Literomancy and Vanity Fair: Vile Hypocrisy or Sober Toleration?
Because one of the great pleasures of reading "literature" is to relate it to current events and/or your own life (basically a euphemism for: "-- quote passages from it out of context in an attempt to make yourself look far wiser than you really are..."), herewith I offer yet another passage ganked from Thackeray's Vanity Fair:
"If every person is to be banished from society who runs into debt and cannot pay -- if we are to be peering into everybody's private life, speculating upon their income, and cutting them if we don't approve of their expenditure -- why, what a howling wilderness and intolerable dwelling Vanity Fair would be!"
I have a hard time imagining anyone writing this in the current confluence of "patriotic consumerism" in the wake of 9/11 and the celebrity tabloid culture that jams waaaaay too much information about various celebrities and wannabes down our collective throats. I sometimes wonder if we'll get to the point where people are shunned for not being in debt, but I can't believe that the taint of opprobrium will ever leave bankruptcy (excuse me, I meant to say: "I can't believe that the taint of opprobrium will ever leave lower class people who file for bankruptcy;" the wealthy and/or arisotocratic classes will still be permitted -- nay; expected -- to not pay their debts so long as they don't "betray their class"...); it's rather like Hedrick Smith described the attitudes towards the de rigueur copious consumption of vodka in the Soviet Union in his book The Russians: in a country whose traditions mandated that, once a bottle of vodka was opened, it must be consumed that very same day (or night), no matter how big the bottle or how small the number of people present to drink it, alcoholism or an inability to "hold one's liquor" was still the subject of much scorn and derision. One might, methinks, profitably write how the "credit card culture" has not only legalized loan sharking, thus cutting in on a traditional activity of criminal gangs, but has also reintroduced, through the back door as it were, indentured servitude: yet another reason to shut up, punch the clock, and be a good little employee, so the executives can have companies profitable enough to be worth raiding, taking over, embezzling, and, uh, "insider trader-ing;" but I won't essay the topic, at least not now.
Back to Vanity Fair, taking up the same passage just a bit further down:
"-- all the delights of life, I say, -- would go to the deuce, if people did but act upon their silly principles, and avoid those whom they dislike and abuse. Whereas, by a little charity and mutual forbearance, things are made to go on pleasantly enough: we may abuse a man as much as we like, and call him the greatest rascal unhung -- but do we wish to hang him therefore? No. We shake hands when we meet. If his cook is good we forgive him, and go and dine with him; and we expect he will do the same by us. Thus trade flourishes -- civilization advances: peace is kept; new dresses are wanted for new assemblies every week; and the last year's vintage of Lafite will remunerate the honest proprietor who reared it."
-- Oxford World's Classics Edition, pps. 642-43 (Chapter LI: "In Which a Charade is Acted Which May or May Not Puzzle the Reader")
Pretty interesting how the middle and upper classes of the 1820s - 1840s (at this point in Vanity Fair the time is sometime in the 1820s; but VF was published serially between 1847-48) were already well on the road to the "credit card culture" which most of us now "enjoy." But again, I don't wish to expound at this juncture on the early stages of consumerism, or even how reading VF has done more to make me want to read, eventually, Tom Wolfe's Bonfire of the Vanities (which I suspect refers to/was inspired by Thackeray as much as it does/was Savonarola); what recommended this passage to me when I first read it was the line "-- we may abuse a man as much as we like, and call him the greatest rascal unhung -- but do we wish to hang him therefore? No." Viewed one way, this is a neat summation of the (necessary!) hypocrisy in which most of us indulge; viewed another way, it is a perfect distillation of the principle of toleration which is so essential for any society to function. I forget who said that manners are the art of getting along with people whom you don't like; but it seems to me that we all can use a gentle reminder of this, as yet another unusually acrimonious presidential election in these United States enters its final lap.
And maybe it's just me, but it seems to me that Christopher Hitchens, a staunch supporter of the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq, is having an increasingly difficult time refraining from savaging the same liberals he once (does??) made common cause with because they don't agree that the U.S. should have invaded Iraq, or should stay long enough to see that it gets "fixed" tolerably well before leaving; check out his latest column for Slate, "Flirting With Disaster: The Vile Spectacle of Democrats Rooting for Bad News in Iraq and Afghanistan," in the Monday, 27 September issue. The piece jumps off from a remark made by John Kerry's multi-millionaire spouse, Teresa Heinz Kerry ("'I wouldn't be surprised if he appeared in the next month.' Teresa Heinz Kerry to the Phoenix Business Journal, referring to a possible capture of Osama bin Laden before Election Day."), and offers this summation:
"The unfortunately necessary corollary of this-that bad news for the American cause in wartime would be good for Kerry-is that good news would be bad for him. Thus, in Mrs. Kerry's brainless and witless offhand yet pregnant remark, we hear the sick thud of the other shoe dropping. How can the Democrats possibly have gotten themselves into a position where they even suspect that a victory for the Zarqawi or Bin Laden forces would in some way be welcome to them? Or that the capture or killing of Bin Laden would not be something to celebrate with a whole heart?
"I think that this detail is very important because the Kerry camp often strives to give the impression that its difference with the president is one of degree but not of kind. Of course we all welcome the end of Taliban rule and even the departure of Saddam Hussein, but we can't remain silent about the way policy has been messed up and compromised and even lied about. I know what it's like to feel that way because it is the way I actually do feel. But I also know the difference when I see it, and I have known some of the liberal world quite well and for a long time, and there are quite obviously people close to the leadership of today's Democratic Party who do not at all hope that the battle goes well in Afghanistan and Iraq."
One gets a sense of the repressed fury that lurks behind Hitchens' "I have known some of the liberal world quite well and for a long time;" and while Hitchens's métier is acidulous, nigh-satirical political and social commentary -- and hence, the rules of toleration are necessarily relaxed for him as he plies his trade -- one wonders whether the Iraq war and occupation have precipitated a seismic shift in his thinking, so that, ultimately, he is a Bush and/or neo-conservative supporter, and devil take those soft-headed lefties whinging about the Patriot Act.
Still, it is awfully hard to remain tolerant when the other side persists in being so intolerant; the supposed Christian dictum of "turning the other cheek" works very nicely for the "Caesars" of the world, thenkyouberrymuch; and I seem to recall reading that, under the Tokugawa Shogunate of feudal Japan, while the samurai were expected to commit seppuku for any reason, or for no reason, at their lord's command, once they made the fatal incisions, they were theoretically allowed to say whatever they wanted to their lord and whatever audience was present to witness their self-destruction, before their second decapitated them so that they wouldn't "lose face" by, oh, screaming and crying in agony because they'd just sliced through their GI-tract. What a great way to handle dissent, and claim that you support "freedom of speech;" Amaterasu help me, but I can't help but think that a number of "Bushies" would loooove to see such a policy implemented, forthwith.
"If every person is to be banished from society who runs into debt and cannot pay -- if we are to be peering into everybody's private life, speculating upon their income, and cutting them if we don't approve of their expenditure -- why, what a howling wilderness and intolerable dwelling Vanity Fair would be!"
I have a hard time imagining anyone writing this in the current confluence of "patriotic consumerism" in the wake of 9/11 and the celebrity tabloid culture that jams waaaaay too much information about various celebrities and wannabes down our collective throats. I sometimes wonder if we'll get to the point where people are shunned for not being in debt, but I can't believe that the taint of opprobrium will ever leave bankruptcy (excuse me, I meant to say: "I can't believe that the taint of opprobrium will ever leave lower class people who file for bankruptcy;" the wealthy and/or arisotocratic classes will still be permitted -- nay; expected -- to not pay their debts so long as they don't "betray their class"...); it's rather like Hedrick Smith described the attitudes towards the de rigueur copious consumption of vodka in the Soviet Union in his book The Russians: in a country whose traditions mandated that, once a bottle of vodka was opened, it must be consumed that very same day (or night), no matter how big the bottle or how small the number of people present to drink it, alcoholism or an inability to "hold one's liquor" was still the subject of much scorn and derision. One might, methinks, profitably write how the "credit card culture" has not only legalized loan sharking, thus cutting in on a traditional activity of criminal gangs, but has also reintroduced, through the back door as it were, indentured servitude: yet another reason to shut up, punch the clock, and be a good little employee, so the executives can have companies profitable enough to be worth raiding, taking over, embezzling, and, uh, "insider trader-ing;" but I won't essay the topic, at least not now.
Back to Vanity Fair, taking up the same passage just a bit further down:
"-- all the delights of life, I say, -- would go to the deuce, if people did but act upon their silly principles, and avoid those whom they dislike and abuse. Whereas, by a little charity and mutual forbearance, things are made to go on pleasantly enough: we may abuse a man as much as we like, and call him the greatest rascal unhung -- but do we wish to hang him therefore? No. We shake hands when we meet. If his cook is good we forgive him, and go and dine with him; and we expect he will do the same by us. Thus trade flourishes -- civilization advances: peace is kept; new dresses are wanted for new assemblies every week; and the last year's vintage of Lafite will remunerate the honest proprietor who reared it."
-- Oxford World's Classics Edition, pps. 642-43 (Chapter LI: "In Which a Charade is Acted Which May or May Not Puzzle the Reader")
Pretty interesting how the middle and upper classes of the 1820s - 1840s (at this point in Vanity Fair the time is sometime in the 1820s; but VF was published serially between 1847-48) were already well on the road to the "credit card culture" which most of us now "enjoy." But again, I don't wish to expound at this juncture on the early stages of consumerism, or even how reading VF has done more to make me want to read, eventually, Tom Wolfe's Bonfire of the Vanities (which I suspect refers to/was inspired by Thackeray as much as it does/was Savonarola); what recommended this passage to me when I first read it was the line "-- we may abuse a man as much as we like, and call him the greatest rascal unhung -- but do we wish to hang him therefore? No." Viewed one way, this is a neat summation of the (necessary!) hypocrisy in which most of us indulge; viewed another way, it is a perfect distillation of the principle of toleration which is so essential for any society to function. I forget who said that manners are the art of getting along with people whom you don't like; but it seems to me that we all can use a gentle reminder of this, as yet another unusually acrimonious presidential election in these United States enters its final lap.
And maybe it's just me, but it seems to me that Christopher Hitchens, a staunch supporter of the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq, is having an increasingly difficult time refraining from savaging the same liberals he once (does??) made common cause with because they don't agree that the U.S. should have invaded Iraq, or should stay long enough to see that it gets "fixed" tolerably well before leaving; check out his latest column for Slate, "Flirting With Disaster: The Vile Spectacle of Democrats Rooting for Bad News in Iraq and Afghanistan," in the Monday, 27 September issue. The piece jumps off from a remark made by John Kerry's multi-millionaire spouse, Teresa Heinz Kerry ("'I wouldn't be surprised if he appeared in the next month.' Teresa Heinz Kerry to the Phoenix Business Journal, referring to a possible capture of Osama bin Laden before Election Day."), and offers this summation:
"The unfortunately necessary corollary of this-that bad news for the American cause in wartime would be good for Kerry-is that good news would be bad for him. Thus, in Mrs. Kerry's brainless and witless offhand yet pregnant remark, we hear the sick thud of the other shoe dropping. How can the Democrats possibly have gotten themselves into a position where they even suspect that a victory for the Zarqawi or Bin Laden forces would in some way be welcome to them? Or that the capture or killing of Bin Laden would not be something to celebrate with a whole heart?
"I think that this detail is very important because the Kerry camp often strives to give the impression that its difference with the president is one of degree but not of kind. Of course we all welcome the end of Taliban rule and even the departure of Saddam Hussein, but we can't remain silent about the way policy has been messed up and compromised and even lied about. I know what it's like to feel that way because it is the way I actually do feel. But I also know the difference when I see it, and I have known some of the liberal world quite well and for a long time, and there are quite obviously people close to the leadership of today's Democratic Party who do not at all hope that the battle goes well in Afghanistan and Iraq."
One gets a sense of the repressed fury that lurks behind Hitchens' "I have known some of the liberal world quite well and for a long time;" and while Hitchens's métier is acidulous, nigh-satirical political and social commentary -- and hence, the rules of toleration are necessarily relaxed for him as he plies his trade -- one wonders whether the Iraq war and occupation have precipitated a seismic shift in his thinking, so that, ultimately, he is a Bush and/or neo-conservative supporter, and devil take those soft-headed lefties whinging about the Patriot Act.
Still, it is awfully hard to remain tolerant when the other side persists in being so intolerant; the supposed Christian dictum of "turning the other cheek" works very nicely for the "Caesars" of the world, thenkyouberrymuch; and I seem to recall reading that, under the Tokugawa Shogunate of feudal Japan, while the samurai were expected to commit seppuku for any reason, or for no reason, at their lord's command, once they made the fatal incisions, they were theoretically allowed to say whatever they wanted to their lord and whatever audience was present to witness their self-destruction, before their second decapitated them so that they wouldn't "lose face" by, oh, screaming and crying in agony because they'd just sliced through their GI-tract. What a great way to handle dissent, and claim that you support "freedom of speech;" Amaterasu help me, but I can't help but think that a number of "Bushies" would loooove to see such a policy implemented, forthwith.