Correcting Williams

"No ideas but in things" is perhaps the most famous statement of any poetics. (Only Pound's "make it new" is more succinct, but it is also less specific.) Pangrammatically speaking, however, it is imprecise. Poetry is to people what philosophy is to things. Williams gets the connection between poetry and ideas right (philosophers are mistaken to think ideas constitute their domain, though concepts, of course, do). But the slogan must either read "No realities but around things" or "No ideas but in people".

The original slogan is of course taken from the first book of Paterson, which was supposed to be about "the resemblance between the mind of modern man and a city" (xiii). His method, then, would be to describe the ideas in this mind by describing the things in that city. But a method is not, in and of itself, a poetics. Williams was not actually writing down the things he saw; he was writing down the ideas in his mind. Paterson is not so much a place in the world as a way through history. As he would also put it, much more simply, "Paterson is a man".

In a related matter, making is to poetry what taking is to philosophy. Philosophy studies the given while poetry polices our striving. (Striving is to power what giving is to knowledge. A study is to knowledge what a policy is to power.) If poetry, then, is to make it new, i.e., direct us to the end of history, let philosophy take us back, i.e., direct us to the origin of the world. Poetry is a crisis of desire, philosophy a crisis of belief.

A Definition of Oligarchy

A society whose banks are too big to fail.

NOTE: This JEC session is where it came up. In fact, if you listen even half-way carefully from 02:21:15 to 02:24:30, what you will have heard is the case being made, before a joint committee of the United States Congress, by some very reputable persons, that America is a banana republic. That's the light-hearted way of putting it. Stiglitz says he would consider the private-public partnership program a "scam" if some third-world country had proposed it. Taken in conjunction with Brad Miller's summary of Johnson's Atlantic article—an oligarchy controlls the government and "until you end the power of the oligarchy..."—this is very disturbing, or at least should be. I know a lot of people are using the word "fascism" very carelessly these days. But I don't see how much more of an argument you need to at least raise the issue.

Too Big to Fail = Too Big to Exist

Simon Johnson is my new hero. Read his very good piece in the Atlantic also.

Update: Johnson seems to be alluding to Bernie Sanders (the argument starts at about 2:00):

Hard-boiled Sentiments

I have a soft but not very developed spot for Raymond Chandler. My knowledge of his work covers an essay, a short story, and two novels, one of which I just finished. So far, I know exactly what I like about his writing.

In Farewell, My Lovely (1940), Marlowe meets a "psychic consultant" and con-man named Jules Amthor, who holds the following short speech:

I am no fool. I am in a very sensitive profession. I am a quack. That is to say I do things which the doctors in their small frightened selfish guild cannot accomplish. I am in danger at all times—from people like you. (126)

I like that on its own. But what I really appreciate is the way it resonates with Marlowe's own words not long afterwards. A police detective has just warned him about what might happen if he interferes with the murder investigation: "little by little you will build up a body of hostility in this department that will make it damn hard for you to do any work." Marlowe responds:

Every private dick faces that every day of his life ... I don't expect to go out and accomplish things a big police department can't accomplish. If I have any small private notions, they are just that—small and private. (180)

"Most serious matters are closed to the hard-boiled," says Saul Bellow's "dangling man" (1944). I'm not so sure.

Topical

Have they ever done anything other
Than steal work?