Are you good?

One day God was looking down at earth and saw all of the misbehaving that was going on. So he called one of his angels to go to Earth for a time.

When he returned, the angel told God, 'Yes, it is bad on Earth; 95% are misbehaving and only 5% are not.'

God thought for a moment and said, 'Maybe I had better send down another angel to get a second opinion'

So God called another angel and sent him to Earth for a time too.
When the angel returned he went to God and said, 'Yes, it's true. The
Earth is in decline; 95% are misbehaving, but 5% are being good.'

God was not pleased. So he decided to e-mail the 5% who were good,
because he wanted to encourage them, give them a little something to
help them keep going.

Do you know what the e-mail said?

No?

Okay, just checking with you. I didn't get one either...

Cultural Time (2)

When working for the International Red Cross in Southern Africa, I also had to do some research in Northern Zambia. One day, I was supposed to meet a guy to discuss a project for which he needed funding. When I finally managed to find his office (which consisted of a small room with a table and a stool on three legs), he was not there. His charming secretary showed me an impressive amount of letters that he had written to lots of different organisations and institutions all over the world asking for money. Unfortunately, she said, he had to go to see his relatives in his home village. And when would he be back? Anytime from now, she said ...

Official Acceptance

Every fury on earth has been absorbed in time, as art, or as religion, or as authority in one form or another. The deadliest blow the enemy of the human soul can strike is to do fury honor. Swift, Blake, Beethoven, Christ, Joyce, Kafka, name me a one who has not been thus castrated. Official acceptance is the one unmistakable symptom that salvation is beaten again, and is the one surest sign of fatal misunderstanding, and is the kiss of Judas.
James Agee in Let Us Now Praise Famous Men

Winter in Maine

Diesem ganz wunderbaren Roman ist ein Zitat von Marc Aurel vorangestellt, das dieses Werk treffend illustriert: "Wer sehr lange lebt, verliert doch nur dasselbe wie jemand, der jung stirbt. Denn nur das Jetzt ist es, dessen man beraubt werden kann, weil man nur dieses besitzt."

Gerard Donovan ist ein Meister im Vermitteln dieses Jetzt. Weil er genau hinguckt, weil er genau beschreibt und weil er zu Interpretationen Abstand hält. Und das klingt dann zum Beispiel so: "Als ich Streichhölzer, Milch, Tee, Brot und Butter gekauft und alles im Pick-up verstaut hatte, überquerte ich die Strasse bis zum Café. Mir fiel auf, dass der Wind auffrischte und die vereinzelten Regentropfen sich härter anfühlten, als wären sie mit Schnee beschwert. Deshalb freute ich mich über den Schwall warmer Luft, der mir beim Öffnen der Cafétür entgegenströmte, über das helle Licht und die paar Leute, die über Suppe und Getränke gekauert dasassen. Es bediente eine andere Kellnerin, doch sie brachte mir dieselbe Kaffeesorte an denselben Tisch und sagte auch dasselbe: Lassen sie ihn sich schmecken."

Der Protagonist, Julius Winsome, lebt mit seinem Hund Hobbes und über dreitausend Büchern in einer Jagdhütte in den Wäldern Maines. Dann tritt unverhofft Claire in sein beschauliches Dasein und verschwindet nach einiger Zeit genauso unverhofft wieder. Kurz darauf wird Hobbes aus nächster Nähe mit einer Schrotflinte erschossen. Und Winsome beginnt einen Rachefeldzug.

Das einsame Leben in den Wäldern und die Lektüre Shakespeares (wer dächte da nicht an Thoreaus Walden?) hat den Protagonisten Winsome zu einem bedächtigen, überlegten und sehr gegenwärtigen Menschen werden lassen. Daran ändert auch der Tod seines Hundes nichts und doch ändert sich mit diesem Tod alles: Winsomes Leben gerät aus den Fugen, er rächt sich nun an der Welt, an all dem, was er falsch findet an dieser Welt.

Was diesen Roman aussergewöhnlich macht, ist nicht in erster Linie der Rachefeldzug von Winsome - obwohl, dieser ist spannend genug und das Buch ist auch ein Krimi - , sondern die Stimmung, die Gerard Donovan zu vermitteln weiss. Man glaubt beim Lesen selber vor Ort in diesen Wäldern zu sein, das Holz der Jagdhütte zu riechen, die Bücher aus den Regalen zu ziehen, das Knirschen des Schnee unter den Schuhen zu hören, zu spüren, wie die Zeit verstreicht. Donovan ist ein Meister im Vermitteln der Gegenwart.

Es braucht wenig, so scheint es (ist der Tod eines Hundes wenig?), dass ein Mensch ausrastet. Doch rastet Winsome wirklich aus? Nie ist er auf seinem Rachefeldzug unkontrolliert, ganz methodisch und überlegt (genauso wie vor dem Tode des Hundes) geht er vor. Was sich geändert hat, ist, dass sein (stark von seinem Vater geprägtes) Leben plötzlich eine ganz andere Richtung genommen hat.

Gerard Donovan führt mit diesem Buch eindrücklich vor, dass es illusorisch ist, zu glauben, wir hätten unser Leben unter Kontrolle. Dass er dies am Beispiel eines äusserst kontrolliert agierenden Menschen aufzuzeigen vermag, macht dieses raffinierte Werk zu einem Lesegenuss erster Güte.

Gerard Donovan
Winter in Maine
Luchterhand Literaturverlag, München 2009

The Art Instinct

"Bold ... original ... exciting", Steven Pinker is quoted on the cover. No wonder that Pinker offers such praise for Denis Dutton draws quite a bit on Pinker (and on Darwin, Aristotle, Kant and quite some others). Moreover, Dutton basically addresses the same fundamental question that Pinker did in his "The Language Instinct", namely, whether we are primarily culturally conditioned or whether we are governed by innate universals.

"Complex language is universal", Pinker argues in "The Language Instinct", "because children actually reinvent it, generation after generation - not because they are taught, not because they are generally smart, not because it is useful to them, but because they just can't help it." It is their nature, it is not nurture. Dutton comes to the same conclusion in regards to art: "Preoccupied as we are with the flashy media and buzzing gizmos of daily experience, we forget how close we remain to the prehistoric women and men who first found beauty in the world. Their blood runs in our veins. Our art instinct is theirs."

I warm to this idea and so I approached Dutton's work with sympathy. The sensations I felt when reading it were similar to the ones I experienced with "The Language Instinct": a mix of fascination and excitement and quite some moments when I felt at a complete loss for this barrage of learned information seemed, well, a bit much, and at times offered rather peculiar conclusions: "A climable tree was a device to escape predators in the Pleistocene, and this life-and-death fact is revealed today in our aesthetic sense for trees (and in children's spontaneous love for climbing them)."

This is how Dutton describes his approach:

"Hauling in animal instincts to compare with human activities can be a suitable way to show the grand continuity of life as Darwin understood it" one reads and that "great works of music, drama, painting, or fiction set us above the very instincts that make them possible. Paradoxically, it is evolution - most significantly, the evolution of imagination and intellect - that enable us to transcend even our animal selves, and it is a purpose of this book to show how natural and sexual selection placed Homo sapiens in this odd situation." That however leads to sometimes rather odd reasonings. Let me quote from the chapter on art and natural selection (yes, I'm quoting out of context yet what I mainly want to point out here is the rather far-fetched link to art): "On the basis of this argument, I therefore side with opponents of the Symons/Lloyd/Gould view of the female orgasm as a nonadaptive by-product of an adaptive male process. A direct link between female orgasm and pregnancy, Lloyd demonstrates, cannot be established (that's hardly a surprise, I'd say), and she uses this fact, in agreement with Gould, to conclude that the female orgasm is not an adaptation. But this analysis implies, in my opinion, a paltry, limited view of human sexual experience. In this regard, it is directly parallel to arguments about whether artistic pleasures might be adaptive. Lloyd makes much of the fact that clitoral pleasure is so often self-induced and experienced in the absence of a partner. But the same might be said of most male orgasms over a lifetime - and this presumably does not call into question the status of the male organ as an adaptation." Well, yes, presumably not.

However, such rather peculiar ponderings are not the rule for this book, as mentioned above, is, first of all, an inspiring, well-written, erudite, smart, insightful, and opinionated read. " ... the whole idea that art worlds are monadically sealed off from another is daft. Do we need to be reminded that Chopin is loved in Korea, that Spaniards collect Japanese prints, or that Cervantes is read in Chicago and Shakespeare enjoyed in China? Not to mention pop music and Hollywood movies, which have swept the world."

This is, essentially, a book full of clever arguments, let me give you two examples that I've found particularly fascinating. Here's the first one:

A study on picture preferences around the world showed a remarkable uniformity about what counts as a beautiful landscape: a landscape with trees and open areas, water, human figures and animals. Surely, this must be due to exposure to the same kind of images, right? Here's how Dutton argues: "... the window of my office at the New Zealand university where I teach is high, and its ledge offers a convenient perch and nesting place for pigeons. Whatever their charms, these creatures, alas, are extremely messy; they finally made the ledge so unhygienic that the window had to be shut at all times. How to keep them away? My solution is a rubber snake on the ledge. I have seen the birds land on the ledge, see the snake, and immediately depart.They don't come back. The odd fact is that, although European pigeons have been in New Zealand for a couple of hundered pigeon generations, there are no snakes in New Zealand and never have been. The phobic reactions of the birds is therefore learned neither from exposure to snakes nor from images of snakes. In snake-free New Zealand it is a perfect instance of a natural atavism: an innate fear-response that is passed, unnecessarily in these parts, from generation to generation of pigeons."

Here's the second one: When, in 2004, five hundred "of the most powerful people in the art world" (Dutton surely lives in a world of superlatives) - dealers, critics, artists, and curators - were asked what they thought the most influential work of art of the twentieth century was, they voted for Marcel Duchamp's 'Fountain', the men's urinal put forward for exhibition in 1917. But is 'Fountain' a work of art?, asks Dutton and analyses it against a list of cluster criteria: direct pleasure, skill and virtuosity, style, novelty and creativity, criticism, representation, special focus, expressive individuality, emotional saturation, intellectual challenge, art traditions and institutions, and imaginative experience. "On a numerical calculation of items on the cluster criteria list, not to mention the overwhelming agreement of generations of art theorists, and art historians, the answer is a resounding 'Yes, 'Fountain' is a work of art.' Duchamp's readymades nevertheless incite fierce debate because they so deeply and effectively challenge our evolutionary response-system for art: where's the emotion, the individuality, the skill, the beauty? Duchamp set himself not only against culture but against the adaptive structure of art. Yet there it is on a plinth, an object of no special interest made into an object of the most special attention. Can this be art? Of course not, and yet it must be, as the experts continue to insist. As philosophical provocations about art, the readymades are intellectual masterpieces. For its part, 'Fountain' may not be pretty, but as an art-theoretical gesture, it is a work of incandescent genius." Good points, I'd say. On the other hand: there is no such thing as hard evidence in the humanities, and so there is no need to take 'expert'-opinions for more than what they are - opinions, that is.

PS: Dutton also meditated on kitsch and states that "literature and philosophy too can offer kitsch by way of undemanding analysis of life's problems through trite insights into the secret of the universe. In this respect, Hermann Hesse's pretentious mysticism and Kahlil Gibran's little messages dressed up in pseudo-biblical cadences count as kitsch." Well, this reads as if Mr. Dutton's determination to be "bold" and "original" (Pinker) has, in this instance, got the upper hand - for to label Hesse's insights "pretentious mysticism" or Kahlil Gibran's poems "little messages dressed up in pseudo-biblical cadences" is a bit cheap.

Denis Dutton
The Art Instinct
Oxford University Press 2009

Honest Journalism?

It seems to me curious, not to say obscene and thoroughly terrifying, that it could occur to an association of human beings drawn together through need and chance and for profit into a company, an organ of journalism, to pry intimately into the lives of an undefended and appallingly damaged group of human beings, an ignorant and helpless rural family, for the purpose of parading the nakedness, disadvantage and humiliation of these lives before another group of human beings, in the name of science, of “honest journalism” (whatever that paradox may mean), of humanity, of social fearlessness, for money, and for a reputation for crusading and for unbias which, when skillfully enough qualified, is exchangeable at any bank for money (and in politics, for votes, job patronage, abelincolnism), and that these people could be capable of meditating this prospect without the slightest doubt of their qualification to do an “honest” piece of work, and with a conscience better than clear, and in the virtual certitude of almost unanimous approval.

James Agee in Let Us Now Praise Famous Men.

Hotmail? No good!

In December 2009, my Hotmail account was hijacked by a Chinese spammer who then sent a mail to my contact list saying that I was recommending some laptop. I learned about this because one of these messages was also sent to my Google mail. I immediately informed "abuse" at Microsoft which - to my utter amazement - led to the closing of my Hotmail account. What was that all about?, I wondered and sent an inquiring mail to Microsoft - only to get an email back, that was evidently written by a machine, saying that there was spam activity originating from my account and that it was therefore closed! Which meant my contact list was gone! Well, arguing with a machine is hopeless - and my interest in Microsoft products is now zero.

A couple of weeks later, my Google mail was hijacked by the same Chinese spammer with the same message about that laptop and was sent to my Google mail contact list. Expecting the Microsoft approach, I immediately rushed to send my most important email addresses to a safe account (I hoped and still hope) with a not so famous company. But Google didn't do the Microsoft, they simply let me know that there was spam activity originating from my account and told me to change my password. Praised be Google!