Blogging the Bookshelf

The Melancholy of the Antique World - “My Reading Life” – Bob Carr

Tim — Thu, 10 May 2012 05:31:08 +0000

Gustave Flaubert, in a letter to a friend, speculated on the ‘melancholy of the antique world’ being more profound than that of our modern world because there was no hope of life beyond the grave. Flaubert went on to say that for the ancients therefore, that:

“’Black hole’ was infinity itself; their dreams loom and vanish against a background of immutable ebony. No crying out, no convulsions – nothing but the fixity of a pensive gaze. With the gods gone, and Christ not yet come, there was a unique moment, from Cicero to Marcus Aurelius, when man stood alone. Nowhere else do I find that particular grandeur.”

Labor: A source of Drama - “My Reading Life” – Bob Carr

Tim — Thu, 10 May 2012 03:01:46 +0000

Rawson’s Book (Labor in Vain?: A Survey of the ALP, 1966) is sound political science, readable and relevant. Flciking it open, years after I reviewed it for the student paper, I’m struck now by this insight into the ALP:

“The ALP has always been a great source of drama, high and low comedy and even a little tragedy. Even when it is a political failure – or perhaps especially at those times – it is an unending source of human interest. It has provided a good broad canvas packed with a great variety of incident. It abounds in examples of nearly every human type except, of course, those who have no interest in gaining power and influence over their fellow men. It illustrates idealism and cynicism and the path from one to the other; it illustrates poverty and riches and poor men who want to become rich; ignorance and wisdom and ignorant men who seek to become wise. It shows most of the principal divisions of Australian humanity – men and women, working class and middle class, Catholic and Protestant, older and younger – in a magnified though also distorted form as they endeavour within or by means of the party to produce an environment in which they can be content.”

The Centre Must Have an Ideology – “My Reading Life” – Bob Carr

Tim — Thu, 10 May 2012 00:31:24 +0000

(Crosland) believed that the Centre in the Labour Party must have an ideology, that it cannot simply disagree with the Marxists. Those at the centre must hammer the fact that they are ideologists too.

Kill a Chicken to Scare the Monkey – “My Reading Life” – Bob Carr

Tim — Wed, 09 May 2012 05:31:01 +0000

Mao said to a party gathering in 1968 about a colleague, Marshal He Long, ‘Now it seems we can no longer protect him’. Chilling. It was the chairman’s perverse way of announcing a political execution. As Mao said on another occasion, you kill a chicken to scare the monkey.

When There is Much You Can’t Say, Have a Story Ready – “My Reading Life” – Bob Carr

Tim — Wed, 09 May 2012 03:02:52 +0000

Vidal has Lincoln say:

“When there is so much you cannot say, it’s always a good idea to have a story ready. I do it now from habit… In my predicament, it is a good thing to know all sorts of stories because the truth of the whole matter is now almost unsayable; and so cruel.”

LBJ and the Civil Rights Act – “My Reading Life” – Bob Carr

Tim — Wed, 09 May 2012 00:30:56 +0000

The Civil Rights Act of 1957, not in itself as revolutionary as its supporters hoped or its detractors feared, opened the door to later, more substantial legislative reparation to Blacks. Not until the next decade could Southern Black Children share a classroom with white Americans; not until the next decade could Southern Black adults eat a sandwich at the same lunch counter as whites. But in the context of the times the ‘meagre’ – (Robert) Caro’s word – 1957 Act was the indisputable first step.

Let’s dwell on the rhetoric of that moment – the limited advances that cleared the way for legal and political equality. In a 1957 speech a few hours before the vote, Johnson said, ‘I cannot follow the logic of those who say that because we cannot solve all the problems we should not try to solve any of them.’

A Second Class Intellect – “My Reading Life” – Bob Carr

Tim — Tue, 08 May 2012 05:32:05 +0000

“A second-class intellect but a first-class temperament.” That was the verdict of Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr on Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Political Speechmaking – “My Reading Life” – Bob Carr

Tim — Tue, 08 May 2012 03:01:31 +0000

Of (Warren Harding’s) oratory, Mencken said:

“It reminds me of a string of wet sponges; it reminds me of tattered washing on the lines; it reminds me of stale bean soup, of college yells, of dogs barking idiotically through endless nights. It is so bad that a sort of grandeur creeps into it.”

Orwell’s Passions – “My Reading Life” – Bob Carr

Tim — Tue, 08 May 2012 00:31:07 +0000

This, however, is my favourite piece of (Orwell’s) wisdom:

“So long as I remain alive and well I shall continue to feel strongly about prose style, to love the surface of the earth, and to take pleasure in solid objects and scraps of useless information.”

Orwell on Journalists and Communists – “My Reading Life” – Bob Carr

Tim — Mon, 07 May 2012 05:31:31 +0000

(Orwell) could say of a Russian agent encountered in Spain:

‘it was the first time that I had seen a person whose profession was telling lies – unless one counts journalists.’