Preserving a President

13 Presidents, each freezing their time in history with a library.

Question 1: Does 13 make it a tradition?

Question 2: What does America see as the purpose of this “tradition”?

Question 3: What should be the purpose of this “tradition”?

Now for the question the Times is asking:

Question 4: Should we keep this “Tradition”?

Personally speaking as I like to do, I think the end of this short post is what is most interesting. Will Obama’s technological influences inspire him to construct his library differently, or even perhaps digitally? Could Obama start the Second Life Presidential Library Tradition?

Thoughts?

-huysmans

From Evelyn Waugh’s The Loved One:

“Dennis sat in one of the arm-chairs, put his feet on the trolley and settled himself to read. Life in the Air force had converted him from an amateur to a mere addict. There were certain trite passages of poetry which from a diverse multitude of associations never failed to yield the sensations he craved; he never experimented; these were the branded drug, the sure specific, big magic. He opened the anthology as a woman opens her familiar pack of cigarettes.

“Outside the windows the cars swept past continuously, out of town, into town, lights ablaze, radios at full throttle.

“‘I wither slowly in thine arms,‘ he read. ‘Here at the quiet limit of the world,” and repeated to himself: ‘Here at the quiet limit of the world. Here at the quiet limit of the world” . . . as a monk will repeat a single pregnant text, over and over again in prayer.”

I posted earlier about evocative phrases that seem to be evocative only, in some way, through cheap trickery, and here they are is again. Dennis Barlow is not only a poetry addict, but a well-known hack poet, and like nearly every character in a Waugh novel, is entirely superficial and devoid of any genuine concern for the world. Whether we’re only meant to be laughing at Dennis for his superficial use of the poem (Tennyson’s “Tithonus”), or whether Waugh is making fun of Tennyson as well (which seems likely), this sort of relationship between reader and phrase is familiar. All Dennis is after, here, is the physiological effect that the particular phrase “at the quiet limit of the world” has on him. There is certainly something wrong with his superficial style of reading and failure to move beyond the old and familiar, and that is the main point of this scene, but it also brings up an issue about poetry in general that I can’t resolve. I can’t come up with a qualitative difference between a good poetic phrase, which still has a primary purpose of creating sensations, and a “branded drug” that may turn off the discerning reader, but that is nevertheless effective. What makes one way of evoking a sensation seem ‘cheap’ while another does not?

One major difference, I suppose, is originality, which bears on the reader as well as on the poet. Outside of poetry, one example of the “branded drug” I’ve found is the use of of the word ‘American’ to give a sense of import to a title. Thus, American Pastoral, American Psycho, American Gods, American Splendor, American Graffiti, American Beauty, American Beauty, American Gangster, American Gangster, American Water. The word, used in this context, seems to have turned, over the years, into an empty commonplace used to signify that This Is Big And Important. (American Pie doesn’t count because it is nearly impossible to make food sound serious.) The reason it might seem empty now, as it seems for me, is simply that it’s been done so many times before – setting the doubts that that casts on the creator aside, that gives it the sense of being prepackaged, particularly since it is used in the title, where it can easily resemble a brand.

But it’s not just originality or novelty, and it’s not just the fact that flashy phrases can distract from bad writing, dull ideas, aesthetic blunders, and so on. Some phrases just seem easier than they ought to be, and we, too clever to be so readily manipulated, push them away. I think there is more to our preference for poetry that avoids taking shortcuts on the way to our seratonin glands than simple admiration for the amount of effort put in by the poet. But where exactly is the corny different from what we perceive as genuinely powerful?

~therighthandofnixon

In recent days I have been engaged in discussions regarding the culture of founding myths. The idea behind such a myth has for the most part inspired great nationalism. The most dominant example we’ve discussed is that of the Aeneid by Virgil. Shortly after Rome becomes an Empire, one which has decimated Carthage and enslaved Greece, the Aeneid is produced as proof of the godly heritage from which the Empire has formed. When looking at it through this national lens we can start to make sense of the treatment of Dido, the founder of Carthage, who from the Roman vantage point must be defeated by Aeneas, after all Rome defeats Carthage thrice.

We except these myths as art today and yes many do look at the nationalistic aspects of such epics, but what interests me more is to find the examples today of such writing. One obvious example is that of Fawzi Mellah’s Elissa (Dido) which romanticizes the founding of Carthage for a post-colonial Tunisia.

In both cases Elissa and the Aeneid the intent is to create a national epic. But one approaches the story from an imperialistic point of view (that is Rome who has defeated/conquered/ and ultimately destroyed Carthage) and the other is from a truly national, post imperialism point of view (that is Tunisia redefining its founding myth). Said had it right when he described how nationalism follows imperialism and perhaps Elissa is the best example of that relationship.

But enough of the other side of the Atlantic.  Sure we have our revolution but where are our founding myth. Why try and stay close to the facts? why not expand the Revolution into some large blown up lie that can unite us around what America once meant? Well I don’t mean to get political but the divisions today are just absurd and I’m starting to believe that our salvation is not in debate or politics or journalism but in art, in literature and in the founding of a national epic that can bring America behind what we were founded for.

-Huysmans