“What I Didn’t Tell Them, Being Ambivalent”

Leonard’s closing argument on censorship vs. free speech. He points out that “there are more good ideas than bad” and goes on to list many (French Revolution, Russian Revolution, Atomic Bomb) and that even advertising is protected speech (“The most depressing thing about advertising is that it works”) and pornography (snuff movies, etc.)….inserts a parenthetical good thought, “…aren’t there other ways to protect our children that don’t involve telling anybody what movies he can’t make?”

Then he closes making his final point:

Why then the First Amendment, my first principle? For the occasional Galileo; and maybe because we need to know what the next Lenin has to say so he won’t kill us by surprise; and also because no one has tried it before, no other nation that we’ve heard about, so why not give this Sacred Text a chance?

New word: seraphic = angelic, I suppose very angelic since derived from the word for the highest order of angels.

New learning: “There is more pornography, and less violence against women in Amsterdam than any other city in the world.”

From yesterday...

“What I Told Them, Being Pious”

One of the strongest, and longest, essays in the collection so far. A argument that censorship is pervasive, not just in Communist or Islamic dictatorships (“There’s been censorship as long as there’s been society”) but that the “angels” need to continue to push back on the “axes” despite (“We deplored, never the less”). The article is so good, touching on everything from Czar Nicholas I editing Pushkin to Marlo Thomas’ Free To Be You and Me, that I can’t do it justice in summary. Here’s a highlight reel:

Quoting an Iranian-born American novelist on reading dissident literature, “Such writers…must be read through prison bars, ‘I know that I do not read Solzhenitsyn the way I read Flaubert.”

On censorship of sex, “But the weather of censorship consists equally of sex and politics. They are variable. Put them together and it isn’t surprising to get religion or violence.”

On a story about a TV network that sends all scripts involving homosexuality to a dentist in New Jersey, a script writer comments “ ‘ …you mean there really is a Tooth Fairy?’ “ and Leonard continues, “Have I offended anyone? I hope so.” Knocking down political correctness is a central theme to the essay.

On the pervasiveness of censorship through out time, “Christ on the cross was a free speech issue.”

On the US, “And do we think of ourselves as a free country?...as if the Aliens and Sedition Act, the Smith Act and…Joe McCarthy had never happened…”

More on the US, “If we read Ronald Regan right – was there any other direction in which to read him? – the whole point of his Howdy Doody era was to regulate speech while deregulating greed.”

Good stuff…Rachel Maddow would be pleased.

New word: “deculturalization” = Leonard’s term for wiping clean “whole categories of difficult thought” as in Iran…or Texas.

New learning: At one pint Leonard writes, “Quick now: exactly why did Dalton Trumbo and Ring Lardner, Jr., go to jail?” I had no idea (exactly his point). Turns out both were blacklisted for failing to “name names” during the McCarthy hearings. By the way, Dalton Trumbo is a novelist who wrote Johnny Got His Gun, a great book about the personal aftermath of WW I that would apply very well to veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. Good poster for the movie version:

Censorship: The Angels and the Ax

“Where We Go To Talk About Censorship”

Start of a section on censorship. In this short opening essay (very hard to follow), Leonard contrasts the experience of being asked to speak about censorship at the modern L.A. hotel Bonaventure (“…at least two hours by Porsche to the nearest quart of milk”) to meeting a dissident in the Soviet era Hotel Rossya in Moscow (“Think of Kafka’s castle”). His summarizes his thesis as “The Rossya is the foot of censorship in your face, on your neck. The Boneventure’s more problematic, like a bowl of brain…I know what I was doing in Moscow. In Los Angeles I had my doubts.”

He goes on to write about the many examples of censorship in western society and celebrates the “angels” who fight them every day – from teachers to celebrity authors:

…are among many other heroes and heroines of the U.S. Constitution who have stolen time from jobs and families to insist, without reservation, that our young republic really meant it when it said that Congress shall make no law abridging what We The People publish.

Let’s see where he goes with the rest of the essays in this section….

New word: Kinhasa = alternative spelling for the Capital of the DR Republic of Congo, Kinshassa.

New learning: …Ok, not new learning,  but great quote, “Do American fascists have civil rights?”

“Heidegger in New York”

Leonard’s coda for his essay’s on the class separation growing in NYC symbolized by Fifth Avenue, “Fifth Avenue [read: Mayor Koch and NY movers and shakers] has never wanted us, the unlicensed and unwashed.” He goes on to pine for a better, more democratic, more truly diverse NY but warns that it will never happen “…with Crazy Eddie [Koch] and his Pinkertons [referencing the union busting era of Samuel Gompers].” A very short essay that he ends with:

And many years from now, after there’s cable television in Queens [read: where the real people live], a child will ask, ‘Daddy, before the revolution, why were you in jail?’ And the Father will reply, ‘I was an illegal vendor.’ […like the ones swept off 5^th Avenue by Mayor Koch]”

New phrase: Sein zum tode = German Heideggerian (yes, that’s a word) term for a dread of death that leads to an authentic perspective on being.

New learning: The Barthelme quoted in this piece (and other esssays by Leonard) is Donald Barthelme, the Houston author “…knowm for his playful postmodernism.”

He wrote in the short story “Great Days”:

“—What do the children say?
—There's a thing the children say.
—What do the children say?
—They say: Will you always love me?
—Always.
—Will you always remember me?
—Always.
—Will you remember me a year from now?
—Yes, I will.
—Will you remember me two years from now?
—Yes, I will.
—Will you remember me five years from now?
—Yes, I will.
—Knock knock.
—Who's there?
—You see?”

("Great Days," Forty Stories)

I’ll have to add Forty Stories to my reading list on Goodreads.

Back from vacation!

“The Iguana That Ate Chrysler”

Leonard poking fun at the Fifth Avenue Association for sponsoring an extravaganza of the rich and famous for the introduction of a new car (The Chrysler Fifth Avenue) while using zoning laws to have the 100ft iguana removed from the roof of the Lone Start Café (all in 1978)He has some fun with comments like, “St. Patrick would have loved him (the iguana). They were both in the snake business.”…reference to the real St. Patrick or the people who like to be seen at St. Patrick’s on Fifth Avenue?

Here’s the lizard:

There are color pictures available, but looks much more historic in B&W.

New word: omophagous = eater of raw food (“What do you do with an iguana in a restricted neighborhood? It might eat a Plimpton!”)

New learning: Geas is a curse, a death taboo of the ancient Celts.