Arts & Letters

Noam Chomsky is rather despicable. But I’ve always had mixed feelings when his name came up: one of my first classes at U.T. was in transformational grammar, taught by one of hisi students, fresh out of grad school himself. I remember it with great pleasure for a personal and trivial reason (I met my husband) but also as just a great class. Our teacher, young & fresh faced, would become visibly excited, walk back and forth in front of the room, motioning to the chalkboard and its diagrams of syntax & sense. I can still see him, leaning against the wall and intently looking at the board. He’d hold the chalk against his lips, then suddenly move across and move an element, point to a connection. We were there, we were being taught, but for a moment, he’d forgotten us, absorbed in the idea in front of him. We were watching thought – engaged, cheerful thought – in motion. It was electric – that was man thinking, drawing us into his world, Chomsky’s world. We loved Chomsky’s famous debate with Skinner. We were, of course, on Chomsky’s side.

And in that way, we still are. His analysis that blends nurture and nature leads us to understand language & human nature. The sense of universality that lies beneath these sentences informs my thinking to this day. I never studied trans gram again; that teacher, energizing as he was, didn’t get tenure. Yes, much has fallen by the way. But today, Roger Scruton discusses Chomsky by noting that electricity as well as how far Chomsky has fallen in his ability to connect ideas, to selflessly lose himself in thought. Scruton’s first paragraph is clear: “Noam Chomsky’s popularity owes little or nothing to the eminent place that he occupies in the world of ideas. That place was won many years ago in the science of linguistics, and no expert in the subject would, I think, dispute Prof. Chomsky’s title to it.” But if Chomsky thinking – like my old teacher – could be a beautiful sight, Chomsky feeling is less attractive. At one time, he lost himself in ideas; now, as Scruton concludes: “he is not valued for his truths but for his rage, which stokes the rage of his admirers. He feeds the self-righteousness of America’s enemies, who feed the self-righteousness of Prof. Chomsky. And in the ensuing blaze everything is sacrificed, including the constructive criticism that America so much needs, and that America–unlike its enemies, Prof. Chomsky included–is prepared to listen to. “

Read more

Reading Sheila’s charming if obsessive Dean Martin posts, I thought of how often lately my mind has gone to Robert Mitchum. As one of the commentators observed, they shared a kind of coolness – one sang well, one acted well, but they kept a joke going; they kept a distance. Martin was a cool drunk, the jokes were on him – the graceful goofiness Sheila rhapsodizes over – but that freed him; he had a dark suit elegance. He didn’t want to be seen trying. That era was cool & ironic & silky; those guys didn’t want to put much on the line – they eschewed earnestness. Of course, James Bond, that favorite reading matter of John Kennedy, was cool – like his martinis, his music.

My husband once asked if my uncle ever said anything that wasn’t ironic. As a child I’d always been put off by that – he seemed to be laughing at me. Actually, he was. I was clumsy & melodramatic. We may feel sympathy for the objects of Mr. Bennet’s sharp tongue and Jane Austen lets us know by the novel’s end that she does not find her character’s wry humor the best tone for a patriarch; nonetheless, we like cool, we smile at wit; we value the softer, gentler form as Jane Austen probes society’s foibles, making us aware of a proportionality that remains useful two hundred years later. Sarcasm, the blunt weapon of an adolescent’s anger, tries to be cool, but it fails. Irony is detached, precise; it is an adult’s diversion.

Read more

In answer to Chel, I tend to watch whatever the hell is on. But, frankly, I’ve never seen any of the three that you mention. I guess I just leave on other junk. Yes, I’m sure Lex is right, I’m wasting my life away.

Speaking of which, in a previous post about the sixties, I mentioned that those were also the years of the Dean Martin Show – though I doubt many of you guys in your forties think of that when you’re thinking of the sixties. Tim Blair linked to this thread; sure it’s obsessive but sometimes its fun to see something through someone else’s more appreciative eyes, it gave me a new & rather pleasant horizon.

This blog is sometimes critical of boomer culture. But Lex puts up a video of Jackie DeShannon & we all watch, pleased by the aesthetic & energy, the charm of a singer quite representative – to some – of the sixties. Those years went through cultural changes that, looking back, were breathtaking. But those of us who were teens moved through them as fish in water; we were obsessed with ourselves, of course, but we had no perspective; we’d never been young before.

In 1963 Jackie Kennedy balanced her little pill box atop masses of hair. A freshman in college, I’d encase myself in garter belts & nylons for class or stretch pants designed for ski slopes nowhere close to Nebraska. We ratted our hair. By 67 or 68, we were wearing see-through blouses and no bras, our dresses were so short my daughters finding one of my old dresses assume it’s a tunic, our hair hung below our shoulders, often below our waists. Sometimes changes come from the pragmatic – the pill & pantyhose. Now, dresses are about any length we want. For decades, they inched up and down, but in the sixties, they moved from the knees very high & then down quite low. The movement was so fast and extreme, styles merged & women in pants, in minis, with dresses trailing the ground appear at the same workplace, the same party.

Read more