Tlooth-some

A.D. Freudenheim, The Editor

His Wikipedia entry makes a comparative reference to Thomas Pynchon. The back of the book says “He is like Pynchon, Barth, and William Gaddis.” But Harry Mathews is no Pynchon, nor a Barth or Gaddis for that matter.

It was back in late-April that I heard Mathews’ short story Country Cooking from Central France: Roast Boned Rolled Stuffed Shoulder of Lamb (Farce Double) read on the Symphony Space program “Selected Shorts” (and available as an MP3 here; I highly recommend it). I had never heard of him, and after digging up his biography online, I was both comforted in my ignorance and surprised, given the odd pathways of literature that I have followed, not to have found him earlier. I bought three of Mathews’ books, and have just finished Tlooth, his second novel, originally published in 1966 and (in the case of my copy) republished in 1998 by Illinois State University’s Dalkey Archive press. And off we go...

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“Fully dressed, Dominique had worn sixteen garments and ornaments. She shed four of them on the first day, three on each of the next four days, and at the end she danced naked, shielded only by her hands and hair. Every piece of her jewelry and clothing had been fastened with an inextricable knot, from which one or several tassels hung. The dancer’s enchantment worked yeastily through her audience while for hours she slowly tried, with shakings and suave caresses, to pamper loose one cluster of dangling strands. When the voluptuous ferment became unbearable, the girl, turning away with a mild complicit shrug, would draw from a scabbard fixed upright near her a wicked blue scimitar, and slice the knot. The sword, always visible to the crowd, gathered terrific significance as the moment of its use approached; and each severing of trivial cords fell on the tormented mass like a scourge, exciting hysterical shrieks, fits, faints, onsets of importance, confessions of speakable crimes, miraculous cures, numberless psychic and physical traumata, and the exchange (settled by the unpredictable time of the event) of millions of francs among the slightly cooler-headed gambling element.” (Pages 151-152)

This might be one of the most inspired, enervating paragraphs I have read in a long time, alive with words not often found in fiction (“yeastily”! “traumata”!), combined with a description of a series of acts of such improbability that it still comes as a surprise to learn in the next paragraph that Dominique the stripper has died on the sixth day of her marathon dance session. One has a sense of Dominique as trapped by these knots she cannot remove, and yet empowered to remove them; she is performing, voluptuously, but also bored, as the shrug suggests This Moroccan stripper’s is, on the one hand, considered so tangential that it is entirely parenthetical. On the other hand, Mathews’ frames her death as of such magnitude that “she was proposed to Rome for canonization.” It hadn’t once occurred to me she might be a Catholic.

If Mathews owes a debt to anyone, it is Georges Bataille and his Story of the Eye. Tlooth is less aggressive (if no less violent) but just as manic in its appetites, and just as absurd in its approach to the same. A long section—at least, long in the context of this story—in the middle of Mathews’ novel is itself another fiction, a living walkthrough of a movie script, highly pornographic, that the narrator has been hired to write. I call it a “living walkthrough” because, as the reader, you lose your own sense of whether you’re reading the script that Mathews’ protagonist has written, or if that same protagonist is now actually in the story.

We get references to how the camera should pan in one direction or the other. We get a mixture of highly specific, scene-setting detail—from clothing to the use of Wedgwood china to the acts being performed and in which locations—and at the same time a glib skipping over of any kind of context that might help the reader establish a genuine point of reference. It doesn’t really matter. And still, at the end of the whole section, after so much absurdist human interaction, it comes as a surprise to find the script completely dismissed by the crazy Count who commissioned it: “It’s interesting. But where is the character development? In the last scene we do not really know anything more about Sister Agnes than we did in the first.” (Page 136)

Indeed, we do not learn much at all about Sister Agnes. The character development is ours, the readers’. We learn something of ourselves from Tlooth, as we do from most difficult (and may I here use the word surrealist?) works. Yes, we learn about ourselves and our ability or willingness to read through challenging literature. More importantly, I think, are what novels like this teach us about our sense of self: whether, in wading through complicated, deeply layered and hidden ideas, we find things at which to smile or laugh, and whether we can see in small, absurdist details, analogies to how most of us also fixate on the little bits of errata in our daily lives. We just don’t normally see such things as particularly absurd—but perhaps we should. We might be happier that way, and more alive.

American Jewish Rage

A.D. Freudenheim, The Editor

I recently had the odd experience of being accused (somewhat indirectly) of having a “pathological absence of rage.”

As part of an evening of study for the holiday Shavuot, I found myself among a small group of people listening to a dialogue-cum-diatribe by two American Jews, under the title “The Denial of Hatred and The Hatred of Denial.” The two speakers (whose names I feel no need to reveal here) were addressing what turned into a conflated and conflicted bunch of points. They tried to include some “facts,” such as the claim that anti-Semitism is at its highest point since the World War II era, an unprovable assertion that they tied to a Pew study. They both seemed to believe that American Jews (as exemplified by those of Manhattan’s Upper West Side) are deluded in not seeing or believing the imminent threat of anti-Semitism. They refute any notion that anti-Semitism might be rooted in anything other than the utterly irrational, in no way a response to (perceived) actions by Jews themselves. And at the same time, they suggested that too many Jews walk around fearful of expressing their Jewishness—a ludicrous claim in general, and certainly in New York City!

First, on the so-called fact of the scope of worldwide anti-Semitism: the presenters quoted a study by the Pew Research Center to bolster their claim that anti-Semitism is at its highest point since the holocaust. They were presumably referring to a 2008 study by Pew Research Center that showed that anti-Semitism was on the rise, in some cases strongly (see “Xenophobia on the Continent,” by Andrew Kohut and Richard Wike). Without ignoring the impact of those findings, there is still nothing to support the presenters’ hyperbolic claims, or the implicit sense that Jews everywhere should be on alert. As Kohut and Wike wrote in their article: “While there has been a rise in anti-Semitic opinion in Europe, the percentages holding negative opinions toward Jews in most countries studied remain relatively small.” Moreover, the data collected and presented by Pew explicitly draws connections between anti-Semitism and perceptions about Israel’s actions towards the Palestinians, as well as about the role and (perceived) power of Jews in America.

The speakers also revealed what I would call (to use their own terms) a pathological naivete: a denial of the obvious fact that powerful (or perceived powerful) minority groups have always been targets of one kind or another (e.g., Tutsis in Rwanda, or the Ismaili Shia in many Sunni Muslim countries). Similarly, small states with (again, perceived) out-sized power have also been targets, particularly when they have engaged in the kinds of conflict with their neighbors that trigger reflexive feelings about minority populations and their political or social agendas.

Let me be clear: I am not making excuses for anti-Semitism. But I also believe it’s irrational to think that a minority group that makes up 2-4% of the total United States population, yet controls wealth equal to three or four times those numbers, and which has very, very prominent group members represented in high places in government, finance, etc., isn’t going to face some animosity. Nor am I the only one who thinks this is the case, or that this is a reality that Jews must confront. To go back to additional Pew-funded research, in 2006 the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life co-sponsored a talk with Josef Joffe, author of “Überpower: The Imperial Temptation of America,” on anti-Semitism and anti-Americanism. While rejecting what he describes as “the perception that Jews have ‘conquered’ America and have the most powerful country in the world at their beck and call,” Joffe nonetheless goes on to say “that Jews and Americans have always acted as forces of rampant change that has [sic] rolled over ancient traditions and dispensations and thus threatened traditional status and power structures. If you represent the forces of an anonymous market, you are bound to anger those players who profit from privilege and entrenched position.” In other words: duh. Without making excuses for a kind of murderous, irrationally rooted anti-Semitism, one must nonetheless accept the reality that one’s actions in the world have consequences. Jews, whether in America or Israel, aren’t exempt from this construct any more than anyone else.

Yet none of this makes me fearful. Politically engaged and morally concerned, and desirous of living righteously (and not just to and towards Jews)? Yes. But fearful? No. The presenters’ argument that American Jews are too afraid of being publicly Jewish ran smack into their argument that there is this massive tsunami of hatred coming to get us and that we should, essentially, be afraid to be publicly Jewish. And that, for me, is where it all fell apart: the idea that I suffer from a “pathological absence of rage” about the existence of anti-Semitism, that I should get over my denial, and that in overcoming my denial I will be free—finally free to be afraid.

Lest these two gentlemen be unfairly called out for their views, it is worth noting that they are hardly the only ones to hold this classic mixture of bigoted, fear-mongering views. For example, currently making its way around the internet is an offensive screed by Rabbi Dr. Morton H. Pomerantz, the absurd claims of which can be summarized just from the first sentence: “Our new president did not tell a virulent anti-Semite to travel to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington to kill Jews, but he is most certainly creating a climate of hate against us.” That’s a heavy charge—and one that falls flat, because it rests on both the misrepresentation of what President Obama said, and, more importantly, on that classic American Jewish Fundamentalist perspective that there is no such thing as legitimate criticism of Israel. For those with this worldview, President Obama is damned for eternity because he dared to say openly what is so obviously true: that past wrongs against Jews do not excuse current wrongs inflicted by Israelis—and that the forty-plus year Israeli occupation and oppression of the Palestinian people must, finally, end.

In retrospect, the tipoff that this Shavuot presentation would be problematic might have come at the very beginning, when one speaker began with a second-hand holocaust story, about his mother’s experiences in the camps and after the war. The purpose, clearly, was to engage the audience and provoke an emotional reaction that would bind the listeners to the presenter, credentialize him as an authority, and simultaneously remind us of that greatest of all acts of murderous anti-Semitism. Such tactics tend to work with Jews; we have been well conditioned. But if my description sounds cynical, it is not nearly as bad as the act of the presenter himself, which reminded me of a character from Tova Reich’s novel “My Holocaust,” in which she so effectively caricatures the second-generation survivors, whose devotion to the cause of the holocaust has often surpassed that of the survivors themselves.

We sat in rapt attention, listening to this compelling story—only to discover yet another Jew sadly abusing the memory of the murdered (and those few who survived), in order to justify the rights and reactions of Jews everywhere at the expense of other humans. To my mind, such “me first” righteousness is counter to the morality, the humanity, that rests at the core of Judaism, and there is no denying that it must be resisted.

Our Mortgaged Future

A.D. Freudenheim, The Editor

An article (“Recovery begins at home”) from last week’s issue of The Economist, about Shaun Donovan, the new Secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) caught my attention—not for the analysis of Donovan’s early assertion of leadership, but because of the statistics included about the continuing problem of home foreclosures. The Economist reports that “foreclosure filings last month increased by 32% over April 2008; one in every 374 housing units received a filing.” The article also noted that HUD “announced that a $8,000 tax credit for first-time homebuyers could be used as down-payment on a mortgage…” and that “it would provide $2 billion in stimulus funds to stabilise neighbourhoods hit by foreclosure.”

Reading this article reminded me of how adrift we are in the middle of this vast sea of foreclosed homes, and that we cannot seem to find the dry land beyond the horizon. The collapse of our economy has been spurred on in large part by our collective capacity to over-borrow, and our collective desire to over-inflate the value of our homes. While the cracks in the broader economy are more complicated—the housing asset bubble is only one factor—this problem of over-mortgaged homes with over-inflated values is probably the thing most average people are able to focus on. The housing bubble was aided by the robust market in “sub-Prime” mortgages, and part of the problem with these mortgages was their inherent short-termism: banks loved the fees associated with mortgage creation, and the near-term monthly payments, without caring about the long-term impact of the potential failure of the housing market. If the goal was to maximize near-term profits, all of this made sense.

But there was always a logical inconsistency in the sub-Prime mortgage market, waiting for someone to notice it: it is difficult to make money over the long-term with loans you can almost guarantee that no one will be able to afford to pay off. If you know the borrower won’t be able to pay up over the life of the loan, then your short-term profits will ultimately be undermined by the long-term collapse. No amount of mortgage insurance will cover this potential deficit. It’s like building the George Washington bridge out of cardboard: it’s only structurally sound until the first rainfall, and coating it in plastic wrap is not long-term protection from the rain.

News that HUD is offering a credit to first-time homebuyers is great, but helps none of the people who currently have mortgages with unreasonable interest rates or already face foreclosure proceedings. And $2 billion to “stabilize” neighborhoods is all well and good, but it’s hard to know what impact it will have on affected homeowners. These initiatives are part of what the department is calling its “Homeowner Affordability and Stability Plan.” It seems to me that the best way to achieve this would be to encourage mortgage lenders to make loans more affordable, in order to bring stability to the turbulent world of home ownership. All of this led me to ask a different question: is the solution to the failed investment in mortgages ... more investment in mortgages?

Here’s how this investment program might work, as a formal process implemented with government backing, and in lieu of the purchasing of “distressed debt” mortgages by external vultures. Instead of foreclosing on a property, or simply refinancing the mortgage on more favorable terms, banks would refinance while also taking an additional equity stake in these homes. The bank’s investment might be 20-25% of the total value of the mortgage. The mortgage interest rates offered by the banks for these new loans would be fixed within a small range corresponding to the Federally set prime rate; some higher rates would be permitted, but only by one or two percentage points. All mortgages would be fixed rate loans on a 15, 20, or 30 year schedule.

The payoff (so to speak) of this process would be three-fold:

First, it would shift the process of dealing with many of these problem mortgages from a challenge over impending foreclosure back to focus on continued ownership. As with the bursting of many asset bubbles, part of the problem with the collapse of the market is the glut of houses available at reduced prices, which depresses the value of the newly foreclosed assets even further. This is not good for banks looking to recover from the sale of these assets, and it doesn’t help homeowners with legitimate (that is to say, normal) reasons for wanting to sell. Therefore, removing some homes from the market by keeping them owner-occupied would help return some stability to the market.

Second, this refinancing structure would reduce the monthly mortgage payments owed by the homeowners, by refinancing at a rate that owner-occupants can actually afford, on a schedule that makes rational economic sense (which most adjustable rate and sub-Prime mortgages do not, except on a short-term basis). What is the bank’s incentive to refinance this way? That leads to the third point...

By refinancing at a reasonable rate, banks enable homeowners to invest in their properties—keeping their homes and neighborhoods cleaner and more desirable—while the bank still, even at 6 or 7%, makes money. Well-kept homes in cleaner neighborhoods will likely have better resale values over the long-term.

The biggest benefit of this new process will be that it creates a mutual incentive for long-term success, for both the owner-occupant and the bank: the owner's incentive is the opportunity to stay in their house at a monthly payment rate they can afford. The bank will recoup its additional costs over time by taking that addition 20% equity stake, thus giving them 20% of the profit when the home is eventually sold. Since part of the allure of sub-prime mortgages was the higher interest rates being charged, and thus the higher rate of return to those who invested in these mortgages, this equity based approach will also help address the loss of profit that will result from bringing a 14% mortgage interest rate down to 7%.

Why should these homeowners accept this 20% reduction of their equity in their own homes? Well, for one thing, this new bank stake would reduce the amount the borrower owes by the same percentage, in effect reassessing the near-term value of the home. Given the inflated market in which many people purchased their homes, such a readjustment might be welcome. But the long-term rationale is even stronger: a 20% reduction in one’s investment is almost always better than a 100% loss of both equity and one’s actual home. For homeowners, choosing between 80% and 0% should not be so hard—and as banks might be starting to learn for themselves, 100% ownership of many, many houses may not be a good investment for their own shareholders.

Preventing Obama

A.D. Freudenheim, The Editor

If I was in the message management business (and I am), and I had a client with terrible, horrible news to release to the world or a potentially disastrous idea to float, well heck: the days before a long, holiday weekend might be perfect. Few people are paying attention to the news as it is; even fewer when focused on sunny weather and beach blanket bingo in the days ahead.

However, I do not know whether I would be clever enough (or Machiavellian enough) to coordinate the release of this terrible, horrible news with a speech timed as a counter-point to a speech given by one of my client's biggest critics. Seriously, it's hard to get one’s critics to cooperate! It takes tremendous resources and planning, and a stealthy streak worthy of a come-from-behind presidential candidate.

Therefore, it should be no surprise to anyone reading this that the person who released the terrible, horrible news was President Barack Obama, and the clever (or Machiavellian) maneuver was to share the information alongside a critical speech given by former Vice President Dick Cheney.

And the news that was released?

That President Obama favors a program of "preventive detention," sort of like what repressive, authoritarian, mock-democratic regimes (c.f., China, Egypt, Iran) use to reign in people and perspectives they don't like. Rather than worry about having to try suspects after they have committed a crime, Obama’s proposal would allow for indefinite detention without a trial where evidence is presented that suggests someone was planning a crime. The New York Times ran two articles about this, the first on 21 May (“Obama Is Said to Consider Preventive Detention Plan”), the second on 23 May (“President’s Detention Plan Tests American Legal Tradition”). There are plenty of others, too.

Thankfully, I am not alone when I say—loudly and unambiguously—this is bullshit. I will dispense with reciting chapter and verse on why such a “preventive detention” plan is unconstitutional. Senator Russ Feingold has done this eloquently enough for anyone interested, while underscoring that Congress (or at least one Senator) is watching and intends to stand guard on this issue. Senator Feingold: thank you!

What I will say is: this entire episode represents a huge political and philosophical disappointment. First, the point/counter-point construct of the speeches was both an obvious and unnecessary distraction. As president, Obama has his choice of speaking moments; he can only have agreed to this because he believed that the media’s (and public’s) focus on the “Thrilla Near the Hilla” (as Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank dubbed it) would distract from the substance of the issues and his articulation of an unsatisfactory policy plan. Otherwise, he would have given his policy address when he knew (as with many others) that it, and he, would be the sole focus of attention.

Second, it is disappointing because a politician as smart as Obama, in an environment as politically charged as this one, should know that it is hard to embrace the ideas of one’s opponent without losing credibility—unless you do so (as Bill Clinton did with policy issues like welfare reform and debt reduction) by embracing the political substance, the underlying logic, and even the fallout. President Obama has not done that; he has not suddenly started talking like Dick Cheney and George W. Bush. Indeed, quite the opposite.

Which leads to the third disappointment: the lingering suspicion that President Obama wants to have it both ways. He seems to want to be respected for charting a course that is not that of the Bush/Cheney years—e.g., one that places diplomacy, not force, at the center of our global leadership—while at the same time being given permission to pursue the same nasty, off-the-books habits, tactics, and policies, but in a manner that is more effectively off-book.

The world is a nasty place, and President Obama’s original, campaign-era formulation that faux-righteous might will not protect us remains as true now as it was then. Hidden righteousness, in the form of “preventive detention,” is unlikely to protect us, either. It only degrades our democracy, our society, and the quality of both our government and our moral judgment. On this issue, President Obama should be stopped.

UPDATE: In his 31 May column for the New York Times, Frank Rich dissects Dick Cheney's speech and the way it was reported in the news - and, very helpfully, points to an article by Jonathan S. Landay and Warren P. Strobel, writing for McClatchy, that points out 10 "inconvenient truths" that Cheney overlooked. That article is worth reading.

Regressive New York?

A.D. Freudenheim, The Editor

Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Maine, and even Iowa all now permit “opposite marriage,” while “liberal” New York (and California, too) lag behind. An excellent article in tomorrow’s New York Times notes that as a new bill makes its way through the legislature, some New York politicians seemingly remain closed-minded. For example, Jeremy Peter’s article has a great story about a State Senator, as in this snippet:

Proponents of same-sex marriage who visited Mr. Onorato in his office in Long Island City acknowledge they have not made much progress.

“He said right off the bat that marriage is between a man and a woman, and that this is a religious issue,” said Jeremiah Frei-Pearson, 31, a child advocacy lawyer who went to the senator’s office two weeks ago accompanied by a gay man and a straight official from one of the state’s most powerful labor unions.

“I explained to him that I go to church every week and that religion teaches us not to discriminate,” Mr. Frei-Pearson said, “and that ultimately your faith should be kept separate from this decision-making process.”

He said he also tried to appeal to Mr. Onorato by explaining that he was engaged to a black woman, and that an interracial relationship like his (Mr. Frei-Pearson is white) would have been frowned upon years ago, just as many gay relationships are today.

“None of that seemed to resonate,” Mr. Frei-Pearson said.

To which I can only say: wow! Great reporting, great quotes … backwards politician!

The many perspectives (and resistance) to gay marriage in New York might be a reflection of a quality of our state that is, in an odd way, less at issue in places like Vermont, Maine, and Iowa: diversity. The same can be said of California, a similarly large and divided state. Logically, one might expect homogenous societies to enforce orthodoxy and resist (seemingly) heterodox notions like acceptance of gay marriage, let alone gays themselves—while diverse communities should be the opposite. The logic, though, may overlook the much more complicated set of connections between people’s sense security and (emotional) safety. In a funny way, places like New York may be more challenging political and social environments precisely because they toss many, many different people and perspectives together.

Not buying it? Me either, necessarily, because it starts to sound like another excuse. The truth is that this is a classic case of groundless discrimination, for which too many bad excuses have already been offered.

With the new bill in the state legislature, New York’s politicians have an opportunity to show that such discrimination has no place in a society like ours. Whether you live downstate in New York City, or upstate in Buffalo, our state needs people who want to live here, make their lives and livelihoods here, pay taxes here, raise families here, and contribute to our society—regardless of whether they love someone of the same sex. Preventing gay marriage discourages people from making their homes here, and that’s no good for anyone.

Citizens of New York: contact your State Assembly member and State Senator and make your voice heard.