Passages

Here is the first of a series of quotations such as people used to record in commonplace books. This is from a wonderful novel by the writer's writer Richard Ford,The lay of the Land. With thanks to the blog by Terry Teachout "About Last Night" from whose Almanac section, I am borrowing this device.

"Home may only be where you've memorized the grid patternwhere you can pay with checks,where someone you've already met takes your blood pressure,palpates your liver,slips a digit here and there,measures angstroms gone off your molars a bit-in other words, where your primary caregivers await,their pale gloves already pulled on and snugged."

Protestantism and opera

Good to run into a delegation of Arts and Science Students at opera yesterday. Don Carlos is four and a half hours, an opera of Wagnerian length. Ajzenstat was with me, has seen the opera many times, told me this was the best production he's seen
In my opinion the central character, the one who gives the opera focus and stature was Phillip ll, sung and acted by a wonderful Norwegian.
The opera has 2 connections with West Civ. First, Phillip ll was meant to be the hero of the CounterReformation.I was intrigued that Verdi never mentioned that the Flanders Rebellion was Protestant. One of the early victories of the Calvinists.
There is also a view of Macchiavelli. Phillip is portrayed as a ruthless monarch being crushed by the (what he sees) as the necessities of maintaining power. The Scene where he bemoans his isolation, loveless marriage, son a traitor etc.maes you feel sorry for him..glad to be a powerless retiree.
There is also a brutal portrayal of Catholicism . Bloody crosses ,a well staged auto de fe, a villainous Grand Inquisitor...
Imagine singing for four and a half hours. I'm dead after two hours of yakking

Individualism

On George Clooneys' latest film Michael Clayton(unless he's made another one since last week)
Clooney has discovered a niche in the genre of protest films: the insider who has been granted enlightenment and becomes a scourge. In Michael Clayton he is a fixer in a law firm,looking a bit dishevelled,holding life together with scotch tape,whose partner begins to fall apart, undresses at a hearing then disappears to collect incrimnating evidence agains the company his law firm is representing. Clooney finally discovers his partner is on to scumbaggery and ....I won't reveal the plot but remember Clooney played a similar role in Syriana.
What has this to do with 2A6. Connect to Edward Said's view of the intellectual as outsider. Said is pluggling into the tradition that only someone who is outside the system can expose and bring it down. There is a long tradition of this ,notably Isaac Deutscher's view of Spinoza, Freud, and Marx, who as Jewish outsiders could see through the hypocrisy of the system . But are we forgetting the sunversive insider.e'g Clooney. Gorbachev, who ended communism ,was a vintage insider,women who had made it helped bring down Enron. (This kind of insider is to be distinguished from C.E.O's who ruin their companies and receive large bonuses.)Can you think of other examples of the redeemed insider.