The Power of Senators

What can a drunken Robert Byrd really tell us about the American political system? Quite simple. The truth and nothing but the truth. While people like to focus on the president, it is quite clear that the true force in American politics is still Congress and here it is clearly the Senate which plays the overpowering role (due to its only 100 members and need for bipartisan consensus). Thus, Robert Byrd is not far off with this self-description. Big Daddy. The Man.

Senators virtually never lose reelection (the incumbency advantage is even stronger than in the House where incumbents lose seldom enough already). This prominence coupled with the need for a broad consensus (in order to avoid a Filibuster) makes for easy earmarking in the Senate. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) constructed his famous bridge into nowhere, Robert Byrd (D-West Virginia) assured money for his bio-center. Every senator does this, some more, some less successful.

Drunk politicians really make political scientists' jobs easier sometimes, so thank you Robert Byrd for emphasising this point.

Double Post appearing in tapmag at the same time.

law-abiding

Admittedly, there is a certain irony to a German writing this entry, considering Germany's well-documented history with horrendous law-abiding but also more modern stereotypes about Germans waiting at a red trafic light with no one else around at three in the morning, but I consider it ridicolous how Americans adher to rules and regulations sometimes, and how preposterous they are in doing so.

The obvious example of this are the way bouncers handle IDs at bars. A vast amount of places simply don't take foreign ones based on the fact that they could more easily be faked, even obvious proof (the existence of approximately 2 million other cards with the same name and birth date) does not make these people change their mind about a supposed fake ID.

This is not all there is though, Americans in official positions are surprisingly (considering national stereotypes) inflexible when it comes to rules and regulations even when faced with obvious extraordinary circumstances. I am currently trying to apply for a teaching assistant position for a German-language recitation of a course entitled Society and Culture in Postwar Germany. Without being too arrogant I cannot really see anyone being more qualified for this position. Yet, because I am officially considered an undergraduate at the university here (despite of the fact that I will write my master's thesis next semester and graduate in the fall), it is 'unlikely' that I will get the position.

Examples like these abound, most of them involving drinking laws, but also course requirements or university regulations. I would argue that contrary to popular stereotypes Americans (at least those working in a public institution such as UNC) are as inflexible as most Germans.

L'avalée des avalés

Je viens à apprendre quelque chose sur la littérature francophone. Je ne suis pas encore capable de faire des remarques généralisés, et peut-être que je ne le serai jamais, mais découvrir une nouvelle litterature, s'ouvrir un nouveau monde est une expérience très agréable. Je lis encore aussi lentement qu'un un enfant, et je ne comprends pas tous les mots, même pas tous les phrases avouons-le. Mais, j'y arrive toujours et j'espère que le temps et l'expérience m'aideront à résoudre ces deux problèmes aussi (c'est comme ça, en lisant, que j'ai appris la plupart de mon vocabulaire en anglais après tout).

Concernant le livre L'avalée des avalés de Réjean Ducharme il faut admettre, qu'il m'a posé des problèmes. L'histoire avance très lentement, et parfois on a l'impression que rien ne se passe durant tout un chapitre. On m'avait beaucoup recommandé ce bouquin, et je ne l'ai pas trouvé mauvais, ni aussi génial comme on m'avait dit à son propos. Il y a beaucoup de similarité entre Bérénice Einberg, la protagoniste, et Holden Caulfield, le héros de The Catcher in the Rye, mais les insécurités, les agressions de Holden sont compréhensible. Il regarde le monde et il le trouve faux. Bérénice est explicable par la jalousie seulement. Il y a une scène où Bérénice raconte ses sentiments quand elle a vu sa mère et son frère interagir, mais sauf ça, les explications n'étaient pas clairs et j'avais l'impression qu'il n'y a pas d'autres. Elle déteste sa mère, mais elle l'aime, elle aime son frère, elle déteste son père, elle déteste sa vie, mais à la fin elle profite d'une façon incroyablement immorale d'une amie pour se sauver.

Enfin, le livre parle d'une fille qui a des grands problèmes psychologiques, mais à mon avis, Ducharme n'explique jamais pourquoi elles les a. En plus, ce qui m'énerve le plus peut-être, est que Bérénice n'évolue pas. Au moins cinq ans passent dans sa vie pendant le livre, et elle ne change jamais ni dans ses pensés ni ses activités. Alors, le livre n'a pas été mauvais, mais il serait non plus pas dans mon panthéon personnel.

Mid-Term Essay

Honestly, I shelled this essay out in very little time (I think I wrote it in like 7 to 10 hours), it has no footnotes, and really is just an argumentative essay. I kind of like it for what it is though. So, enjoy.

Task:
Was the development of the Bush Doctrine a proper response to the attacks of 9/11/01? Has implementation of the Bush Doctrine over the past five years been effective, ineffective or counterproductive in reducing the threat of international terrorism against the United States?

Memo 2

My second memo for the 9/11 and its aftermath class. See below for the topic:

You are staff for a member of the Senate Committee on Armed Services. The Committee is holding a hearing entitled "The National Security Strategy of the United States: A Review of the Post-9/11 Security Posture" in the fall of 2002. Write a short briefing memo (of no more than 750 words) for the Chairman of the Committee. The memo should 1) summarize the key points of the national security strategy, 2) analyze the strategy and note its strengths (if any) and weaknesses (if any). The memo should conclude with a recommendation stating whether the Chairman should support or criticize the strategy and concise statement explaining the reasoning for the recommended position.

Parties and Leaders in the Postreform House

My PhD class again made me read a 200-page scientific book in a day and I know this sounds kind of sadomasochistic but I enjoyed it. Somehow this intense pressure of doing things, leaves one satisfied. David W. Rohde in this book - Parties and Leaders in the Postreform House - talks about ... well, read the title. Basically, Democrats - who were the majority party in the House for about 50 years before 1994 - changed the rules in the House during the early 70s, resulting in a more parliamentarian system not based on consensus building but majority dominance. Rohde argues that this was due to - or possible in the first place because - increases in homogeneity in the Democratic caucus - which in turn was brought about through racial legislation during the 60s, which eliminated Dixiecrats to some extent - and the willingness by leaders to take advantage of these new measures. The result of all this was an increase in polarization (party-unity voting, distinctiveness...).

All in all a highly interesting book, even if some of his chapters are a little on the long side and become too detailed. Yet it gives an interesting recount of the committee governance of the House which was implemented in 1910 to counter the Speaker's dominant position of power. Then with Southern Democrats blocking liberal legislation due to their dominance of committee chairmanships which they obtained through seniority due mainly to a less than democratic South, the Democrats decided to abolish the power of these committees and instead empower the Speaker (as an expression of the whole caucus this time though) and the subcommittees.

Again, highly interesting, if you care about institutional politics and have some time to spare, read it.

The Corrections

Jonathan Franzen's The Corrections is the story of a three-generational family that originated in the Midwest, but where the middle part of the family has migrated to Philadelphia and New York. The main characters are the grand-parents (Enid & Alfred) and their three adult children. Alfred is slowly losing his mind and this serves as the string along with the lives of these people are told. None of them is really happy with what they have achieved, none of them is all that successful in his everyday life, in that sense I guess this book is surprisingly dealing with completely normal people. They could live next to you right now.

This book highly confused me. There is no stringent action, no climax, no denouement. The story is carried solely by the inner monologues and problems of the characters. These protagonists furthermore are in no sense extraordinary, they are the kind of people - and stereotypes - you would not care for a minute longer than you would have to if you met them there. But in reality, when forced upon you, or introduced through a book such as this. Their everyday problems, their attempts at grappling with life provide a highly interesting story. It is all pointless in the end, there is no lesson to be learned, nothing to be gained, no moral or political standard upheld or destroyed. Yet, it is a great book, it makes the reader think about himself and his problems, worries and failed interhuman relations. Read it, it is good.

The Effects of Income Inequality

I have - finally - finished my last paper for the last semester in Berlin. It is an essay about the effects of income inequality on other economical and societal factors. Honestly, it is a disappointment. I did a lot of empirical work for this essay and out of twenty correlations only three are relevant. Just a load of crap the whole thing. I put so much work into it and got nothing out of it. Check it out only if you are extremely bored.

This means that with the courses that I am taking here right now, I only need one more class next semester to start writing my thesis and graduate. Hasn't really sunk in yet that.

Race and Congress

This might be one of the craziest papers I have ever written. It is for my PhD course on Legislative Politics. This course is a very humbling experience as it is full of well future professors who have been specializing in American politics for the last 3 years already and then I sit in there, with my European point of view and most importantly with a background that is a lot broader and more abstract (or useless) than theirs. Anyway, the point is that I wanted to turn in something good, it is not like most of my other courses where I can just get by on making up crap a little.

So, I got up Sunday morning at seven, had a nice breakfast on Franklin Street with some random, 50-year-old Republican woman (good conversation partner though) and then pretty much read eight books and wrote four pages about those. Tonight I only checked grammar and spelling and will now send it off to my professor (my schedule today was too busy to really change anything anymore). Do I actually think it is good? I don't know, I liked the subject, I feel like I have something to say even if I only scratch the surface of it. Let's see what the professor will have to say about it. I can only repeat that I enjoy the challenge of working a lot and under pressure though.

Check it out here.

Memo I

Well, I've actually written my first essay for the university here. I don't like it all that much personally, we'll see what he thinks. I feel like I don't know enough about the subject yet personally, but I don't have the time to really get into it. In any case, here it is. Below you can read what he asked us to do, I have to say that I really like the general principle of the task:


You are a counterterrorism analyst at the CIA and an expert in Islamic fundamentalist groups. It is September 21, 2001 and the Director of the CIA has just read President Bush's speech to Congress the previous evening.

He says to you: "Last night the President said: 'They hate what we see right here in this chamber -- a democratically elected government. Their leaders are self-appointed. They hate our freedoms -- our freedom of religion, our freedom of speech, our freedom to vote and assemble and disagree with each other ...They stand against us because we stand in their way.'

Write a short memo to me (of no more than 750 words) telling me whether the President was right about al-Qaeda's motivation or not."

Portrait d'un officier

Un de mes livres que j'ai trouvé dans la librarie de ma fac à Berlin. J'en ai acheté cinq pour sept Euro. Mais il faut admettre, que j'avais aucune idée sur quoi ils seraient ou si les auteurs sont connus. Apparement Pierre-Henri Simon, qui a éecrit Portrait d'un officier ne l'est pas. Quand même je trouvais son livre pas mal. L'histoire s'agit d'un officier de l'armée française, qui a démissioné et qui pendant une voyage au train, raconte à un ancien camarade de la deuxième guerre mondiale ses raison pour cette démission trouvable dans ces expériences en Vietnam et Algerie.

Le bouquin était assez intéressant, même s'il n'y avait presque pas d'histoire, mais que une conversation. Mais je ai trouvé les sujets de conversation stimulant. La guerre, la religion, les colonies, la rôle d'ouest dans le monde. Ma seule problème était avec l'age du bouquin, parce qu'il était écrit dans les années 58 à 59, certains des idées et discussion sont un peu trop conservateur et ridicule même d'un point de vue d'aujourd'hui. La colonalisation par exemple est rarement defendue encore, ou que par les gens d'extrême droit. Même pour la religion, que - en Europe - est presque disparue et a perdu - pour moi en tout cas - la credibilité, qu'elle avait dans ces annés. Quand même, un bouquin intéressant. Mon but originel était d'apprendre plus sur les guerres en Algerie et Vietnam, pour ça le livre était plutôt inutile, mais je suis sûr que je trouverai un autre plus détaillé et moins philosophique une autre fois.

A Tramp Abroad I

As an avid fan of Crevecoeur as well as Mark Twain I figured I had to write at least some commentary on life in the US while being here - and no, this does not mean that I am comparing myself in any way possible with those two, that would be blasphemy. Thus, today my first such entry. Others will (in a more or less structured manner) follow.

Most Europeans don't seem to realize how racially diverse the United States really is. Even while living in the South, in Chapel Hill and thus not even an urban center (even if a university town) it is surprises me over and over again, how many people either have an obvious immigration background (meaning they look as if they came from the Indian subcontinent or South East Asia) or claim one from less exotic places (such as the Netherlands). Now, as a German one will quite often hear the ridiculous statement that one's conversation partner is German too, because his ancestors came from there 100 years ago. This is usually is followed by a comment on how that person is only able to say scheiße (or Autobahn, Guten Tag...). This peculiar fashion of self-identification is not what I mean though.

Contrarily an incredible amount of people grew up mostly in the US, but due to their parents' relatively recent immigration, they still have more or less close ties to their 'homeland' and (importantly) usually speak the language. In the few days I have been here I have already met people with a Bengali, Indian, Chinese, Egyptian, Iranian background (and these are just some of the more exotic sounding ones). While UNC is dominated by white American-American students, the number of these more international ones should not be underestimated and are incomparable to a society as homogenic as Germany.

Yet, what I really wanted to address today was the question of race. I am after all living in the South and quite close to Greensboro and accordingly one of the hot-spots of the Civil Rights Movement. As already pointed out, most students are white (and come from North Carolina), but there is a sizable black contingent on campus. Admittedly, I was surprised at how few there actually are, but then my high school experience probably had prepared me for different percentages.

Race relations in the USA are notoriously difficult, due mainly to historical reasons. I am simply astounded by how segregated American society still is though, I have not lived here in a while and had seemingly forgotten how sharply distinguished these groups are. Arguably, the separation lies not so much with the actual skin color, but is more due to a cultural expression (clothing, language, music...). Thus, there are white black guys as well as black white guys. Yet, to surprisingly large extent people do not mix. A simple look around in the dining hall makes clear that each group stays mostly to itself (and this does include Asian students btw, who I will kind of ignore for the time being though).

Of course, this is not as simple as I am making it out to be right now. Firstly, there is a lot of interaction between all groups, it is not like people don't talk to or don't know each other at all. Secondly, the groups (as already stressed) are not completely homogenic, just to a large extent. Yet, this de facto separation clearly exists and I am still having a hard time trying to grapple with it.

An important aspect of this racial divide I find is the image of black masculinity. For a lot of black guys at this school it is quite blatant how much they define themselves through their masculinity. Most of them are more or less athletic, most of them are cool - in the sense that they perceive themselves as much as they are actually are, but that latter point really isn't what I am trying to discuss here - and they give off an unapproachable vibe to some extent.

I personally believe that this is still prevalent because of black men's' historical emasculation as the financial provider and protector of the family. Yet, I would be very interested to find out more about this and hope that I will get to do so in my year here.

I want to add that most of the guys I have gotten to know mainly through basketball have been really nice after some initial arrogance phase (white guy + long hair = can't play ball, deserves no respect) and that for others this whole argument is not true in the first place. But I believe it is a fact and would be interested in anyone's comments on this subject matter.

Strategy And Choice in Congressional Elections

American college professors require their students to read quite a lot, if then you are stupid (or vain) enough to actually take a PhD course on Legislative Politics in the USA, you will be positively overwhelmed with literature. That is why I spend my Labour Day Monday ploughing through Strategy and Choice in Congressional Elections by Gary C. Jacobson and Samuel Kernell. The book itself was interesting enough, I just sometimes wish I was reading everything a little slower than I am forced to right now, at the same time I don't want to pretend that I am really complaining, I like the pace, it suits my current mood, and also makes one feel as if one really accomplishes something.

Jacobson and Kernell in their book (even when they call it essay in the introduction, over 100 pages are too much for an essay for me) try to refute the notion that national politics, national sentiments greatly influence congressional elections. Thus, the 1974 landslide victory of Democrats throughout the country was not due to Nixon's - well-deserved - unpopularity or his lack of economic success, nor the 1980 Republican victories to Carter's failures as a president. They claim, that empirical evidence does not support the argument, that national issues (such as Presidential popularity or economic progress) are decisive for either party's electoral success. This simply, because most voters do not vote based on national issues, but rather decide on local or regional factors such as name-recognition of the candidate.

Their argument then is, that the correlation between national issues and these local results is due to elite decisions made on both sides of the political spectrum. If a party will conceive its chances in elections to be low due to its implication as the President's party or a less than stellar economic record, less high-profile candidates (meaning mostly office experience) will run with less financial background (because of party and private resources concentrating on candidates with higher chances of winning) in open elections (meaning no incumbent has to be beat). Instead the money will concentrate on incumbents whose chances of staying in office are higher already and thus actually heightened (if only marginally because of a sinking rate of return on campaign money). On the other side of the spectrum, the party that has favorable ratings in spring of an election year, will have more high-profile candidates with more financial resources simply because of the perceived higher chances of success.

Thus, two main elements determine the results of congressional elections. Firstly, quality candidates need to be willing to put themselves up for elections which they will not do in a climate which disfavors their party. Secondly, private sources will be less willing to finance campaigns of politicians whose chance of winning they consider to be nil. It is thus not the national issue that is the decisive factor in elections, it is not the general public sentiment, but more so the elite perception of that sentiment about six months before those elections.

This is a very, very dense summary of a relatively complicated book (and argument (it is actually not that complicated but summing it up in three paragraphs is), so if I fail at explaining the reasoning please ask me and I will try to clear up any misunderstanding. Oh yeah, do I recommend this book for pleasurable reading? Only if you have nothing better to do in your life or are a complete nutcase for legislative politics. I found it interesting as an idea, as a concept, but not interesting enough to reread it at the beach or with more time next weekend.

Finally, what bothers me about the argument is that the question arises why politicians believe that their chances sink with national party politics failing, when Jacobson and Kernell show they don't. Surely there must be some relation of national policy to local voting behaviour.

Das Urteil

Kafka. Ehrlich gesagt (oder vielleicht eher peinlicherweise) hatte ich bisher noch nicht so viel von Kafka gelesen. Vor 10 Jahren mal Die Verwandlung an meiner damaligen High School in den USA und deswegen perfiderweise in Englisch. Jetzt also nochmal. Das Urteil besteht aus verschiedenen Kurzgeschichten, unter anderem Die Verwandlung, In der Strafkolonie und Ein Hungerkünstler.

Ich finde es im Allgemeinen schwierig Kurzgeschichten zu besprechen, aber Kafkas Geschichten sind irgendwie noch ungreifbarer. Die Geschichten sind sprachlich eindrucksvoll, man ist ihrer Wucht ausgesetzt, kann das Leid der Protagonisten fühlen. Aber gleichzeitig, lassen einen die Geschichten irgendwie sprachlos zurück. Jede Analogie zur Realität, zu meinem Leben, zum Leben von Anderen, scheint unmöglich oder sehr schwierig. Vielleicht reicht mein Intellekt nicht aus um die Parallelen zu sehen, vielleicht müßte ich alles doppelt oder sehr viel langsamer lesen, vielleicht ist es genau das was Kafka nicht will (einen offenkundigen Bezug zur Realität).

Es gefiel mir die Geschichten zu lesen (auch wenn ich seit der Verwandlung eine leichte Kakerlakenphobie entwickelt habe (die sieht man aber halt auch hier im Süden desöfteren)), aber ich fand es schwierig einen Zugang zu ihnen zu finden, der über das Lesen als solches hinausging. Ich habe nicht groß über sie nachdenken müssen, nachdem ich sie gelesen hatte.

Eine schwache Rezension, ich weiß, würde Kafka trotzdem auf jeden Fall empfehlen, einfach weil man ihn als Deutscher (oder deutschsprechender Mensch) mal gelesen haben sollte.

De la guerre à la liberation

Oui, une de mes meilleures trouvailles. Non, je rigole. Je ai acheté De la guerre à la liberation - La France de 1939 à 1945 de Willard, Joannès, Hincker et Elleinstein seulement parce que j'ai voulu savoir plus sur la France de la guerre, sur Vichy, sur la résistance. Le problème avec ce bouquin ce qu'il est écrit d'une perspective dérisoire communiste. Je n'ai pas de problème avec le communiste (à cette temps en tout cas) et j'ai su déjà que dans tous les pays occupés par les allemands ils étaient très important dans la résistance, mais les auteurs font illusion (ou essaient de faire illusion) comme si ils étaient les historiens quand en fait ils ont les militants communistes incapable de quitter une pointe de vue partisan. Surtout les description de la politique anglo-saxon (à mon avis il y avait même pas quelque chose comme ca) et soviet-union sont complètement ridicule.

En plus, et plus grave pour moi, il n'y a pas d'information dans le livre. Ils racontent les petites histoires sur la résistance ou la politique en général, ils citent quelques journaux ou autres historiens parfois, mais il n'y a pas de rendu connexe, logique ou même détaillé sur un niveau rudimentaire. Alors, il ne faut pas que vous inquiètiez.

To Hate Like This Is to Be Happy Forever

I read Will Blythe's To Hate Like This Is to Be Happy Forever - A Thoroughly Obsessive, Intermittently Uplifting, and Occasionally Unbiased Account of the Duke-North Carolina Basketball Rivalry on my train ride up to North Carolina. Again one of those books that I just kind of raced through, I think it took me like eight hours (on the train, in a row that means). Anyway, I liked it as an introduction to UNC (where I am now sitting in the graduate library trying to write a paper for one of my classes back home), but I did not find the book all that hot other than that.

I care a lot about basketball, I play as often as I can (my feet look so bad as of right now, just because I have been playing so much the last few days that I think I might have to take a break), I read about the NBA quite regularly (or even religiously if you want), but I am not one to go into these obsessions. I can relate to that to some extent with regard to German football, but even there I simply don't care that much. I don't even really watch anymore because there are seemingly a million things that are more important than sitting in front of the TV at anykind of fixed time. My point is, this book was written by a die-hard UNC-fan and Duke hater, someone who actually comes from Chapel Hill, his father already went to UNC here and it is fun and amusing to read about the antics involving the Duke-UNC rivalry, but Blythe does it over 300 pages and I believe he could have done it as well on 100.

Quite simple, the topic exhausts itself after a while and Blythe still keeps on going on about it for another 200 pages (or 6 hours, whatever you prefer). Thus, do I recommend this book? If you are a basketball fanatic, yes, if you will go to UNC (or Duke) anytime soon, yes. Otherwise? No.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

I am not going to write long about this. Either you like Harry Potter or you don't. I doubt anyone does not already have a preformed opinion on this. I enjoyed this last installement of the series as much as I did the earlier six. Maybe the hype surrounding it has hurt the enjoyment of reading it a little bit, just because the way expectations were hyped up is basically impssible to live up to. Nonetheless a very nice read and deserving end for a good children/fantasy book series.

I am Charlotte Simmons

I've been wanting to post this for a while, but hadn't gotten it done because of my busy schedule here (beach, pool, going out, doing nothing, you know busy vacation schedule...). I read Tom Wolfe's I am Charlotte Simmons in pretty much one sitting while flying to Miami (I literally got out of my seat like twice and only stopped shortly during meals). As a seven-hour read like that implies it is well-written book and an enjoyable read. Yet, I was not all that excited about it in the end, especially the denouement really was a drag and disappointment.

Tom Wolfe, whom I really don't know much about it, is apparently one of the American reporter/writer legends - like Norman Mailer for example. He is old, about 80 if I remember this correctly from one of the reviews of the book I read and for this novel he tried to totally immerse himself in modern American college culture. I will soon be able to pass better judgment on this, but I felt as if his portrayal of this binge-drinking culture centered around sex was greatly exaggerated, excessive and limited in its scope. For some reason Wolfe seemed incapable of developing well-rounded characters, they all stayed on a stock character level. The frat boy with bad grades and only sex and alcohol on his mind. The nerd. The athlete, who actually is the only one that at least limited breaks out of his role type by developing an interest in Socrates.

The main character, Charlotte Simmons, is completely overdrawn as a country girl that comes to the big, bad college world and is corrupted by the appeal of the frat boy upon which her world crumbles around her. All this is fine and dandy but not only is the naivety of Charlotte of a level seemingly impossible after the advent of television, Internet or even radio. Furthermore, the destruction of her world is not understandable. She has sex with the frat boy who does not care about her after having gotten some booty and this turns her world upside down. Now, I understand that a country girl with a religious mom (even if her own beliefs are never discussed, another weak point) might have problem with having gotten drunk for the first time and then wasted her virginity on an undeserving guy with no further interest in her. Yet, her reaction in the end is too strong, she gets relatively bad grades for her first semester because of the depression she gets in after that event, but it is completely inconceivable to describe how she basically stops talking to everyone and keeps on having crying attacks months after her first time took place.

Additionally, it is not clear what she wants or is depressed about. Is the problem that she lost her virginity, lied to her parents and received bad grades? Or is the problem that no 'cool' sorority will now take her because she got laid by some frat boy? Wolfe just does not a good job of describing the problem, of explaining Charlotte.

Lastly, the ridiculous obsession with sex and bodies that dominates the novel was too much for me. Wolfe describes every guy's muscles specifically, uses medical terms for each one most of which I had never even heard (nor bothered to look up I have to admit). Finally, sex. Every one in the book is to some extent obsessed with it. It never becomes quite clear why. Maybe this is an American thing, but I honestly believe that Wolfe in his old age dwelled on that which he misses most of his youth, sex and an athletic body. Thus, I feel like the book is more about what an old man sees in young people than about actual youngsters.


PS: This also will be an age thing but it annoyed me a lot. Wolfe's third-person narrator has super traditional or conservative view of men and women:
"the power that woman can hold over that creature who is as monomaniacally hormonocentric as the beasts of the field, Man" is just one example for this.

Le Crime de Sylvestre Bonnard

Ah oui, la Floride. La plage, le soleil. Pas mal. Croyez-moi.

J'ai fini Le Crime de Sylvestre Bonnard - Membre de l'Institut d'Anatole France dans l'avion avant que je l'eusse lu pendant quelques jours à Berlin. Je dois admettre que je n'ai pas été trop impressionné. Je l'ai acheté par hasard dans une librairie à prix modéré et oui, il le ne faut pas lire. Le bouquin est séparé en deux partie, la première n'a rien avoir avec la deuxième, sauf que le protagoniste ne change pas. Dans la première Bonnard essaie de trouver un texte historique important. Dans la deuxième, il explique comment l'amour de sa vie était une fille qu'il a vu quelques fois quand il avait eu 18 ans (il a presque 80 ans quand il ranconte tous ca). Complètement ridicule que pendant 60 ans il n'a pas rencontré des autres personnes. Je pourrais décrire plusieurs activités ou pensées de lui qui ont aucune logique mais ca serait une perte de temps pour moi et vous. Il faut dire seulement, que l'histoire n'est pas cohérente, il n'y a pas de fil conducteur (la ficelle rouge je trouve plus joli, mais apparemment ca c'est impossible en francais) et parfois on a l'impression que le bouquin est seulement un dénombrement des activities. Il n'y a pas de dé développement de caractère, il n'y pas d'histoire captivante. Lis-le pas!

La seul chose que m'intéresse encore un peu ce que si ca c'est un roman ou pas. Le bouquin est écrit comme un journal et si c'était fictif ca serait nul. En contraire, si c'était la vie de quelqu'un dans la réalité, ca serait différent. Parce que enfin c'est ca la vie, une énumération des activités sans abouchement, sans sens, sans logique, sans cohèrence.

The Art of War

One of the classics of military education, I figured I had to read Sun Tzu's The Art of War as a self-respecting political scientiest. It is definitely one of the oldest books I have ever read (the old testament and Homer come to mind as being older). I was disappointed though in the sense that I had expected a real book, in something like an extended essay form. In reality, The Art of War is basically a collection of aphorisms. That means more patience is required by the reader than I usually show and a lot more thought has to be put in every sentence or even word.

After I had read all of them, I discovered that the second part of the edition I had was exactley the same text interspersed by various commentators (from early Chinese ones to early 20th century American ones (General Crook is quoted once)). That second version I found a lot better, it placed Sun Tzu into context somehow, before some of his aphorism seemed a little too obvious ('never attack downhill; use spies'), but the aphorisms made clear how military leaders in all of history had heeded Tzu's advice and fared well on it (even though I am sure that a patient researcher could show as many examples of people who suceeded even though they had counteracted to Tzu's advice). Shocking was how many proverbs still ring true today:

The consumate leader cultivates the moral law, and strictly adheres to method and discipline, thus it is in his power to control sucess.

The comment on this read:
There is a very strong temptation ... for government forces to act outside the law, the excuses being that the processes of law are too cumbersome, that the normal safeguards in the law for the individual are not designed for an insurgency and that a terrorist deserves to be treated as an outlaw anyway. Not only is this morally wrong, but, over a period, it will create more practical difficiculties for a government than it solves. A government which does not act in accordance with the law forfeits the right to be called a government and cannot expect its poeple to obey the law. Funcontionning in accordance with the law is a very small price to pay in return for the advantage of being the government.
Sir Robert Grainger Ker Thompson, Defeating Communist INsurgency: Experiences from Malaya and Vietnam (1966)