The fall issue of Narrative Magazine includes a pair of excerpts from American Idol, the novel I’ve been writing in fits and starts during this long slow slog through graduate school. The novel tells the story of an American anthropologist who lives South America and studies American Christian missionaries, though the latter don’t appear in either excerpt here. I was especially pleased and grateful to see that on their front page the good folks at Narrative had nudged my mug up next to my friend and mentor Annie Dillard, whose stunning Pilgrim at Tinker Creek is excerpted in the issue as well. Anyway, check it out…
This week Harvard University Press is publishing The Heart of William James, a selection of essays edited by my friend Bob Richardson. Bob is the author of a trilogy of tremendous biographies—on Thoreau, Emerson, and James—and to celebrate the publication of this new book he’s got a guest post up at The Second Pass today on James’s “war against war.” Here’s a bit from the start:
By 1910, James was against war itself. His notion of a “war against war,” as he puts it, had been building for at least a decade. His position, unusual still today among peace advocates, recognizes that war is a deeply attractive thing for many of us, and that we do not in fact want peace—at least not entirely. He wrote before D.H. Lawrence observed that “the essential American is hard, isolate, stoic, and a killer.” And long before Simone Weil’s “The Iliad, or, the Poem of Force,” James noted that “the Iliad is one long recital of how Diomedes, and Ajax, Sarpedon and Hector killed.” It is the greatest strength of James’ argument that he seriously recognizes the grip war has on us and will continue to have. Rather than say we all love peace, let’s not fight, James instead tries to harness the war-spirit and turn it against itself. We will have to kill war.
In Jeffrey Goldberg’s new “must-read” story about Israel and Iran, which I spent last night ranting about on Twitter, he concedes that “Israeli policy makers do not necessarily believe that Iran, should it acquire a nuclear device, would immediately launch it by missile at Tel Aviv.” But he suggests that Israel might go ahead and bomb Iran anyway, and for three reasons. Prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu offers two of them:
“First, Iran’s militant proxies would be able to fire rockets and engage in other terror activities while enjoying a nuclear umbrella. This raises the stakes of any confrontation that they’d force on Israel. Instead of being a local event, however painful, it becomes a global one. Second, this development would embolden Islamic militants far and wide, on many continents, who would believe that this is a providential sign, that this fanaticism is on the ultimate road to triumph.”
The first reason seems at least minimally defensible, even though it doesn’t take into account that deterrence also affects conventional warfare, since neither side wants to see a minor scuffle get too far out of hand. The second reason, not so much: if militant Muslim fanatics looked to the development of nuclear weapons as a sign from God to go more batshit bonkers than they already are—and that’s a big if—you would think they’d already found their clue in the completion of Pakistan’s bomb. (And no, I don’t think the Shia/Sunni split helps the argument.)
But it’s the third reason Goldberg cites that really caught my eye. It’s insane enough to need lengthy quotation:
bobbybaird Two excerpts from *American Idol*, my novel in progress, are now up and free at @NarrativeMag: http://bit.ly/aIy8FE+++2010/09/01
bobbybaird RT @nicknotned @longformorg is the future of the web. #frtt+++2010/08/31
bobbybaird Fight on, righteous brother RT @EpicureanDeal: This #frtt thing is hilarious, but I'm afraid it won't play well in the staid econotwitsphere +++2010/08/31