Category: Uncategorized

From Cat Ballou (start 40 seconds in).

(Thanks: TS.)

One of the books I read for the first time earlier in the year was W.G. Sebald’s Austerlitz; so that makes it difficult for me to nominate any other book as the best I’ve read this year. But I can make up for that by saying John Williams’s Stoner, which I finished last night, is amongst the best novels I’ve ever read. I hope I’m not just generalizing from my own ignorance in wondering why Stoner and its author aren’t better known. But until a friend recently passed the book on to me as a gift, I’d not heard either of it or of him. After reading it, I think I’ve found a novel that belongs with those by William Maxwell, Richard Yates, Anne Tyler, Marilynne Robinson, and other such elevated company.

In the edition I read, Stoner comes with a recommendation from John McGahern. He refers to the clarity of Williams’s prose, and that is one of the book’s pervasive merits: writing about the subtleties of emotion and the shifting relationships across a man’s lifetime, the author is always pellucid as well as economical. The life he describes is in one way unremarkable: of a boy – William Stoner – from a farming background who goes to college to study agriculture but is diverted into a love of literature and becomes an academic and teacher. Stoner’s career isn’t one of fame or any kind of glory; it could even be seen as pedestrian. But another striking feature of Williams’s tale is the drama he brings to the unfolding of this ordinary life in both professional and personal domains, so that Stoner is one of those books you’re always keen to get back to. Moreover, it reveals, beneath the routines of ‘ordinariness’, the depths of a man of consistent integrity, trying to do the best by those around him, the people he loves, the students he teaches, and the profession of teaching itself, the joys and the values of literature and of learning. Williams records a life well-lived, without glamour and with enough of life’s disappointments, but one to be celebrated nonetheless – just like the book that contains it.

I wish anyone else coming to Stoner for the first time the same pleasure it gave me. Can I guarantee this? Of course not. But I’m betting you won’t regret trying it.

(See also, now, here.)

Is it OK to stage an academic boycott on broadly human rights grounds but targeted against one country only and its universities and academics? According to Matt Hill at the New Statesman, it is. But then again he also thinks it isn’t in the particular case to hand, namely Israel. He delivers an object lesson in how to swallow your own reasoning with the reasoning that follows it.

The occasion for Hill’s piece is Stephen Hawking’s much-publicized decision not to attend a conference in Israel, and he begins by making it clear that his opposition to this decision isn’t based on ‘the usual argument trotted out’ by those opposed to boycotting Israel. For him that’s what we boycott-opponents do with arguments: we trot them out; as we also, apparently, throw words around. But in any event, Hill writes:

Partisans of Israel often charge BDS with inconsistency, claiming it’s hypocritical to single out Israel and not other countries who abuse human rights. But this won’t wash. When it comes to moral acts, the question isn’t whether we are consistent but whether we have a chance of achieving some good. When activists led a boycott of South Africa during the apartheid years, they didn’t wait until their movement could boast a consistent platform on every conceivable issue.

Hill is right about this for the cases to which it applies; but he’s wrong about it for the particular case to which he applies it. You don’t have to refrain from doing some good just because you can’t do all the possible good there is to do. It would be a strange and useless counsel to someone not to donate to one or two worthwhile charities unless they could donate to all of them. And it isn’t a sensible norm of international politics for a country to desist from a feasible humanitarian intervention that might save many lives in circumstances where it could only afford to undertake one such intervention though more than one was needed. But boycotting the academics of other countries on putatively human rights grounds isn’t like either of these cases. (See this earlier post of mine.)

Not visiting other places to attend a conference and not inviting academics from those places are both generalizable negative activities that do not impose costs on those who undertake them; to an academic boycott of Israel could easily be added boycotts of Iran, China, Syria, Zimbabwe, Sudan, etc, without this stretching the means of the intending boycotters. Fewer places to visit; fewer visitors to entertain, accommodate and, crucially, talk and listen to. So Hill’s argument against what opponents of the academic boycott ‘trot out’ is busted – busted in its own right.

Yet, he doesn’t leave it there; because he goes on to recognize that one of words we boycott opponents ‘throw around’ actually has some merit:

Israel’s supporters claim that the BDS movement has little to do with the occupation, peace, and government policy, and is instead intended to bring into question the Jewish state’s right to exist.

It’s true that Israel’s supporters throw the word ‘delegitimisation’ around to portray fair-minded criticism of Israel as invidious and sinister. But when it comes to BDS, the fact is that they have a point. The BDS movement doesn’t have a single leadership with stated goals, but most of the biggest groups within it make little secret of their preferred outcome to the conflict. Instead of a two-state solution, they support a single, Palestinian-majority state that would mean the end of Israel’s existence.

Hallelujah the Hill, to coin a phrase. The focus on Israel as a target of boycott is not, then, merely a matter of trying to do some good where you can. There’s something about that country that makes certain types of people itchy for denunciation and for punitive action against its academics.

Here’s a report about six Israeli trauma experts visiting Boston in the aftermath of the bombing at the Boston Marathon. They’re members of the Israel Trauma Coalition for Response and Preparedness (ITC), and were there to help with advice, as they have done evidently in other parts of the world after terrorist atrocities. The report quotes a Boston official as follows:

We had brought in other experts to speak about trauma, but the Israelis came with a level of practical real-life experience that brought it to a new level.

That’s a kind of real-life experience Israelis could do with much less of, but it’s one of those facts that fails to impinge on the bigotry of the bigoted.

If you want to know about Jews, there are some relevant statistics here: ’14 million Jews around the world, representing 0.2% of the global population’; 41% of them in the US, 41% in Israel; numbers of Jews for other countries with fewer Jews than the US or Israel but more Jews than, say, Luxembourg. But, now, here’s the standout fact:

Globally, Jews are older… than the overall global population…

Do you get that? I mean, how can we be older? Granted, I – who is Jewish – am older than both of the kids next door, who are not. But, on the other hand, I am younger than all those non-Jews who are older than I am. And a very young Jew will be younger than more non-Jews still. So it may be puzzling to you to read that Jews are older.

Puzzle no more. I’ll explain it. Jews are older because we keep coming across bigots like Stephen Hawking, who favours an academic boycott of Israel, and the more than two-thirds of entrants to this poll on the Guardian website who think he is right. Such people enjoy believing that Israel is a uniquely bad country (and that its academics are a uniquely bad bunch), but without being able to explain why in the face of massive evidence to the contrary. And they are secure in the virtue of their motivations, as bigots generally are. Bigotry – here is my hypothesis – ages those on the receiving end of it.

Theodore Dalrymple is discussing the benefits of retirement. That’s apropos Sir Alex, but you don’t have to be interested in football for this. Dalrymple makes the following general observation:

There are few sensations more delightful than waking up in the morning in the knowledge that one does not have to get up if one doesn’t want to.

I can think of at least one thing that is more delightful. It’s knowing you don’t have to get up but wanting to. It means there are activities you enjoy more than postponing the start of your day.

Ben Saul, professor of international law at the University of Sydney, highlights a feature of Australian federal law that makes it a criminal offence for an Australian national to take up arms on the side of the rebels in Syria. At the same time Australians may freely fight on the side of Assad’s regime. How so?

The problem is that Australian foreign policy [which opposes Assad] and Australian law are radically out of whack. Indeed, the law actively undermines our foreign policy objectives. First, our federal terrorism law criminalises anyone who uses political violence against any foreign government. This includes violence limited to military attacks on military targets in a civil war and which does not target innocent civilians, and which may precisely aim to stop government attacks on civilians. There is no exception for armed conflicts, unlike the law in Canada and as required by international law. War fighting is now altogether illegal.

Secondly, a federal law on “foreign recruitment” makes it a crime for an Australian to join any non-state military force overseas, yet allows Australians to fight in foreign government militaries. The Foreign Minister has a legal power to exempt a designated non-state force, and to ban fighting for a designated government, but has not exercised either power in relation to Syria.

Let’s be clear about what this means. It is a crime for Australians to rebel against Assad to stop his tyranny, human rights violations, and crimes against humanity. This is so even if the rebels fight fairly by attacking only military targets and sparing civilians, and even if they are fighting to save civilians from being butchered. But it is entirely lawful for Australians to fight for Assad and thus to help him repress the rebels, terrorise his people and stay in power.

It sounds to me like Australia’s federal terrorism law is misconceived, treating armed struggle against any foreign government, even if this is a tyrannical regime, as terrorism. Terrorism, in the strict sense, is the random murder of civilians for political purposes. Furthermore, no law can legitimately criminalize the right of rebellion against dictatorial power.

Today Google has a tribute to Saul Bass, set to the music of Dave Brubeck. Bass was born on 8 May 1920, and I’ve always regarded his work for Hitchcock and others as sitting at the very top of the tree. The credit sequences for both Psycho and Vertigo are unforgettable masterpieces (with the very considerable assistance of music by Bernard Herrmann). But here’s another one not to be sneezed at: the opening for Martin Scorsese’s Casino. (Via Simon.)

Here’s one you probably won’t know. It’s from Sing You Sinners of 1938.

They all count.

I won’t answer the question myself, but just point you to this paragraph publicizing a day of talks and workshops at the University of Manchester for students from schools and colleges:

What makes our actions right or wrong? Is it OK to torture one innocent person in order to save the lives of a thousand others? Does God exist? How can we know anything about the world around us? Is my mind just my brain? Should we trust doctors more than homeopaths? What is truth? Is democracy better than dictatorship? Is it rational to fear death? What is time? If you find these kinds of questions interesting, then come along to Why Study Philosophy? and find out more!… You can come to philosophy with any academic background: you just need curiosity and an open mind. Philosophy asks – and tries to answer – the kinds of deep and puzzling questions that other subjects don’t answer. So if you’re interested in truth, beauty, right and wrong, justice, the nature of science, how language works, the meaning and value of life, the existence of God, the difference between rational and irrational beliefs… then philosophy is for you.

I might have added something about doubt, and about clarifying questions you’re not sure how to answer, but there’s enough there to be getting on with.