One-Way Street

The Most Trusted Man in America

Walter Cronkite is dead at 92, which seems old, but not quite old enough. Who is to say what's an appropriate lifespan? How much more life is available to someone at 92? For someone who reported on a national loss of innocence but represented a hope for the best, one always wishes more life.

Personally? I was too young to remember him as a newscaster. He represents the loss of something, the so-called greatest generation's orientation to history, that I couldn't experience myself. Cronkite existed in an imaginary realm inaccessible to my generation, but for which he was the avuncular spokesman. He spoke from a world that saw the triumph over global evil in grainy black and white. It would have been nice to hear some dispatches from that place. Anything other than the symptom, the messy ambiguity of the last forty years, from which we can't escape.

Then again, what I would have liked to have heard from him is a direct denunciation of the media's failure to see through the rush to war in Iraq or the evisceration of the Constitution in the name of preventing another terrorist attack. Cronkite's most famous moment was his grave announcement that the Vietnam War was a lost cause, but he never reported that Iraq was one from the beginning. He never stepped forward and said to his fellow reporters, in his sonorous voice, "You know something's wrong. Stand up and say so!" I don't think that was too much to ask from the most trusted man in America.

Death to Russia!

This is probably a temporary fit of pique rather than a paradigm shift, but for the moment at least people aren't buying into the standard rhetorical maneuvers intended to thwart change. In today's protests in Tehran, no matter how many times the leaders shouted "Death to America!" and "Death to Israel," the crowds responded with "Death to Russia!" The chant was apparently a reference to the speedy congratulations Russia’s government offered to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad soon after the official election results were announced. The moment was also interesting in light of Michel Foucault's reports of anti-Semiticism and xenophobia in the 1978 street protests that led up to the 1979 revolution.

YouTube link (and translation) thanks to Tehran Bureau.

Updates from Tehran Bureau's Twitter feed at 1:10 PM CST: tonight's Allahu-Akbar shouts are louder than ever, and they include "Death to Khamenei!" (unprecedented in its specificity) and "Death to USSR!" (oh well, the message is clear enough).

Walking on the Moon

Ted Gioia argues that sci-fi reached its high-water mark during the 1969 Apollo 11 mission to the moon, when the predictions of "the ABCs of sci-fi (Asimov, Bradbury, Clarke)" came true. However, when NASA never got around to taking the next step, a mission to Mars, all of the glamour drained away from the American space program and science fiction alike. "How could these same writers adapt to a world where rockets and astronauts had lost their luster?" Gioia asks. "The authors, for the most part, stuck to their favorite plots of space exploration, but the stories rarely had the same pizzazz as before."

I wouldn't venture to guess about the current state of sci-fi as a popular culture genre, as opposed to just a literary one. One moment when everything crystallized will always seem more vital and meaningful than the dispersed practices of the current time. Gioia refers only to literary sci-fi and its powers of prognostication. Much of the genre's claim to literariness rested in its ability to be six or seven steps ahead of history.

If sci-fi writers failed to predict that space travel would be turned over to bureaucrats, sci-fi writers also failed to predict that their own genre would be turned over to giant entertainment conglomerates. Amazing Stories had a peak circulation of 50,000 in the mid-1960s, but that's small change compared to contemporary Hollywood space epics. The latest installment of the Star Trek series grossed nearly $378 million worldwide. As a popular culture genre, sci-fi is a big business, but few would claim that Star Trek or Star Wars can tell us anything about how we will live in the future. Sci-fi has gotten out of the prognostication business.

When Neil Armstrong walked on the moon on July 21, 1969, science fiction went legitimate, at least for a moment. To my mind, however, that event spelled the beginning of the end of literary sci-fi, not the disappointed expectations that followed. Part of the genre's appeal, it seems to me, is its vaguely louche, outsider quality. Every sci-fi novel says to its reader, "You and I know things could be better, but everyone else is too stupid to realize it." Meanwhile, after 1969 the rest of us said to the sci-fi crowd, "So we walked on the moon, but nothing really changed back on earth. What else do you have for us?"

We're still waiting.

Mr. Passion

Last night, after a wine tasting at The Bottle Shop, the store's manager Joe Alter and I drove to the Hideout to hear the DKV Trio. Together for ten years now, the Trio consists of Kent Kessler on bass, Hamid Drake on drums, and Ken Vandermark on sax. All three musicians are fixtures on the Chicago jazz and avant-garde music scene. Vandermark, you may recall, was the subject of Daniel Kraus's documentary Musician (2007), an installment in Kraus's WORK series.

Vandermark works with ensembles as large as 11 and as small as two. Five seems to be about right for him; the Vandermark 5, for which Kessler plays bass, is Vandermark's best-known group. His music can be densely layered to the point of being overwhelming at times, especially when Vandermark is in full flight. Thus the trio format is a good introduction to the basic elements of Vandermark's music. He combines the rhythmic drive of Dave Holland with the hyper bebop of Eric Dolphy. Another point of comparison is the trumpeter Dave Douglas, for whom jazz is like the novel: a heteroglossic medium weaving together voices from a variety of different musical forms, from swing to rock to funk to hip hop. Douglas and Vandermark have both completed interesting cinema projects: Douglas took it upon himself to provide music for Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle's 1915 silent film Fatty and Mabel Adrift, while Vandermark was commissioned to create the soundtrack for Augusto Contento's forthcoming documentary Strade d'Acqua. 

Vandermark once played in a group call Mr. Passion, and that still describes his style of playing. Last night the first set lasted about 45 minutes, but consisted of only two songs. Vandermark kicked things off with a Coltranesque fury, with Kessler and Drake treading water, waiting their turn. This apparently formless run of squawks was actually a thematic introduction to Vandermark the musician. Every moment he played he was going to go all out, but in a more disciplined way than the late Coltrane--in other words, like Dolphy would have played. Kessler and Drake each had a role to play, too. Kessler and Vandermark clearly feel very comfortable with each other, with the bassist alternately pushing and pulling the sax player, adding heft to Vandermark's frenetic runs, then withdrawing notes to bring Vandermark back down to earth again.

If Kessler added depth to the DKV Trio, Drake added breadth. The drummer switched deftly between musical idioms, leading the ensemble through its eclectic sources. I've never seen a drummer change sticks so frequently, although at one point his juggling got away from him and he knocked a cymbol to the floor. It was Drake who ensured that the songs maintained their balance and that the musical ideas, which could get esoteric, resolved themselves into recognizable forms.

The first set--neither Joe nor I had the stamina for the second set--may have only been two songs, but they covered a lot of ground. At the end of the set Vandermark withdrew to a corner of the room, at once spent and charged up, which is exactly how jazz is supposed to leave you feeling. It was how I felt leaving the Hideout. 

The DKV Trio performs tonight at the Sugar Maple in Milwaukee.

A Day in the Park: Visiting the Burnham Plan Centenary Pavilions

Yesterday I paid a visit to the Burnham pavilions in Millennium Park. Here's my first foray into voice-over commentary, which turned out to be trickier than I thought it would be.

For a larger version of this video, go here.

Vertiginous Heights and Flesheating Bloodthirsty Bunnies

Here's a follow up on some topics I've already considered in this space, and where I'll be looking next.

The Royal Society of British Architects reports that a fifth of all architects are unemployed, about another fifth are underemployed, but when they find work, UK architects can expect a 7% salary increase.

The Twitter Revolution may be here after all: Yesterday's protests were organized almost entirely online and succeeded in rattling the authorities, despite government attempts to restrict Internet access--and a sandstorm. 

Colm Tóibín hates writing. You know what? It shows.

I don't think this is a comprehensive list--there are no East Asian cities--but here are the ten oldest continually-inhabited cities in the world. Oldest city? Damascus.

The presentations from last month's 17th annual Congress for the New Urbanism aren't online yet, but there's a feature on an urban infill project in Denver's old Stapleton airport.

Tonight's viewing in Chicago: "flesheating bloodthirsty bunnies" in Andrea Eve and Mark Gavin's Vamphoppers, which will make its world premiere tonight at the Portage Theater as part of the Bang-a-Thon festival. Stick around for the Q&A session with the film's directors and a Britney Spears Toxic Karaoke competition. 

On Monday I will be downtown to take a look at Ben van Berkel's pavilion for the Burnham Plan centennial. Alas, Zaha Hadid's pavilion, also located in Millennium Park, won't be completed until August 1. And, if I have enough time, I'll stand on the Sears Tower ledge and look 1,353 feet straight down.

The Wrong Woman

Colm Tóibín’s Brooklyn is set in a run-down place during run-down times. The novel tells the story of Eilis Lacey, a young woman living in a small town in south-east Ireland in the 1950s. The novel has all the elements of a story of youthful restlessness, but Eilis is actually rather well suited for a life of limited prospects. She’s stubbornly decent and without any visible trace of personality. However, she has a head for numbers, which, in her wind-swept town, qualifies her as something of a genius.

Enter Father Flood, delivered by divine provenance from Brooklyn Heights to Enniscorthy. Eilis has a part-time job as a clerk in a small shop run by the wickedly prim Nelly Kelly. Father Flood sees a smart young woman in a tiny shop and dares to dream big: he imagines a smart young woman in a much bigger shop. He promises to arrange passage to Brooklyn, where Eilis can work in a department store.

Characteristically, Eilis recoils at the notion. Surely her more glamorous and prettier sister Rose—the Katharine Hepburn of Wexford—would be a better candidate for immigration. Indeed, throughout the novel there’s a feeling that the wrong woman ended up in Brooklyn. Little outbursts of life go off around Eilis like firecrackers, but Eilis is a passive vessel for others’ designs. Really, the woman who should have gone to Brooklyn was Isabel Archer.

In Brooklyn Eilis is taken care of by a gaggle of women who make sure she has everything she needs to succeed in the New World, which, as it turns out, is a good pair of shoes and a properly fitting bathing suit. Eilis wins the heart of a young man who finds niceness erotic. She visits Coney Island and Ebbets Field. She attends night classes at Brooklyn College. African-Americans start shopping in the store in which she works.

This under-dramatized world goes against type. No rollicking drunks, no squalor—this isn’t Far and Away. Eilis was born and will die in the petit bourgeoisie. The flatness of her world is reflected in Tóibín’s prose, which can sometimes work itself up into small fits of bitterness, but otherwise remains spare, each sentence wrapped in a brown paper bag.

She was nobody [in Brooklyn]. It was not just that she had no friends and family; it was rather that she was a ghost in this room, in the streets on the way to work, on the shop floor. Nothing meant anything . . . . Nothing here was part of her. It was false, empty, she thought. She closed her eyes and tried to think, as she had so many times in her life, of something she was looking forward to, but there was nothing. Not the slightest thing. Not even Sunday.

This small world contracts even further when Rose dies suddenly, compelling Eilis to return to Enniscorthy. In this last section of the novel Tóibín picks up the narrative pace, injecting some dramatic tension that the Brooklyn scenes often lack. Eventually, the sense that the wrong woman was sent overseas begins to resolve itself. Rose’s death frees Eilis to choose her own destiny.

Just as the action alternates between the Old World and the New, Brooklyn alternates between Henry James and William Trevor, between psychological nuance and dogged realism. The novel gradually builds in power, like a James novel, yet remains true to its characters’ modest virtues. Supposedly, Brooklyn was to be Tóibín’s Atonement, but instead it is closer to McEwan’s On Chesil Beach. Brooklyn could end up a really good Terence Davies film, or be remembered as something William Trevor could have written had he a touch more talent.

What Does It Mean to Be a Revolutionary Today?

The topic of revolution has suddenly become relevant again, primarily because of three recent developments: the worldwide economic crisis, the election of Barack Obama, and the uprising in Iran. Eric Alterman compares our current predicament to the one faced by Franklin Roosevelt and finds Obama insufficiently bold compared to FDR, perhaps, Alterman suggests, because FDR didn't have to contend with an army of lobbyists working on the inside against him and constant braying from right-wing demagogues working on the outside. Alterman says bolder action to combat the current economic crisis is hampered by "a political discourse that ranges 'from the moderate left to the far right' with no room for the kind of bold 'persistent experimentation' needed to rescue America from the catastrophes it faces after eight years of incompetence, extremism and corruption enabled by a proudly clueless but uneducable punditocracy."

Putting aside the issue of exploiting an economic crisis to push through a radical agenda, which the left has long accused the right of doing, the question is this: Is communicative rationality enough to solve our collective problems?

Arguably, communicative rationality is the source of Obama's revolutionary potential. Has Obama failed to take sufficiently bold action because he could only come up with $800 billion to rescue the economy, or because he hasn't led a purge of all conservatives from government and the public sphere?

Last Monday Slavoj Žižek gave a speech in which he dismisses liberal faith the incremental change brought about by communicative rationality. (Watch the speech on YouTube.) In "What Does It Mean to Be a Revolutionary Today?" Žižek calls for radical action against what he sees as the totality of the capitalist system. Ever the Lacanian, Žižek regards capitalism as a sort of obsessive neurotic giant desperately clinging to its problems--everything from ecological disaster to Islamic fundamentalism--just to reassure itself that nothing will change. He cites Walter Benjamin's dictum that every fascism is an index of a failed revolution to make the claim that right-wing demagoguery in the US and Islamic fundamentalism are both symptoms of a deeper problem within global capitalism. Žižek would argue, for instance, that Brad Pitt's Make It Right Foundation, which enlists starchitects to rescue the poor of New Orleans, is insufficiently bold because does nothing to address the underlying cause of substandard housing. Although Žižek doesn't explicitly make this claim, he suggests the Iranians are rebelling against their cultural and political mandarins so that we don't have to rebel against ours.

As usual, Žižek veers between the sublime and the ridiculous in his talk. After telling a vulgar joke he abruptly calls for more modernity, more rationality, not less. To take Benjamin's remark about fascism one step further, we should look for the moment of truth buried within the shouting from the "proudly clueless but uneducable punditocracy." Sure Rush Limbaugh is a blight on the republic, but in his backhanded way he recognizes there's a madness in the system that's experience at an individual level as alienation from modernity itself.

It would be gratifying if the president could smite Limbaugh and his fellow bloviators like Obama crushed that fly in the MSNBC studio, but simply dismissing them from the national dialogue would be irrational. It would be the difference between boldness for boldness's sake, and genuinely thoughtful action.

Up North

I'm off to Wisconsin with the family. See you July 7 July 8.

“A little old lady, pleasantly plump”

That's how Agnes Varda describes herself. Once she even went to an art exhibit dressed as a potato. Her new “subjective documentary” The Beaches of Agnès came and went already in Chicago and I missed it, but it's now playing at the Film Forum in New York, among other places.

Varda has been regarded as the grand-mère of the Modernist French cinema since before she was thirty years old, and her dowdy image and impish smile seems to be designed to make us forget what an exemplary filmmaker she is: restlessly innovative, always pushing the medium to its limits. Too many young American filmmakers have made a reputation for independence and artistic integrity by relying on a set of recognizable tropes that say "indie film": ingénue lead actress, hand-held camera, pervasive mumbling. Varda could have made a comfortable career repeating Cléo de 5 à 7 over and over again, but like the heroine of that film, Varda made her statement and moved on.