.
The dividing line between will and willful is transgression.
Will is determination in relation to accomplishment or achievement. Willful is determination in relation to what is disapprobative. If every morning I get up at 5:00 am to train for a marathon, that is an exercise of will. If in the course of my morning runs I cut through my neighbor’s flower beds after having been asked not to that is willful.
So will involves self overcoming self in doing what is difficult to a purpose; willful involves self succumbing to self in wrong doing. In this sense, will and willful are antitheses.
What I have in my own mind added to that conceptualization is that that determination must struggle—the more, the greater the exercise of will—against what stands in its way. Without straining against difficulty will does not operate; it doesn’t have to because it doesn't emerge. So I would add to the second meaning of determination-- "the single minded implementation of that judgment"—"against difficulty."
That addition needs refinement. Difficulty need not be external obstacles; it may inhere in the very project which is will’s object. So if a formidable man blocks my way to my destination and I need to steel myself to the difficulty of overcoming him, that is one mode of will. If my project requires great discipline in achieving it—practice, training, rehearsal, physical effort, exertion, creative effort and the like—that is another mode of will. The first may be thought of as self against the world; the second may be thought of as self against self.
These thoughts also lead me to want to distinguish between will and willful. The latter may be understood as “the unrelenting intent on having one's own way; being headstrong, obstinate; being habitually disposed to disobedience and opposition.” Determination is common to these meanings.
The dividing line between will and willful is transgression.
Will is determination in relation to accomplishment or achievement. Willful is determination in relation to what is disapprobative. If every morning I get up at 5:00 am to train for a marathon, that is an exercise of will. If in the course of my morning runs I cut through my neighbor’s flower beds after having been asked not to that is willful.
So will involves self overcoming self in doing what is difficult to a purpose; willful involves self succumbing to self in wrong doing. In this sense, will and willful are antitheses.
Lionel Trilling on Ideas vs. Thinking
From The Sense of the Past, from The Liberal Imagination, the essay being written in 1942:
The "tyranny of words” became a popular phrase and is still in use, and the semanticists offer us an easier world and freedom from war if we only assert our independence from words. But nearly a century ago Dickens said, that he was tired of hearing about the “tyranny of words” (he used that phrase); he was, he said, less concerned with the way abuse us than with the way we abuse words. It is not words that make our troubles, but our own wills. Words cannot control us unless we desire to be controlled by them. And the same is true of the control of systematic ideas. We have come to believe that some ideas can betray us, others can save us. The educated classes are learning to blame ideas for our troubles rather than blaming what is a very different thing—our own bad thinking. This is the great vice of academicism, that it is concerned with ideas rather than with thinking, and nowadays the errors of the academicism do not stay in the academy; they make their way into the world, and what begins as a failure of perception among intellectual specialists finds it fulfillment in policy and action.
In time of war, when two different cultures or two extreme modifications of the same culture, confront each other, this belief in the autonomy of ideas becomes especially strong and therefore especially clear. In any modern war there is likely to be involved a conflict of ideas which is in part factitious but which is largely genuine. But this conflict of ideas, genuine as it may be, suggests to both sides the necessity of believing in the fixed immutable nature of the ideas to which each side owes allegiance. What Gods were to the ancients, ideas are to us.
Me: This seems to me to be a good account of the diffference between ideology and liberalism and ties in with Trilling's theme of the idea of liberalism as it emerges from the essays in his book, a good account of the difference between closed systems of thought which are not self questioning and open minded, dead to evidence and to argument and liberalism as paradoxically simultaneously believing and doubting.
The "tyranny of words” became a popular phrase and is still in use, and the semanticists offer us an easier world and freedom from war if we only assert our independence from words. But nearly a century ago Dickens said, that he was tired of hearing about the “tyranny of words” (he used that phrase); he was, he said, less concerned with the way abuse us than with the way we abuse words. It is not words that make our troubles, but our own wills. Words cannot control us unless we desire to be controlled by them. And the same is true of the control of systematic ideas. We have come to believe that some ideas can betray us, others can save us. The educated classes are learning to blame ideas for our troubles rather than blaming what is a very different thing—our own bad thinking. This is the great vice of academicism, that it is concerned with ideas rather than with thinking, and nowadays the errors of the academicism do not stay in the academy; they make their way into the world, and what begins as a failure of perception among intellectual specialists finds it fulfillment in policy and action.
In time of war, when two different cultures or two extreme modifications of the same culture, confront each other, this belief in the autonomy of ideas becomes especially strong and therefore especially clear. In any modern war there is likely to be involved a conflict of ideas which is in part factitious but which is largely genuine. But this conflict of ideas, genuine as it may be, suggests to both sides the necessity of believing in the fixed immutable nature of the ideas to which each side owes allegiance. What Gods were to the ancients, ideas are to us.
Me: This seems to me to be a good account of the diffference between ideology and liberalism and ties in with Trilling's theme of the idea of liberalism as it emerges from the essays in his book, a good account of the difference between closed systems of thought which are not self questioning and open minded, dead to evidence and to argument and liberalism as paradoxically simultaneously believing and doubting.
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