Little Talk:

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How Much Morning Multimedia Does A Man Require?

My current answer:

25 minutes of audio + phone, 5 minutes of television.

In practice, I think I usually listen to more than 25 minutes of audio. But if I had the discipline to limit myself to 25 minutes, I would.

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Big Talk:

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https://www.972mag.com/mass-assassination-factory-israel-calculated-bombing-gaza/

I don't think Netanyahu is representative of most Israelis, in the same way that I don't think Hamas is representative of most Palestinians. It's tragic, I don't know how they get out of it. It takes a lot of energy to break out of a bad equilibrium, to a better one. And I suppose it's always possible to find an equilibrium that is even worse.

Since the first Gulf war, we have been living in the smart bomb era, where the world's most advanced military powers have some reason to believe they can impose their will with bombs of ever greater precision, and ever greater power. The hope of the era was that a benevolent hegemon would not drop those bombs except in the service of civilization, when there was no other choice. As the hegemons that surround us seem to become less benevolent, the fear of the era is that the bombs might be dropped for insufficient reasons, for bad reasons, or for no reason at all.

The right response, it seems to me, is to double down on benevolence, and to double down on the principle that a bomb should never be dropped, unless every other alternative has been tried, and tried for some time.

One of the important conversations of our time seems to me to have been between Gen. Wes Clark and the Bush military people after 9/11. "We read your book.", they reportedly said. "No one's going to tell us where we can bomb." After 20 years, it seems to me that democratic accountability, and democratic safeguards, in the choice of bombing targets is preferable to the ability to bomb whomever you want, whenever you want.

Under the Republicans, you get enthusiastic support for Netanyahu. Under the Democrats, you get unenthusiastic support for Netanyahu. Is there a difference? I think so. But maybe not enough.

The only thing I can think of is to go to Gaza and the West Bank, and to talk to the people there. Or at least to talk to people who have ties to Gaza and the West Bank.

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On immigration, it seems to me important not to think in terms of all or nothing. Things that seem to me to be true:

1. It does seem to me to be important to have an immigration and refugee system where people do not have an incentive to cross oceans and borders to apply for asylum in specific locations.

I think I would prefer a system where asylum applications are judged by embassies in the country of origin, or near the country of origin.

2. "Avoiding bad incentives" does not mean creating a system where asylum seekers are tortured, and families are separated, until they agree to withdraw their applications.

3. The people who do cross oceans and borders to apply for asylum should be admired for their grit and courage, even if not all of them can get the golden ticket. It's the job of leaders on both sides of the border to channel that grit and courage towards positive ends.

4. The right number of refugees for a country to take is somewhere in between zero and infinity.

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I suppose my fundamental picture of Robert Solow is of one of those solid, sensible, mid-20th century figures, looking, among other things, for some solid, sensible middle ground between socialism and laissez-faire.

Did he succeed? Not entirely. But he left us something solid and sensible to build on.

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Recently I borrowed, from the library, the Criterion Collection version of The Spy Who Came In From The Cold, as well as the Guinness versions of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy and Smiley's People. Among the DVD extras were interviews with le Carré, an interview with Richard Burton, and a 2000 BBC documentary on le Carré, The Secret Centre, directed by Randall Wright. I felt the need to write some of it down.

The Secret Centre:

"1. I began to think that I was the plaything of ridiculous forces, on the one hand this racket-y criminality, on the other this toffee-nosed High School stuff, and I fled it, really . . .

2. He was talking about "die Fliegende Blätter der Art & Kunst", these were the terms of reference about the Goethean period, and I couldn't understand how you translate "Flying Leaves of Art & Culture".

He must after a while have identified me as some kind of stowaway, because he asked me to stay behind at the end of the seminar, and so I remained behind, I looked half the age of anybody else there, and really, if the discussions had been in English I wouldn't have understood it then, but they were in very, very cultural German, and about people I had never heard of.

I was sitting there with my thumb in my mouth, practically, and he said, "What are you doing here?"

And I said, "Well . . . I'm a refugee from England."

And he said, "Well . . . Then you'd better stay."

3. I waited, at the end of the Cold War, for something to tell us the world can now be reshaped, that endless standoff, as it seemed to us, between the two great economic monoliths, of the Western world, and the Communist world, was over. The excuses for exploiting the Third World, for imposing dreadful little dictatorships on them provided they were anti-communist, all those excuses had gone. Now something decent could be put together. A real sort of global Perestroika could occur . . . nothing happened. We went into a kind of collective Western atrophy of isolation and self-indulgence. . ."

Kenneth Tynan interview of Richard Burton, 1967:

"Tynan: Is there anything in the background of Wales, the cultural background, that specifically influenced your acting?

Burton: We had no actors, no actors! You know, for about forty years. I suddenly realized why we had never had any actors. Because all the actors, of course, went into the pulpit: the greatest stage in the world. You dominated a village, in a chapel, you stood hovering, like a great bird of prey, over the people in the village, and said, "I will tell you what is wrong with you! Let me examine your soul!" . . . the greatest pulpit in the world.

And then, suddenly, that particular kind of belief, went out. They were no longer stars, the great preachers of my childhood. They went out, and the first man, in Wales, to stop being a preacher, and start becoming an actor, was Emlyn Williams. And it was remarkable for all of us. There was this strange man, who had suddenly decided not to be a preacher, but to become an actor. And what a preacher Emlyn Williams would have made! He became a preacher in another sense."

John le Carré interview, 2002:

"Q. George Smiley is in many ways the quintessential English character. What is it about him do you think that appeals to Americans?

A. I think it fascinates them that there is nothing up front. That whatever is going on in him is very modest. He can't do all the things the Americans like to do. He dresses badly. He doesn't like cars. He's very thinky, he's very romantic as a figure. Wonderful at work, no good at his private life. Always, somehow, uncomfortable in what he's wearing and what he's thinking. One of life's meek who do not inherit the earth, was how I described him. And . . . somebody who carries his horse uphill.

I think Americans warm to him because he was so inaccessible, so unpurchaseable, so incorruptible, that he just set some standard of human decency, which very many Americans relate to. He was probably as anti-corporate as you can get. He wouldn't know a brand name if it got up and bit him on the knee . . ."

I loved Rosa Lyster's 2021 essay on George and Ann. It seems to be offline. A bit of it here:

https://bookhaven.stanford.edu/2023/04/george-and-ann-smiley-one-of-the-strangest-marriages-in-fiction/ 

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Next post: February 29, 2024