In Praise of Cassandra Arno J. Mayer

There is no understanding the infernal Israeli-Palestinian imbroglio and its world­ wide repercussions without exploring the dialectics of the vexed “Arab Question” in the unfolding and consummation of the Zionist project. For Martin Buber this ques­ tion concerned, in essence, "the relationship between Jewish settlement and Arab life, or, as it may be termed, the intra-national (intraterritorial?) basis of Jewish settlement.” From the outset in the 1890s, eminent Zionist voices in both the Diaspora and the Yishuv criticized the Zionist movement’s principal leaders for their benign but stub­ born neglect of this problem. Eventually Judah Magnes sadly concluded that the fail­ ure to make Arab-Jewish cooperation a major policy objective was Zionism’s fatal “sin of omission.” Rather than take the true measure of the majority Arab Palestinian population most Zionists of the first and early hours ignored, minimized, or distorted its reality and nature. Above all, with time they either denied the potential for an Arab awakening or dismissed Arab nationalism as an inconsequential European import. Martin Buber is emblematic of the crit­ ics—Ahad Haam, Yitzhak Epstein, Chaim Kalvarisky, Judah Magnes, Ernst Simon— who from the creation of modern Zionism insisted on the weight and urgency of the Arab Question, and on the importance of not only addressing the fears and anxieties of Arab Palestinians but also respecting their political aspirations. Buber became ever more convinced that the Arab Question would be the supreme test and ultimate “touchstone” of the Zionist project. He deplored the early settlers’ “initial failure” and “basic error”: by neglecting to “gain the confidence of the local Arabs in political and economic matters...they gave cause to be regarded as aliens, as outsiders” disinterested in “achieving mutual trust.” Buber took to task Zionism’s “political leadership” for “paying tribute to traditional colonial policy” and being “guided by inter­ Jack Sherman national considerations” to the exclusion of attention to “intra-national” affairs. On the ment will be oorrupted, maybe forever.” ing catastrophe.” He claimed that as the would be the equivalent of suicide,” largely whole, Zionist policy not only neglected This spur-of-the-moment reaction carried embodiment of “Cassandra” in their time this because “an unstable international basis Arab-Jewish relations inside Palestine but the germ of the idea that informed the foun­ “spiritual elite . . . not merely uttered warn­ could never make up for the missing intra­ also outside, where it failed to “relate the dation of Brit Shalom (Alliance for Peace) in ings but tried to point to a path to be fol­ national one.” Alone an “agreement between aims of the Jewish people to the geographic 1925, later renewed by Ihud (Union). The lowed, if catastrophe was to be averted.” In the two nations [in Palestine] could lead to reality in which these aims had to be real­ members and fellow travelers of these two “speeches which were so many deeds” it Jewish-Arab cooperation in the revival of the ized.” As a consequence, the nascent Jewish societies of dissidents formed an influential indicated an alternative road likely “to lead Middle East, with the Jewish partner concen­ commonwealth in Palestine became ever but powerless opposition focused on the to a Jewish revival in Palestine” and to the trated in a strong settlement in Palestine.” more “isolated from the organic context of Arab Question, and emerged as the racked “rescue of the Jewish people.” The far-sight­ Ironically, Buber expected the logic of the the Middle East, into whose awakening it conscience first of Zionism and then of ed “spiritual elite,” of which Buber was one “geopolitical situation” to favor the reemer­ [needed to] be integrated.” Israel. By virtue of being severely marginal­ of the most forceful voices, put forward a gence of “national universalism,” the Jewish As early as February 1918, Buber ized, these faithful critics were unable to program for “a bi-national state” aiming “at a people’s “unique truth,” to fire the “struggle demurred when Zionist maximalists advocat­ inspire and encourage their Palestinian and social structure based on the reality of two against the obstacles chauvinism places in ed “creating a majority [of Jews] in . . . Arab counterparts, who were as weak and peoples living together.” Buber and his com­ our way.” [Palestine] by all means and as quickly as beleaguered as they were themselves. panions, supported, among others, by the left In October 1948, in the midst of the first possible.” Fearing that “most of today’s lead­ In 1947-48, at the creation of the problem­ Zionist Hashomer Hatzair, advanced their bi­ Arab-Israeli war, Buber questioned the credo ing Zionists (and probably also most of those atic and contested all-Jewish state, Buber national scheme as an alternative to the that since the Jewish State had been attacked who are led) were thoroughly unrestrained reflected on the creed and role of those pub­ “Jewish state,” as envisaged by Theodor it was “engaged in a war of defense.” Ever nationalists,” he forewarned that unless “we lic intellectuals who, “equally free from the Herzl and his political heirs. They cautioned attentive to the “Other,” Buber asked, succeed in establishing an authoritative megalomania of the leaders and the giddi­ that “any [Jewish] national state in the vast [Zionist] opposition, the soul of the move­ ness of the masses, discerned the approach­ and hostile [Middle Eastern] surroundings continued on page 9 page 2 The BOOKPRESS November 2003 Penelope's Confession

These poems are from a longer cycle of The Twelve Women Athena's Bargain poems called Penelope's Confession that I began writing before the invasion o f Iraq. As While she lay in a drugged sleep, She had always thought it strange the war continued, and those of us who had like a lion that has killed a farmer's ox, Athena should be a goddess opposed it felt increasingly impotent, the its chest spattered by the blood that drools of war and weaving, of craft Penelope poems were a way of keeping a from its jaws, Odysseus stood, monstrous, and carnage. Now, Penelope woke sense of outrage alive. As the poems pro­ mired in gore from feet to armpits. from muffled sleep and understood gressed, / found myself re-reading and trans­ The women were told to clean up. lating passages from the last books of the she'd been shielded from the worst. Odyssey. Some of these passages / later They entered the great hall keening, How could she look him in the eye incorporated in the poems. and wept as they dragged the bodies outside. otherwise? The slaughter of the suitors Next he told them to soak sea sponges was work of man and goddess in water, clean the tables and chairs who held the world in balance; soiled by the blood of men they'd known as lovers, boors, gluttons, friends men at war, women weaving, knitting, making and carry out the filthy scrapings from the floor. bread, babies, fingers When the room was cleaned to his satisfaction busy, eyes averted. he told his son to take twelve women Are the gods to blame? who had slept with the suitors to a narrow place A Souvenir between two buildings with no escape She'd quietly kept his house, and kill them like beasts with his sword Still fuddled by sleep preserving the wisdom of a bargain she walks out of the courtyard struck in her name. She'd surrendered to The Wooden Horse But Telemachus thought this death too clean to where the woman lie the pleasure of her craft, a mastery Before that night the horse for the women and strung a ship's hawser threaded like linnets that matched his with the bow. was a high-point of minstrel's tales, across the courtyard tightening it enough on a hunter's belt. especially that part when the belly so no foot could touch the ground. Should she have refused to keep splits and instead of entrails And as when long-winged thrushes Flies crawl in their nostrils her half of the bargain? Defied the Greeks spew out or doves come to roost in a clump and open eyes; she tastes Athena? An owl hooted into the sleeping streets bile and speaks their names outside her window, waiting and take Troy by stealth, o f bushes and find instead a snare, one by one, as if naming for a reckless mouse to move. ending the nine-year siege. the women's necks were placed in nooses were a way to keep them safe so their death would be most miserable. Penelope took the shuttle The poets don't mention the sound Their feet twitched for a while reminding him from rough hands: Hero, thrust it across the loom, the city made as it died of how they'd seemed to tread the air Hermione, Iphigenia, Eirini, back and forth, weft or the smell that rose from its streets dancing to the flute on summer nights. Phaedra, Batia,, Marpessa, piercing warp, fingers after the soldiers had satisfied Leda, Leucothea, Eryso, faithful servants of her anger. their lust for blood and turned Europa, Maia - soft souls to sex. Last night her house —Gail Holst-Warhaft was a mini-Troy, its rooms caught in the snare of their own shrieking, its killer her spouse. desires. She kneels to remove a slipper that has taken the shape Next morning by the sea of a foot, each toe mounded she raises her sticky shift as if by a burrowing mole. over her head and swims, letting her mind and body drift This is all that will last under the brightening sky. of pretty Maia, a shoe At the sea's edge she stands that danced the night away, rubbing her body, removing a slipper whose mate no prince the stench of her husband's hands. will seek: Penelope’s keepsake

The ROOKPRESS Only the Bought Have Access P ublisher & Editor Jack Goldman Production Sc Design Felix Teitelbaum Poetry Editor Dry winds rub the edge of dawn. And the glazed eye blinks into faith Gail Holst-Warhaft as arms merchant pitchmen disguised as pundits Contributors One year the snows failed heap nonsense on nonsense - Susan Buck-Morss, Jamie Cavanagh, and the rivers ran empty in Spring. talk shows drone through the day, Edward A. Dougherty, Thomas No floods brought new lining. And no eye describes. No mind remarks. news shows drone through the night. Eisner, Christopher Furst, Gail Holst- Womb strains slipped of the egg. The emperor sold all the books - Gossips kneel and kiss the glass. Warharf, Arno J. Mayer, James Seed rots in burlap dockside. schoolrooms and libraries McConkey, Emelie Peine Sages have all gone silent, traded for a next campaign And the marketplace for gunnery hums I llustrators consigned to the wings to stiffen the stature of wealth. a dirge for brotherhood. Tom Eisner, Jack Sherman like unwanted items at auction. The cosseted shogun strokes his cock. Lubricious futures, high aspirations - The entire contents of T he Bookpress are copy­ Deserts crawl into wheat fields. And as numbers speak volumes on price, peddled for a few photographs right © 2003 by T he Bookpress. Inc., All rights Corpses ripen, swell with gasses mathematics can't count the sorrows. smooth with concepts and pride reserved. T he Bookpress will not be liable for in an air too thick to escape, Death cries ascend, echoes resound, no kin to the beak-pecked faces typographical error or errors in publication. Subscription rate is $12 per year. T he Bookpress Is made thicker by spasms, stone blinks away tears. gleaned of meat as of meaning - published eight times annually, March through bile and the last of bile. a pipeful of lies May and September through December. Abominations too great for telling for an age mortgaged like oaths Submissions of manuscripts, art, and letters to poke through the thin shell of comfort; and all the blistered tomorrows. the editor should be sent. SASE. to: dawn disturbs a drunkard's dreamless sleep. T hc Bookpress DeWitt Building —Jamie Cavanagh 215 N. Cayuga Street, Ithaca. NY 14850 (607) 277-2254: fax (607) 275-9221 bookpress®darityconnect.com

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1 ' ‘ 1 1'1 1 • ' h * . H V V> :.b . 1.1.* 1 ,. , November 2003 The BOOKPRESS page 3 Seeds of Dissent Bernhard Speyer admits, "The DSM is used While the G-23 took the opportunity pre­ the end consumer, but by an agribusiness Emelie Peine actively by all member states, with the sented by the failure of Cancun to point out company that either stores, trades, process­ notable exception of the poorest, especially the myriad unfulfilled promises of greater es, or packages that product (some large African, countries". democracy and transparency in the negotia­ companies do all four). The low commodity On September 14, trade and finance min­ Even if a poorer nation succeeds in bring­ tions, the Quad derided the G-23 as short­ price doesn’t necessarily mean cheaper com isters from all over the world shook their ing a complaint against a wealthier one, if sighted and naive for its role in derailing the flakes, but it does translate into higher prof­ heads in a mix of frustration and relief as the the defendant fails to comply, the final very process that would eventually lift the its for General Mills, Kellogg’s, ADM, or World Trade Organization ministerial meet­ recourse of the complaining nation is to sus­ people of the global south out of destitution. Cargill. Agricultural commodities like com, ing in Cancun, Mexico came to an abrupt pend privileges or levy sanctions against the Despite the characterization of the G-23’s soybeans, tomatoes, feeder calves, cotton, and bewildering close. As reported by offender. Imagine that Sierra Leone wins a position as progressive and the Quad’s as sugar, rice, etc., are "industrial inputs" for Martin Khor of the Third World Network, suit against the US. The last resort, should protectionist, in truth both equally serve the these companies, and so it is in their interest after 3 days of wee-hour negotiations, what the US fail to comply, is for Sierra Leone— larger neo-liberal project of which the WTO to keep prices for these products as low as was supposed to be an opulent and celebra­ not the WTO—to suspend concessions or is currently the most prominent regulatory possible. For this reason these firms vigor­ tory closing ceremony was moved to an impose trade sanctions on the US. Kind of mechanism. Although the G-23 is demand­ ously oppose production control programs alternate venue, far too small to hold the like a gnat in a lion’s ear. Of course, in the ing greater democracy and transparency in that pay farmers to idle land or store grain in more than 3,000 delegates attending the opposite scenario the US could conceivably the process along with lowering of agricul­ order to prop up prices. meetings, and the ministerial was uncere­ devastate the economy of such a small coun­ tural protections in the Quad, the main goal In fact, the 1996 Freedom to Farm Act moniously terminated. Many of the dele­ try, leaving the Sierra Leones of the world no is to facilitate the exploitation of these coun­ effectively dismantled land set-aside pro­ gates who were kept out of the closing choice but to comply with WTO findings. tries’ “comparative advantage,” which usual­ grams that had long supported agricultural ceremony clamored at the door for news of The four most powerful actors, the US, EU, ly means low-value, labor-intensive prices in the US. As Ray has shown, within the aborted llth-hour meeting in which a Canada, and Japan—affectionately known as agricultural commodities, light manufacture, the next four years, world prices plummeted handful of countries engaged in a last-ditch the Quad—do have a choice, and often delay or low-skilled services. For those behind the 40%. It was this collapse in prices and effort to save the round. Confusion reigned compliance indefinitely. In cases between wheel of the neo-liberal vehicle, democracy farmer income that triggered ballooning and blame was thickly apportioned as it members of the Quad this system may be and transparency in the WTO are the neces­ subsidy payments required to keep the entire became clear that another WTO ministerial more effective, but it also has the potential to sary means of meeting these objectives. American farm sector afloat. Today, the US had passed and the signatories had not even create a quagmire of cross-retaliation. On the other hand, the Quad seeks to exports commodities at these record low succeeded in agreeing to begin negotiations The root of the conflict between the Quad maintain its current level of support for its prices to the tune of about $53 billion. on the many contentious issues that lay and the rest of the world that has stymied agricultural sectors while at the same time Because the US dominates the market for before them. every meeting since Seattle is embedded in forcing developing countries to lower tariffs most traded commodities, low prices here So what went wrong? Why does the most the anatomy of the organization itself. and import quotas in order to open vast have the power to drive prices down all over powerful multilateral organization in the Anyone who has ever tried to achieve con­ potential markets for the government-subsi­ the world, which has resulted in the devasta­ world continue to spin its wheels and deep­ sensus in a business or community meeting dized and therefore artificially cheap agri­ tion of farmers worldwide. en the divide between the competing inter­ can imagine the task infinitely compounded. cultural commodities produced by In Mexico, com prices have plummeted, ests of its members? Surely some credit With so many signatories and competing agribusiness. Due to tariffs and subsidies driving waves of farmers off the land. At the should be given to the hundreds of thou­ interests the goal of achieving true consen­ enacted by the US and the EU, agriculture same time, government deregulation has sands of activists who have tirelessly voiced sus is almost laughable. Perhaps inevitably may be the only sector in which world mar­ caused a spike in the price of com tortillas, their opposition to free trade as an end in then, in what became known as the "green ket prices are generally well below the cost resulting in widespread food crises in both itself, decrying the lack of adequate safe­ room" tactic, the majority of countries rep­ of production. The most extreme example, rural and urban areas. This pattern has been guards for labor and the environment. While resented at the Cancun meeting were according to Daryll Ray, an agricultural repeated in countries all over the world that these protests certainly contributed to the excluded from drafting the agreement that economist at the University of Tennessee, is lack the resources to provide the kinds of collapse of both meetings, possibly the would set the new round of negotiations in cotton, with a world market price 57% income supports that keep (a handful of biggest contribution of the protests in both motion. In the end, the "green room" below the cost of production. large) US farmers on the land. Agribusiness Seattle and Cancun was to embolden the became the principle battleground and prob­ Yet organizations such as the National does not care which farmers in the world are countries of the global south to call for equal ably contributed more than anything else to Farmers Union, the Nebraska Farm the most efficient as long as commodity participation in the drafting process. It is the walkout by the G-23. Federation, the Soybean Producers of prices remain at rock bottom. crucial to recognize the intimate connection What are the major issues behind the America, and the National Corn Growers So, while US taxpayers finance the profit between the protests in the streets and the present stalemate at the WTO? The econom­ advocate a proposal authored by Ray and his margins of companies like Cargill and power struggles in the conference rooms. ic theory upon which all free trade agree­ colleagues that focuses on bringing price Kellogg, the members of the WTO play The Cancun ministerial saw the emer­ ments are based is the theory of comparative levels up to and above the cost of production chicken with agricultural agreements. gence of the "Group of 20" (then 21, 22, and advantage, according to which each country so that farmers can actually make a living Regardless of who goes first or what the final now known as G-23), a coalition of coun­ should concentrate on producing the com­ selling their produce rather than depending agreement looks like, the fact is that this is tries from the global south. This group, led modities that make best use of its resources, on government support. According to Ray, not really about free trade. Liberalization is by Brazil and including India, China, South and then trade for everything else. That way, this would preempt the political rancor over the goal only to the extent that it keeps pro­ Africa, Argentina, and Egypt, joined forces goods are produced and traded at the lowest the bloated farm budget by eliminating the posals like Ray’s for production controls off to leverage power from the US and the possible prices and everyone is better off. need for costly income-support programs, the table. Opening markets in the south and European Union (EU) in the heavily biased Seems like a win-win scenario, so why is it thereby alleviating a major drain on reducing protections in the north would negotiating process. One of the widely tout­ so passionately contested? American taxpayers. Such measures could probably maintain prevailing prices as lower- ed features of the WTO is that it is a "rules- To begin with, the theory of comparative also resolve the conflict over agriculture in cost producers enter the market. However, based system" that, in theory, prevents advantage ignores the major role of politics the WTO by eliminating the need for many maintaining northern supports would serve economically stronger countries from pres­ in trade—especially when it comes to agri­ of its most controversial policies. the same purpose, since northern policies are suring weaker ones. All countries, even the culture: no country wants to be solely In order to achieve planned price stability, what brought prices down in the first place. US and EU, must pledge to reduce tariffs dependent on imports for its food supply. If agricultural exporting nations would have to In the end, then, the arguments of both the and trade barriers at comparable rates, and an importing country were to run afoul of a agree to control production. The current Quad and the G-23 would likely lead the the "least developed countries" (LDCs) are major exporting country, its food security agricultural equivalent of OPEC, the Cairns world to similar prices for agricultural prod­ granted more generous "schedules" to could be severely threatened, leaving poor­ Group (plus the US which is not currently a ucts, but while the Quad advantages implement WTO rules. If rules are broken, er, food net-importing countries in a vulner­ member), would have to agree to expand or agribusiness, the G-23 speaks to the needs of all countries are equally subject to review able position. Agriculture is the very sector contract production based on fluctuations in all but the largest farm operations, in the US under the Dispute Settlement Mechanism in which many poorer countries do have a market price. Farmer-owned grain reserves as well as in developing countries. (DSM) before punitive measures are levied. comparative economic advantage, but the could be established in order to ensure a The failure of Cancun energized the glob­ The system is designed to be neutral and Quad enjoys almost total market dominance steady food supply and to help stabilize al justice movement and made businessmen unbiased, though not exactly transparent due to its overall economic strength and prices in times of feast or famine, thereby and financiers nervous. Not only does this since all of the dispute settlement proceed­ political power. mediating the vagaries of unpredictable rift open space for alternatives to be heard, ings are conducted in closed tribunals. Still, Much of the conflict between the G-23 weather conditions. but it undermines the political legitimacy of this "rules-based system" is widely argued and the Quad centers on agricultural issues. So why isn’t this seemingly well-rea­ the WTO itself. In the meantime, however, to be fairer than a "power-based" one. The US won’t discuss reducing its dispro­ soned solution on the table at the WTO? To US agricultural policy remains business as Evidence has shown, however, that poorer portionately high domestic supports if the answer this question one must look at who usual, and farmers around the world contin­ countries remain severely disadvantaged. G-23 won’t discuss lowering many of its benefits from the farcically low prevailing ue to lose their land. The failure of the WTO The cost of merely having a delegation pres­ members’ disproportionately high tariffs. prices for agricultural products. Certainly may be an opportunity, but it can also be an ent at the meetings is sizable. Even more On the other hand, the G-23 has refused to not the farmer, since most farmers are barely excuse for maintaining the status quo. The expensive is the stable of lawyers necessary agree to reduce its market barriers without a staying out of debt even with government protests are over for now. It’s time to build for any country to navigate the DSM. While restructuring of the current WTO Agreement loans and income supports. Certainly not the our own green room. all countries technically have access to the on Agriculture that includes loopholes big state, which is hemorrhaging funds in this mechanism, there is no provision for assist­ enough for the US to drive its $40 billion sector at a rate second only to the military. ing developing countries in covering legal Farm Bill through unscathed. Many argue that the consumer benefits from Emelie Peine is a Ph.D. candidate in the costs. The Advisory Center on WTO Law With each successive ministerial these "cheap food" in the grocery store, but a box Department of Development Sociology at (ACWL) was established in July, 2001, positions appear to become only more of shredded oat cereal still costs almost four Cornell University researching agricultural but it acts only as an information and train­ entrenched and a functioning agreement dollars, while the commodity value of the trade agreements in Brazil and the US. She ing center. The record shows that many seems more out of reach. At Cancun, the G- oats in that box is about nine cents. lives on an organic farm in Newfield, NY countries of the Global South lack the polit­ 23 walked away from the table, citing the The fact is that most agricultural prod­ and plays the washboard The ical and financial resources to take advan­ Quad’s unwillingness to accommodate the ucts, with the exception of the vegetables MacGillicuddies. tage of WTO rules. WTO supporter basic requirements of developing countries. sold at farmers markets, are bought, not by page 4 The BOOKPRESS November 2003 Globalization and tices are totalitarian, of course. existence are for their own good. preached by a head of state, or in a place of Susan Buck-Morss In 1927, Stalin in his struggle for power As participants in a global public, we can­ worship, or at the IMF, no cultural practice— took advantage of an almost hysterical fear in not allow ourselves, cynically, to accept such religious or secular, economic or political, In memory of Edward Said, 1935-2003 the Soviet Union that the Western powers double standards. Humanity is the subject of rational or romantic—is immune to funda­ would invade, declaring: “We have internal the global public sphere, not the United mentalism’s simplifying appeal. The staging of violence as a global specta­ enemies. We have external enemies. This, States. No individual nation, no partial To equate the politicization of Islam with cle separates September 11 from previous acts comrades, must not be forgotten for a single alliance, can wage war in humanity’s name. fundamentalism is as unjustified as to equate of terror. The dialectic of power, the fact that moment.” The perception of a total threat World Wars, the particular insanity of the it with terrorism. Islamist politics is a broad power produces its own vulnerability, was legitimated the implementation of total, twentieth century, were struggles for territory. and varied social movement, the voices of itself the message. The attackers perished extralegal power both domestically and Sovereignty was a geopolitical concept. The which span the entire known political spec­ without making demands. They left no note abroad. The word “terror” is used to describe enemy was situated within a spatial terrain. In trum, including a radical, progressive Left. behind, only the moving, deadly image, which the execution or imprisonment in the USSR this context, “defending the free world” Much of the movement is more fruitfully the cameras of those who were attacked them­ of thousands of purged party members in the meant, physically, pushing the enemy out, seen as a continuation of anticolonial strug­ selves supplied, as they did the fuel-loaded, 1930s, and we are accustomed to equating setting up lines of defense, deportation of gles against Western imperialism, the secular, civilian planes that mutated suddenly into this terror with Stalin’s name, as if one evil sympathizers, pursuits into enemy territory, Marxist leadership of which was discredited self-annihilating weapons. A mute act, played individual were responsible, rather than the geographic embargoes—in short, spatial in the Islamic world by, among other things, and replayed before a global audience a mes­ logic intrinsic to the whole idea of terror. But attack and isolation. The overthrow—“desta­ Soviet Russia’s aggression in Afghanistan. sage, sent by satellite to the multitude a diver­ Stalin justified his actions because the citizen­ bilization”—of nation-state regimes from Islamist political debates share with those of sity of peoples who, witnessing the same ry felt threatened, a state of mind that is fertile within was a clandestine action, best done by minorities within Western nations the strug­ cinematic time-image, the same movement- ground for abuses of power. According to one indigenous forces, so as not to challenge the gle to forge political identities as they chal­ image, exploded into enemy camps. participant: “In the thirties we felt we were at terms of legitimation of the sovereign-state lenge hegemonic definitions, and they share Or did they? Sympathy was expressed gen­ war, at war with the entire world, and we system in which wars took place. the dilemma of identity politics as well: the erally by the global public sphere. Is the ade­ believed that in war you should act like there In today’s global war, conflict cannot be pitfalls of essentialism and claims to authen­ quate word for the global reception, rather, is a war on.” The consequence was that popu­ discretely spatialized, a fact that has enor­ ticity on the one hand, and, on the other, inte­ “implosion,” as a global terrain means by def­ lar support existed for Stalin’s regime, pre­ mous implications in terms of the imaginary gration into a dominant culture (or dominant inition that there is no outside, at the same cisely because he was not squeamish about landscape. Because the enemy does not world order) that denigrates the traditions of time that there is, tragically, no cohesion rooting out the evil source. The language, the inhabit a clear territorial space, there is noth­ the collective. among the multitude who inhabit it. All the thinking, has begun to sound unpleasantly ing geopolitical to attack. The fact that the Abdul-Kabir al-Khatibi, the Algerian-bom, forces of global society, however radically familiar. United States has nonetheless attacked, first, French-trained sociologist, has written of the incompatible, are immanent within this over­ The unlimited, unmonitored wild zone of the geopolitical territory of Afghanistan, and necessity of a “double critique” practiced by determined, indivisible terrain. power is not unique to the United States. It is then, the Iraqi nation (far less plausible as a Arab theorists to criticize their own societies Terror produces terror, as observers have a potential of every state that claims sovereign terrorist base), is indicative of its self-contra­ from within, and at the same time to criticize, long noted. Bin Laden and his supporters power, and with it, a monopoly of the legiti­ dictory situation. Its superpower strength is from without, the Western concepts used to indeed pose a threat, but that threat doubles mate use of violence. Two consequences fol­ still envisioned in traditional military terms. describe them. The late Edward Said’s book when it is countered in kind. A “fundamental low. The first is that no matter how But the new global immanence means that Orientalism, has been, at least in the West, the paradox” of the paranoid style in American democratic the constitution of a state regime, there is no spatial other, a fact that the terror­ most widely discussed account of the mythic politics, wrote Richard Hofstadter in 1952, as a sovereign state it is always more than a ists operating on September 11 exploited with nature of Western understanding of the Arab the era of the Cold War, “is the imitation of democracy, and consequently a good deal brilliant brutality. In contrast, the United world, laying the ground (with others, like the enemy.” Now, as on that occasion, the acts less. The second is that human rights, human States is manifesting dinosaur-like symptoms Talal Asad) for the argument that Orientalist of enemies reflect each other. The engage­ freedom, and human justice cannot be exclu­ by compulsively repeating its old tactics of “science” reveals more about the colonizers ments of war cannot exist without this mirror­ sive possessions of one nation or one civiliza­ massive, military response. than the colonized. ing, which ensures an overlapping of the tion. They must be global rights, or they will Gobal immanence has changed the role of Such literature that criticizes the criticiz- military terrain. In this terrain, we, the not be rights at all. the media most especially. In world wars, the ers warns us, in fact, to qualify the claim that hijacked multitude, the vast majority, have The problem is not that the West imposes news was directed to distinct audiences. global immanence is something new in his­ been subjected to the common paranoid its democratic values on the rest of the world, Radio and movie newsreels reported the war tory. In fact, throughout the modem colonial vision of violence and counter-violence, and but that it does so selectively. It is inexcusable unapologetically as propaganda, editing and period, Western hegemony produced global prohibited from engaging each other in a that rights be applied with a double standard, interpreting events to rally the home front and immanence in a one-sided fashion. Trie common public sphere. and then justified by calling it respect for cul­ demoralize the enemy. But when a global immanent superimposition of conflicting The U.S. national security state is a war tural diversity. Samuel Huntington, no radi­ audience makes it impossible to separate values was the contradictory and unavoid­ machine positioned within a geopolitical cal, describes Western duplicity: “Democracy home and enemy populations, when the vast able state of the colonized, but not the colo­ landscape. It must have a localizable enemy is promoted but not if it brings Islamic funda­ majority of human beings who are tuned in nizers, whose very identity as “modern,” for its powers to appear legitimate; its biggest mentalists to power; nonproliferation is can be defined as neither “us” nor “them,” historically in “advance” of the rest of the threat is that the enemy disappears. But given preached for Iran and Iraq but not for Israel; when audiences do not sit in spatially isolated world, was their claim to legitimacy as a col­ a war, even a Cold War, and now given an ill- free trade is the elixir of economic growth but bleachers, there is no way of controlling the onizing force. Other cultures, those of the defined yet total war on terrorism, the not for agriculture; human rights are an issue propaganda effect. The media, rather than colonized, existed as objects of anthropolog­ declared state of emergency is justification for with China but not with Saudi Arabia; aggres­ reporting the war, is inextricably entangled ical investigation, or as “civilizations” suspending the rights and freedoms of citi­ sion against oil-owning Kuwaitis is massively within it. It is a deterritorialized weapon accessible to historical study—that is, as zens. It justifies arresting and holding individ­ repulsed but not against non-oil-owning among diverse populations, which it can both vestiges of the past—coeval with, but not uals without due process. It justifies killing Bosnians.” We can add to the list: the killing harm and protect. immanent to “modernity,” a word and a con­ and bombing without oversight or accounta­ of innocent civilians in New York City is a ter­ Globalization is not new, but global “imma­ cept which as critics have noted was in fact bility. It justifies secrecy, censorship, and a rorist act, but Afghani and Iraqi innocents nence” is. I use this term to refer to the fact Europe’s way of defining itself. To “modern­ monopoly over the accumulation and dissem­ killed and wounded are merely unfortunate, that in our era of global capital, global pro­ ize” meant to Westernize, an alien task, in an ination of information. All of these state prac- while the multiple disruptions of their daily duction, global labor migrations, and global exemplary case, for “Oriental” subjectivities penetration by technologies of communica­ who, described as inscrutable, irrational, tion, there is no “other” of peoples, territory emotional, unscientific, and personalistic, or environment against which some of us were the quintessential other of enlightened, could conveniently define ourselves and, modem man. holding ourselves apart, control our fate. The Within the Orientalist context, Arab con­ T H E LIES global space that we share is contradictory, sciousness was by definition overdetermined: OF and intractably diverse. Our lived experiences both immanent and transcendent, a discourse The longtime editor of the are simultaneous and incongruous, resisting within the West and a discourse from without. division into distinct nationalities, pure eth­ But a critical stance within one discourse did GEORGE Nation, Corn sets out to nicities, or racial differences. We are morally not necessarily include a critical stance in the build a serious ease against accountable in a multiple world where no reli­ other. What was called, at the turn of the Bush in which the presi­ gion monopolizes the virtue that would be twentieth century, the Great Awakening of W. BUSH needed to fight evil in its name, where there is Arab intellectual life employed an apologist dent's own words indict no value-free, objective science that could discourse, justifying Arabic traditions of reli­ him. ground universal, secular truth—just as there gious and secular thought precisely because — Booklist is no universal law of the market that can they were compatible with modem Western guarantee us a benevolent future. values of scientific positivism, democratic Those who deny these everyday realities of reasoning, and the rule of law. global immanence fuel fundamentalism, of Kemalism, the modernizing ideology of which there are as many types as there are Mustafa Kemal, who led the Turkish move­ Hardcover ❖ Crown intolerances. The mark of fundamentalism is ment of nationalist liberation, broke from not religious belief but dogmatic belief, that Western colonialism by literally copying its $24.00 refuses to interrogate founding texts and legal, political and cultural forms. The excludes the possibility of critical dialogue, Turkish leader ridiculed traditional Islam as a dividing humanity absolutely into pre-given “symbol of obscurantism,” the “enemy of civ­ categories of the chosen and the expendable, ilization and science,” and “a corpse which into “us” and “them.” And whether this is poisons our lives.” When Arabs adopted November 2003 The BOOKPKESS page 5 the New Orientalism Western discourse in the Marxist mode as a backward, ignorant, impoverished people which have been the object of this project, in foundation of the production of social wealth. secular critique of imperialism, this absence — is a corpse. the next phase?” Now this might have led What is needed is not theological exegesis, of a double critique tended to be just as preva­ Davutoglu to a radical, cosmopolitan posi­ but critical analysis of the world’s problems in lent, as Arab Marxists were similarly adamant Here the very words used by Kemal in tion, if he had allied himself with the original a way that might actually solve them. that their own societal and religious forms rejecting Islam are turned against the post­ impulse of Habermas’s statement, its imma­ What I am suggesting here is that a truly were vestiges of the feudal past. colonial West. But Adonis is a secular nent critique of the Enlightenment project that global public sphere might liberate thinking Interestingly, it was Islamism that inaugu­ thinker, who has no desire to posit, as did holds Western modernization accountable for so that we are not compelled to take sides— rated an autonomous tradition of immanent Sayyid Qutb, an inverted West, Islam, as the its own shortcomings. Instead, Davutoglu “us” v. “them”—or limit ourselves to an critique within the Middle East. The influen­ road to the future. The Fanonist critique was, drops the burden of double critique and falls exclusionary paradigm of thought—religious tial Egyptian writer Sayyid Qutb, a contem­ however, taken up by Islamists, by Ali into Huntington’s fantasy of separate civiliza­ or secular, postmodern or modem—in a way porary of the Frankfurt School theorists, Shariati, for example, whose thought and tions—as if any civilization could remain sep­ that stunts our capacity for critical judg­ critically attacked Islamic regimes as a return writings would play a leading role in the arate within the immanent global sphere. The ments, leads to false intellectual and political of the condition of ignorance—the Iranian revolution, and who was influenced West’s self-critique, he asserts, becomes “an conclusions, and prevents us from identify­ “Jahiliyyah” of pre-Islamic times. Hence as well by the Cuban Marxist, Che Guevara, inter-civilizational crisis in response to the ing similarities among fundamentalist posi­ present-day Islamic society (Egypt) was un- and by Latin American liberation theology, resistance and revival of the authentic self­ tions—which must include the Islamic. The strategy precisely paralleled the an eclectic theoretical mix held together by perceptions of non-Western civilizations.” self-understanding of the United States as the argument of Adorno and Horkheimer in the object criticized—world imperialism, But a clash of civilizations cannot perform the Chosen Nation and the neo-liberal funda­ Dialectic of Enlightenment, that Western rea­ racism and class exploitation—rather than critical, counter-hegemonic task at hand, mentalism that leads to blind faith in the son, which emerged from myth, had itself any ideological form. which is not to replace one dominating civi­ market mechanism, to name only two of the turned back into myth. The difference, of My goal is not the retelling of intellectual lization by another, but rather, to put an end to most blatant, non-Islamic examples. course, was Qutb’s move to positivity, his history. Rather, it is to contribute to a discus­ the structures of cultural domination. American hegemony is constitutive of the affirmation of a return to Islam as stated, liter­ sion regarding a very specific, very political The recognition of cultural domination as fundamentalist Islamism that opposes it; ally in the Qur’an. question: How today, in what intellectually just as important, and perhaps even the condi­ U.S. and Israeli state terror is not only the This affirmation of the true Islam can be critical idiom, might a global Left learn to tion of possibility of political and economic effect, but also the cause of the terror that seen to mark a definitive break from Western- speak together? In this context, intellectual domination is a true advance in our thinking. resists it. These are the truths that need to be defined “modernity,” allowing for an Islamic history undergoes a transfiguration, no longer Moreover, if the West does not have a monop­ expressed by a global Left. model to replace it. But what is striking about a story of specific civilizational continuities, oly on the future’s meaning, then where else Are we witnessing the emergence of a New Qutb’s understanding of the “self-evidence” be they Western or Arabic or Islamic, but an but the discarded past are we to look to imag­ Orientalism? In honor of the memory of of Qur’anic thought, is that it, too, was archaeology of knowledge, to use Foucault's ine a future that does not yet exist? But—this Edward Said, we need to struggle now, more dependent on the West, in the dialectical sense term, of a present global possibility. is crucial—it is to the cultural imaginaries of than ever, against the disparity between US of critical negation. Islam—the true Islam— We are looking for a route that will connect past civilizations that we must look for inspi­ global power and US ignorance and dismis­ appears in Qutb’s work as the inverted other critical discourses that have evolved in partial ration, not the power realities. In other words, siveness of the rest of the world, onto which it of Western modernity: spiritual where the contexts, in order to make them useful for a cultures must be understood as always radi­ projects its own identities and prejudices. West is materialist; communal where the West yet-to-be-constituted, global, progressive cal, in the sense that they are always negotia­ This occurs not only in Washington and is egoistically individual, socially just where Left. We will not be satisfied with the realists’ tions between the real and the ideal, hence at Hollywood, but in high-culture institutions as the West is greedy and competitive, morally maxim: The enemy of my enemy is my friend least potentially in protest against the soci­ well. At Cornell University, Islam is defined disciplined where the West is negligently lib­ - as this will not support global solidarity in a eties and power structures in which they as religion, not politics, and delegated to the ertine. This was, of course, the antithesis of meaningful way. We also suspect that the emerge. The cultures that defenders of tradi­ Department of Near Eastern Studies (in spite the apologists’ strategy of redeeming Islam splintering of the Left along the lines of dis­ tion look back to with such nostalgia are the of the fact that four-fifths of the world’s within the value categories of the West. crete identities has run its course as a progres­ dream-form of the societies that gave them Muslims are non-Arabs). Critical discourses Now, the Western modernity that Qutb and sive form of critique, at least in its Western birth. Precisely for that reason, in their time in the Arts College are full of left-liberal others attacked was in fact the impoverished form, where identity politics now threatens to they functioned ideologically, covering up the laments about colonialism, neocolonialism tradition of instrumental reason, possessive work to the advantage of anti-immigration inequities and iniquities of minority rule, and “empire,” but few theorists bother to read individualism and lack of social conscious­ nativism rather than the protection of cultural patriarchal domination, class domination—all the work of Muslim intellectuals, secular or ness that the members of the Frankfurt School minorities. In its Islamist form, identity poli­ forms of the violence of power that deserve to religious, who remain “others” to be exam­ and other European Marxists were criticizing tics is indeed a powerful force, a constituency be called barbaric. ined anthropologically, and not to be actually from within. It would have taken a radical within civil society of over a billion people, Culture and barbarism—the barbarism of engaged. These “others” have been speaking cosmopolitanism far in advance of what was connected in a global network of mosques. power that at the same time provides the con­ back for decades, however, demanding not possible at the time for both sides (German But those who desire (or fear) the crafting of trol, the law and order, that allows culture to merely inclusion in existing cultural practices, Jewish and Arab Muslim) to join forces in a this public into a uniform Islamist, global flourish—these are the two sides of the but transformation of their very structures. critique of Western reason in its impover­ view do a disservice to the richness of debate Golden Age of every civilization, whether it is They have been doing so non-violently. And ished, neo-liberal, instrumentalized form. But that informs Islam, which not only allows called the Pax Romana, or Pax Britannica, or we have not been listening. the very thought of such an alliance, an attack critical thinking but requires it as a duty. If Pax Americana, or the Classical Age of Islam, launched from both inside and without, sug­ there are Islamist politicians who think they or the heights of civilization of the Aztecs and Susan Buck-Morss is a Professor o f gests the power that a new Left in a global can count on support from a monolithic, Incas. No great civilization has been free of Government and Director o f Visual Studies at public sphere might begin to have today. unquestioning Muslim bloc, then these politi­ this contradiction. This was the tremendous Cornell University. This essay is based on If we are interested in the genealogy of a cians arc no less cynical and no less manipu­ insight of Walter Benjamin when he insisted: material from her book Thinking Past Terror: global public sphere, we will need to note that lative than their Western counterparts. Islamism and Critical Theory on the Left. the first radically cosmopolitan critique of As critical Muslims, critical Israelis, criti­ Whoever has emerged victorious par­ London and New York: Verso, 2003. Western-centric thought did not come from cal Americans and Europeans, we cannot ticipates to this day in the triumphal pro­ the Islamic world. It came from the French- allow our identities to hold us apart. We recall cession in which the present rulers step speaking Caribbean, via secular, Marxist Gramsci’s insight that hegemony depends not over those who are lying prostrate.... THE transport with a detour to Algeria—and when on the absence of oppositional discourses but, There is no document of civilization it appeared it came with a Western wrapping. rather, on the disorganization of dissent. We which is not at the same time a docu­ LIBERATED I am referring to Frantz Fanon’s remarkable are indeed traveling a difficult road. But let us ment of barbarism. ^ BRIDE book. The Wretched of the Earth, which (par­ at least agree to eliminate false steps along adoxically introduced by the European, exis­ the way. In revering and desiring within changed a novel tentialist Marxist Jean-Paul Sartre) called on There is the view, held by many serious and current conditions to salvage our different cul­ the non-Western world to leave Europe critical writers, particularly by those from for­ tural traditions (and Marxism is one of them, “behind”—that is, to produce a modernity mer colonies living in (or writing for) Western as is Islam’s Golden Age and the European that transcended the European model, which audiences, that Samuel Huntington’s predic­ Enlightenment) we would be well advised not had proven itself bankrupt. Fanon’s gesture tion of a “clash of civilizations” has cleared to confuse the dream of the past with its reali­ suggested an intellectual liberation of a totally the way for a counter-hegemonic challenge. ty. As we value the former, we must continue new order because while his politics was still Although Huntington, a realist, was describ­ to criticize the latter. Such redemption of past identifiably Marxist, his approach refused ing a gloomy scenario of global struggle, his culture would rip it out of its ideological role submission to any ideology. It resonated with acknowledgement that civilizations other than of justifying not only past violence, but new the actually lived experience of much of the the West have a role to play in a modernizing violence committed in its name. colonized world that modernity had meant project (i.e., that Westernizing and moderniz­ The goal of a global Left cannot be reduced V A.B. decline rather than progress—what Aijaz ing are not synonymous), posits the coeval­ to the meaningless project of changing the % Y E H O SH U A Ahmad has described as “the descent into ness of civilizations, that do not have to give religion, or skin color, or ethnicity of the bourgeois modernity” that marked the era of up their identities in order to be full partici­ exploiters. Whenever a social system pro­ European imperialism. It received brilliant pants in progress. But Huntington is not radi­ duces a wealthy and powerful few on the ...what at first appears to be a bitter­ rearticulation in a 1967 article by the cally critical in either the immanent or the backs of the many, a culture worth defending sweet comedy of domestic manners Lebanese poet Ahmad ‘Ali Sa’id (Adonis): transcendent sense, and his affirmation of cannot be identified with its justification. set in 1990s Israel [becomes] a other civilizations is more apparent than real. Confucianism and Islam may point to the searching exploration of a politically We no longer believe in Europe. We no The Turkish intellectual, Ahmet Davutoglu, development of a different kind of capitalism, divided society... longer have faith in its political system or speaking specifically to Habermas’s claim but it is not enough if this difference remains —Publisher’s Weekly in its philosophies. Worms have eaten that modernity is an “unfinished project,” at the level of ideological justification, while Harcourt ❖ Hardcover into its social structure as they have asks, then, “who shall complete it? ...[W]hat the exploitation of human beings’ creative $27.00 into...its very soul. Europe for us—we will he the role, of non-Western civilizations, labor and nature’s creative labor remain the page 6 The BOOKPRESS November 2003 November 2003 The BOOKPRESS page 7 The Agony and the Ecstasy what does it take to be a great dancer? The fewer ballet classes because her shoolwork ple prose style belies its intelligent and as great a place in his consciousness as his abounds with such moments of brilliantly the elderly couple who first discover his Wendy Jones books I will be looking at, a memoir and is suffering, F. gives her an ultimatum, him measured complexity, McDonough shows music. By contrast, every moment of articulated insight. tremendous talent when he is a young boy White Swan, Black Swan four novels, explore this question in various or her parents, but really the choice is that dancers, especially great dancers, are Ginny’s life has revolved in some way These stories do more than simply por­ living in Ufa, a poor provincial Russian Adrienne Sharp ways. between what ballet dancers call “real life” born not made, or at least, their will to around her dancing; there is no other story tray the world of dance; they criticize its town; their daughter who befriends him Collusion: Memoir of a Young Girl Ballantine Books, 2002, paper Collusion: Memoir of a Young Girl and and ballet itself. She channels the same dance appears so strongly and so early that to tell. And McDonough tells this story pervasive ethos. “Don Quixote,” a fictional­ when he comes to Leningrad to study at the and her Ballet Master $13.95 Her Ballet Master by Evan Zimroth is a force of will required to make the body do it appears that way. Such is true of the main skillfully; no one is better at describing ized account of George Balanchine, tells the Kirov; Nureyev’s sister; the domestic who Evan Zimroth frightening account of the ballet world, the impossible into getting what she wants: character, Ginny Valentine, a talented young dance—what it feels like to do and to watch. story of an erotic mentorship from the works for him after he has defected to the HarperCollins, 1999 Dancer enough to send any mother of young girls She chooses F. dancer who is passionately loved by two Here is Ginny the first time she goes on man’s viewpoint, explaining but not excus­ West; the shoemaker for the Royal Ballet; $23 Colum McCann fleeing to soccer camp. It begins with the A lyrical style that poignantly expresses married men, Oscar Kornblatt and his son point: ing such relationships. The title refers not and his close friend, Victor Pareci, the Metropolitan Books, 2003, cloth disturbing confession “I was raped.” But Zimroth’s feelings and perceptions with an Gabriel. Father and son’s passions are char­ only to the character part Balanchine dances celebrity cum drug dealer who often accom­ The Four Temperaments $26 this rape turns out not to be a violation “in almost palpable intensity defines this mem­ acterized by two symbolic analogues: the What a sensation. Ginny felt she was (another part for aging dancers), but also to panies him on the sexual escapades that will Yona Zeldis McDonough the criminal way of terror and police oir; in our era of the memoir craze, this obsessive compulsive disorder of being lifted up to a place she had never the way in which for him, art and eros are eventually lead to their both being infected Doubleday, 2003, paper Corpse de Ballet reports, but a description of Zimroth’s first is one of the best. But if Gabriel’s wife Penelope been before, her whole body, legs, inextricably linked; as Don Quixote’s imag­ with AIDS. Moreover, while Nureyev’s $13.95 Ellen Pall love affair. She recalls watching her lover this book is expres­ and Ginny’s will arms, everything, impossibly balanced ination transforms the plain peasant presence is felt in these narratives, they are St. Martin’s, 2002, paper finger the rim of his wine glass at dinner the sive, it is also to dance. All on two small earthbound spots. The Dulcinea into the beautiful lady whom he really about the characters’ own lives; writ­ $6.99 first night they make love, “a gesture that wrong, three contact with the floor was so slight loves, Balanchine’s choreography trans­ ten mostly in the first person, they reveal [meant] Later we’ll make love, whether you and are that she could fool herself into thinking forms his favorite dancers into his wives: thoughts and feelings as well as events that It is December 8, 2002, and I am in the thing unusual about this company and its want it or not.” Zimroth both does and does­ she didn’t need it at all, that she would have nothing to do with Nureyev. As the auditorium of Canandaigua High School school that I am suddenly able to articulate n’t want it, and her resistance becomes part rise right up into the air itself. It happened again and again, without novel meanders from one character to the where 1 am taking warm-up class with the to myself, something that I’ve been observ­ of a power play between partners that she him willing it— the body, the desire to next, we begin to realize that it will be Ithaca Ballet before we perform Nutcracker ing in the last few years as I’ve taken class­ equates with love itself. When her lover While the unhealthy aspects of the create for that body, the desire to pos­ woven almost entirely of digressions. Even that afternoon. I am not the Sugar Plum es of all different levels, with my asks afterward, “Did it hurt? Do you ballet world that we see in Collusion sess that body, the marriages, four of in the few sequences that Nureyev narrates Fairy (soloist), or even a snowflake (mem­ eleven-year-old daughter, with members of want it again?" she suddenly real­ are not the primary focus of this them, each wife then disappearing from or which are told from his point of view, we ber of the corps de ballet), but rather the the company, with other adults. This school izes she has heard these words novel, Ginny’s story provides a his life like vapor as he found himself never get the kind of “apologia” that we grandmother at the Christmas party, a small and this company function by different rules before from her ballet master F. subtle yet pointed critique. drawn to the next. expect from biography (fictional or histori­ character part of the kind that usually goes than the ones I learned so well as a young after the first time he had Wes, Ginny’s first ballet cal). Nureyev himself implicitly accounts to retired dancers. Although 1 never danced person. Most ballet schools, especially com­ struck her with his thin teacher who did so much to His failure to win the love of Suzanne for his absence at the center of his own story professionally, I danced seriously, majoring pany schools, promote a form of pedagogy leather cane because of encourage and nurture her, Farrell, one of his greatest dancers, consti­ in one of his reminiscences, characteristi­ in ballet at the High School of Performing that is linked inextricably to a system of sloppy technique. This also took her virginity in tutes a form of resistance not only to cally about someone else’s sentiments Arts in New York City (better known as the favorites. A teacher or other mentor (com­ uncanny repetition gives a hotel room on the way Balanchine himself, but also to the system rather than his own: “In an- interview Petit Fame school) and taking class at various pany director, choreographer, etc. ) chooses rise to the epiphany that to an audition when she he represents. This critique continues in says that there are certain things that defeat schools throughout the city. When my the best in the class with whom he (more structures the paradig­ was fifteen. But this is “Willis,” which is also a rejection of the themselves if they are said. That dance is daughters began studying dance about two often a man, but not always) develops a matic insight of this an unimportant detail, paternalistic mentoring of women and the the only thing that can describe what is Oth­ years ago, I returned to ballet myself after a strong cathexis, erotic in the broad sense memoir: the relation­ and its insignificance price it demands. Katie, a dancer with erwise indescribable.” Nureyev himself is hiatus of fifteen years since having taken that Freud uses it, although the relationship ship between ballet is mirrored by its American Ballet Theater, betrays her indescribable in print because he has no sig­ class at all, and even longer since I had is sometimes sexual as well. This chosen master and pupil is “a place at the periphery boyfriend, another dancer who has been part nificant identity apart from dance, as the danced with any regularity. one has talent and potential the other stu­ love story.” of the narrative. coach and part lover for years, and who is generic title suggests. McCann underscores As I look around at the people doing dents lack, which is ratified by the teacher’s F.’s question begins Unlike Zimroth, for still urging her to achieve. It is no accident this point ingeniously through his Joycean warm-up, I am amazed at this enterprise. love and attention. Although the teacher their strange and whom dance and her that she has a fling with a man who calls her ability to completely inhabit his characters. Everyone wants to do their best, and so we obviously has the greater share of power, almost surreal intima­ teacher remain syn­ a lousy dancer and tells her she will never Changing speech and psychology among a strive for proper technique and body place­ the relationship is reciprocal; the special cy that lasts from when onymous even after be more than a member of the corps de bal­ series of very different personalities and ment on a floor that is raked, while holding student’s love affirms the teacher’s impor­ Zimroth is twelve until she leaves him (she let; she wants to be desired as a woman who lives, he indicates a sheer pleasure in inven­ on to the backs of seats rather than a ballet tance. she is fourteen. Not never again feels the happens to be a dancer, and not as a dancer tion that parallels Nureyev’s creativity as a barre (this isn’t easy). Here we are in a town This form of mentorship gives rise to an only does F. lavish her same intensity about who happens to be a woman. dancer. Encoded in the book we read called that rarely sees any live dance, but that will insidious definition of success: anything with attention in ballet ballet even though she We meet Katie again a few stories later in Dancer is another one that might be titled give us an incredibly appreciative audience, less than stardom is failure. I’m not talking class, but there are fre­ dances professionally), “The Brahmins.” She has quit ballet, having Author. Artists show themselves through the an index of how receptive people are to the about the need to achieve the level of tech­ quent meetings in F.’s the two are separate for realized that she won’t ever be good enough forms they create. arts despite our culture’s constant underval­ nical excellence that it takes to dance pro­ secret room, a place no one Ginny. And it is telling that to be a soloist, and has gone to Los Ellen Pall’s Corpse de Ballet (groan if uation of them. I am amazed at the unity fessionally, nor do I mean to invoke the else ever visits. Here F. feeds Ginny is not anorexic, that Angeles—the locale signals her inability to you like, but you have to admit it’s clever) is among these dancers, of how what is in dancer’s quest for perfection that this her (one time it its cheese laced she has an uncomplicated and let go entirely of the idea of stardom— a delightful mystery that will please even many ways the most narcissistic of arts also extremely difficult art demands. I am also with blood from an accidental hedonistic attitude toward food. where she is making a documentary about the most discriminating devotees of the demands a kind of selflessness, an aware­ not suggesting that dancers don’t take what cut with the paring knife) and talks Perhaps given Ginny’s immunity young ballet students. The contrast of these genre. When Juliet Bodine, a writer of his­ ness of other bodies and spaces and a giving work they can get or that people in other to her, and in return, she gives him from the most damaging aspects of dancers, full of hope and dedication and torical romances (as is Pall herself), attends over of oneself to others without which we professions aren’t disappointed when they her largely silent but adoring company. ballet, this is a utopian vision of a ambition, with the assortment of drifters she ballet rehearsals to provide moral support can’t have a ballet. achieve less than they expected—indeed She endures the continual violation of F.’s dancer’s life. But what are utopias for if finds in L.A. enables Katie to acknowledge for her best friend Ruth, a neurotic choreog­ As dancers, each day our bodies struggle this is the very definition of a mid-life cri­ cruelty and control both in and out of ballet not to comment on better possibilities? her desire to dance while letting go of her rapher in crisis, one of the dancers is mur­ to do what bodies were never meant to do. sis, and it extends to more than ballet. But class, but in exchange she relishes her own White Swan, Black Swan, Adrienne self-destructive envy and sense of failure. dered. As mystery readers might expect, They are figures that become figures, an other arts, professions, and disciplines are power over him. He can force her to allow Sharp’s exquisite collection of linked short She reasons: Juliet decides to play detective, becoming allegory of our attempts to transform our­ more forgiving, and the people who practice him to pierce her ears with a needle despite stories, captures the dailiness of what it something of an expert on dancers in the selves into expressions of a larger artistic them often find at least as much pleasure her unspeakable fear (she is paralyzed, it knows it, means to be a dancer. Written mostly in the So maybe 1 wasn't of the highest possi­ course of her investigation. Indeed, part of vision—of the composer, of the choreogra­ and self-esteem in the doing as in recogni­ unable to move or resist), but she can taunt undermining its compulsions first person or focalized through particular ble Brahmin caste. So what? This was the fun of this novel for those familiar with pher, of the particular dance teacher whose tion. While ballet dancers certainly love and seduce him into action, as when she own premises even as that can’t be denied, characters’ points of view, these stories better than watching from behind the ballet is seeing that milieu through Juliet’s class we take, of our own internal image of their art (who could make such sacrifices defies him by wearing make-up to class and it asserts them. Early on, as we see in episodes that incarnate a psychology, an environment, a camera. And it was certainly better eyes, as she learns about the paraphernalia what we might become. What is ballet but a where love is absent?), for most, the pleas­ he scrubs her face clean, a humiliating Zimroth tells us, “Ballet is a world in which vividly convey the effect of not be being world. Here, for instance, is the decisive than working at Clifton’s. At least at the of dancers’ lives; this also makes the novel perpetual effort to replicate a purity and ure is tainted by failure—failure to be the descent from the god-like surveillance and “normal values are reversed. Brutality is able to stop oneself—from following ritu­ moment when Joanna, the main character of Met there was a real paycheck and the accessible for the uninitiated. Yet even in a grace lurking somewhere deep in Plato’s teacher’s favorite, to get into the right com­ minimal physical effort with which he seen as a gift, fear as devotion, sadism as als, from loving, from dancing. Yet context “Bugaku,” decides to break up with her fringe benefit of reflected glory. There novel in which a ballet company is ostensi­ cave, a perpetual attempt to capture an ideal pany, to be more than a member of the teaches his classes. Anticipating what she love.” But this then gives the lie to the anal­ makes all the difference. In “real life,” such dancer boyfriend rather than commit herself was applause, when I took a bow with bly the setting, there is a serious discussion that must always differ from and defer (to) corps, to be less than the public’s darling of knows will be the objections of her readers ogy between love and ballet that begins her obsessiveness takes forms that are at best to marriage and children as he wants her to my forty sisters. I got to wear fake eye­ about what it takes to be a dancer. It does its original? Perhaps it isn’t all that remark­ the moment. Dancers are so often anorexic (this one included), and against her own account. That Zimroth’s relationship with counterproductive, as in Penelope’s quest do. He proposes after finishing his perform­ lashes and pretty costumes and to gaze seem that you can’t write about ballet with­ able that the adults in this production are and bulimic not only because they must be deployment of the word “rape,” Zimroth her mature lover is a “gavotte” of power and for a purity of environment that she can ance: at the likes of Baryshnikov and out writing on this subject in one way or capable of making this attempt, even as our thin but also because they have appropriated takes responsibilty for this relationship: seduction proves not that she loved F. as one never attain, and at worst destructive, as Godunov and Nureyev and Fonteyn at another. Juliet and Ruth argue whether aging bodies make it unlikely that we will the available cultural vocabulary of punish­ adult loves another, but rather that the abuse with Oscar’s passion which threatens to end He makes me cling to him while he a range of two meters. And I got to ambition is fueled by “an irresistible inner succeed! I’m one of several ballet parents ment and self-hatred. Is it any surprise that I took part freely, it was my fault, I liked she suffered as a child influences her rela­ his marriage. But compulsion is precisely parades me about the small room, dance. Okay, not with the big Brahmins. drive to achieve excellence” or “a need for who dances regularly and who is perform­ for many, ballet digs in deep and leaves its it, I wanted it; in fact I sought it out and sub­ tionships later in life. And if this memoir is what is needed to be a great artist, and this holding my mouth to his, his hands At the back of the stage. But hey, one social recognition, a need to have their ing today, all of us fairly driven people scars? mitted to it again and again... I enjoyed the wrong as a model of love, it is equally mis­ is what Ginny has, and what sets her apart under my thighs, his body the axis could always look forward to reincar­ value authenticated . . . by other people.” whose idea of a good time is to work equal­ This paradigm of mentorship is histori­ subtle eroticism of power, the delicate guided as a model of pedagogy. Zimroth from others, including competent, even around which all other objects rotate nation. Far from being a gratuitous philosophical ly hard at something other than what we do cally specific. Emerging in the milieu of interplay of threat and surrender, of one herself knows this and eventually leaves F.’s excellent performers such as Oscar himself, and blur. I've got my head back and I'm discussion, however, this conversation actu­ for a living (a nurse, a contractor, a lawyer, Russian ballet in the late nineteenth and person's possession, unquestioned, of school because she realizes that if she stays, who plays in the ballet’s orchestra. This dif­ almost saying yes, and then I catch a Katie rejects the twisted values of ballet ally points to the motive for murder, which a scholar). But the young people—and it is a early twentieth centuries, it was both inten­ another... Children can collude. I colluded. I she will not become a dancer but remain his ference is signaled in one of the novel’s glimpse of myself in the mirror, a comme il faut, with its denial of the achieve­ you’ve probably already figured out by now very young company—are indeed incredi­ sified and popularized in this country by loved him. disciple; F. and ballet are not synonymous, many brilliant details: Ginny dyes her hair woman in street clothes hanging on to ments of all but the very best dancers (imag­ if you’ve read the rest of this review. ble in this respect. Like superheroes, who George Balanchine, whose choreography, in fact, they are at odds with one another. blonde, ostensibly as part of a makover, but a man in costume, and that’s exactly ine how good you have to be to get into the Cherchez la danse! also don tights to assume alter egos, these pedagogy, and personality have continued But however fixated she is on F„ Zimroth These inconsistencies suggest, against the this also figures the alchemical transforma­ what I’m afraid of. corps at ABT), and repairs the damage they mild-mannered, seemingly ordinary tweens to exert an incalculable influence on is in love with more than her ballet master, grain of the rest of her memoir, that dancers tion when Ginny begins to demonstrate not have wrought on her own life. and teens attend to their education for part American ballet in the twenty odd years and he in love with more than a pupil: They become dancers not because of exploitative only technical ability but great artistry. It’s all there: the erotic lure of the rela­ Dancer, a fictional biography of Rudolph * * * of the day, later transforming themselves since his death. Replicated in schools and are both in love with dance itself, and or abusive relationships with their teachers, Ginny is golden. tionship that nearly convinces Joanna to Nureyev, also explores what it means to be a into beings whose concentration, dedica­ companies across the country, it is a model with her body in so far as it but in spite of such relationships. Narrative emphasis also conveys this make her boyfriend the center (the axis) of dancer, but unlike Sharp’s stories, which Ballet will never be a gentle art. It makes tion, and determination exceed that of most that the professional ballet dancer will con­ represents the chance for beauty and perfec­ What then does make the dancer? point. We learn much about Oscar’s life— her existence, the temptation to commit her­ imagine the thoughts of real historical fig­ incredible demands—physical, psychologi­ people of any age. front at some point in her career. It has tion. She confesses, “I allowed him to do In The Four Temperaments, Yona Zeldis his childhood, his training, his career, his self to a “real life,” and the moment of ures at length, Colum McCann’s book rarely cal, spiritual—and those who pursue it seri­ This is not news. This kind of absorption become an accepted way of producing great whatever he wanted with me, to me, in the McDonough locates that answer in the mys­ marriage, his wife, his children, and above epiphany, when Joanna knows that her drive portrays the world from Nureyev’s point of ously give up a normal life; they cannot be is what any art or sport demands of those dancers, but does this have to be the case? Is interest of artistic devotion.” When teries of personality rather than the erotics all, his gradual-but happy acceptance of the to dance would preclude her ever being view. Instead, we see Nureyev primarily who do it with intensity. But there is some- this an essential aspect of the art? If not. Zimroth’s parents demand that she take of pedagogy. In a novel whose lovely, sim­ pleasures of domestic life that come to have happy with such a life. The collection through the eyes of other people in his life: continued on page 11 P ^ 8 TheBOOKPRESS November 2003 Carrots switched over to that tongue, in which he searched for more permanent lodging. descended upon the room, proceeded to was evidently fluent. Hans had come into our lives at that time, make his announcement- Thomas Eisner ill'll From the very moment we were ushered albeit briefly, but on an occasion that was at “We have just heard over the wireless to our table, I was struck by the fact that the once momentous and memorable. that the Hindenburg blew up. The dirigible. Dinner was a social event in our family. waiter looked familiar. I couldn’t help feel­ The Pension Massen was like any other. In Lakehurst, New Jersey. Burned up. Lots My mother managed always to cook an ing that we had met the gentleman before, The rooms were modest but comfortable, of casualties...” exquisite evening meal, and the three of and I shared the thought with the family. and the meals were communal, served fam­ The news was devastating. Silence gave us—my father, my sister, and I—tried hard “Do any of you remember where we might ily style in a spacious dining room. There way to expressions of horror and disbelief, never to miss being present at the table. have met our waiter?” I asked. But none was also a large garden with beautiful and eventually to agitated conversation, as Dinner was a time for voicing enthusiasms shared the recollection. My mother, who flower beds, beside which I sat for hours, the entire assemblage converged upon the and concerns, for exchanging ideas, and for was very shy, and reluctant to strike up con­ keeping track of butterflies and other visit­ kitchen, to be by the radio. enjoying one another’s company. There versations with strangers, pleaded that I not ing pollinators. I was left alone, somewhat frightened, were rules about table manners and inter­ make a scene. “Please don’t embarrass the The food was good and plentiful, and the not knowing quite what to make of the rupting, but enforcement was strictly by tragedy. It didn’t take long for me to real­ gentle admonishment. Speaking with a full ize, however, that I shared my solitude with mouth appeared almost to be tolerated. my carrots, and that this presented a unique None of us had allergies or any particular opportunity. I looked at the mound on my food aversions, except me. I had a phobia. I plate, and at the bowl from whence it came, despised carrots. I was given to understand and feeling not the slightest twinge of con­ that they were rich in vitamins and indis­ science, proceeded to return the former to pensable, and that I would never be allowed the latter. It was just a matter of transfer­ to do without them. 1 tried every strategy, ring the carrots with a spoon, and the whole but the hideous roots managed always to operation took seconds. I proceeded to eat find their way to my plate. And, alas, the the remainder of the food on my plate, so it rule was that if it was on my plate, I had to would not look as though only the carrots eat it. There was no way of bypassing that were missing. Everyone eventually rule. I always hoped that I might be over­ returned to the table, still visibly shaken looked when the carrots were dished out, from the events. I was worried that my par­ but no such luck. I experimented in count­ ents would take note of my transgression, less ways to see if I could mask the carrots’ but they didn’t. flavor by mixing them with other items on What had come to me in a flash as we my plate, but usually to no avail. Carrots were reminiscing with Hans, is that he and were a staple, and they were a requirement. the waiter who announced the demise of There was no honest way by which I could the Hindenburg, were one and the same avoid them. person. My recollection was vivid and I Fate would have it, however, that 1 was was certain I was right. Hans himself con­ once, and only once, able to avoid them, firmed that he had been at the Pension and that was by cheating. It was but a minor Massen at that time of the tragedy, and he victory in the carrot war, but satisfying recalled waiting on my parents. We mar­ nonetheless, and I was able to keep the veled that we should have solved the mys­ transgression secret for years. tery, and talked at some length about shared Circumstances, however, would eventually experiences. My parents had never known force me to divulge the truth. The occasion of the trick I had pulled with the carrots, for the revelation, oddly enough, was my and they were not quite sure whether after parents’ silver wedding anniversary. so many years they should still take me to My sister and I were both home from task. In the end, they had a good laugh, and college, and we decided that on such an Thomas Eisner seemed reassured when I told them I had no important day we should take our parents additional such dishonesties to report. out to dinner. My parents rarely left home man”, she said. “You are probably imagin­ ambience generally cheerful. I was some­ Funny how things turn out. I now at night. My mother had no driver’s license, ing things.” I kept silent, but not because I what awed by the diversity of strangers that love carrots. and my father, who had lost an eye to glau­ thought I was wrong. shared our table, but fascinated by the mul­ coma, drove only in the daytime. Gating out And then, as he was tallying the bill, the tilingual conversation. Most guests were was therefore to be a special event. We waiter himself spoke up. “Excuse me,” he refugees from Europe, as we were, and I picked a nice little restaurant in mid- said, “I don’t want to be intrusive, but took pleasure in confusing those within Thomas Eisner is a biologist at Cornell Manhattan, made our reservations, and on could it be that we met before? ” I felt vin­ earshot by speaking alternatively in the and author of the new book, For Love of the festive evening drove into the city. dicated. I mentioned that I too thought that three languages I knew. With strangers at Insects. Everything went well. We were all in a we had met, and I proposed that we should the table, my parents were prone to be more splendid mood, and as usual, had much to try to establish right then and there where finicky about table manners. Speaking with talk about. My parents were genuinely fond our paths had crossed. a full mouth was now strictly forbidden. of one another, and it was lovely to be treat­ Easier said then done. His path had been However, rather than risk embarrassing me ed to their reminiscences. The food was just as tortuous as ours. We ourselves had by scolding me verbally when I was in vio­ excellent, the setting hospitable, and the left Hitler’s Germany in 1933 for Spain, lation, they would simply fix their eyes waiter attentive. In fact, the waiter, upon from where we fled in 1936 to France, to upon me and frown. Faking incomprehen­ hearing us converse in German, himself escape the Spanish Civil War. From France sion, I would make it a point to stare back we eventually left for South America, quizzically with the most angelic of expres­ where we established residence, first in sions. Argentina for a period of months, and then I had hoped it would be otherwise, but in Uruguay for 10 years, before emigrating Argentina was carrot country. The Pension to the United States in 1947. Massen, in fact, seemed bent on a cam­ Hans, our waiter, had also been born in paign to eliminate night blindness. Carrots Germany. He too lived in France and else­ were almost daily fare, and they seemed where in Europe for a span, and then in always to be served in the largest bowl. My South America, before moving to the mother made sure that I was never deprived States, where he joined the Army. He had of my share. West End Reading Series seen action in France and after the war S at.7pm One day, on account of circumstances lived briefly in Paris, where he met his that I knew would never repeat themselves, wife. He eventually returned to the United I did get a break. The evening had started States, and had been in his present job for like all others. We had assembled for din­ several years. ner, dished out the food, and were about to The West End Reading We compared our lives’ trajectories and begin eating. Carrots were on the menu, H tic 6mis Hat Meant t« You Tltejf ifaite tfs CasWatet W takes place I came to the conclusion that we could and I had received my allocation. I had just £ M on the fourth Saturday have met on any number of occasions, but begun deliberating whether I would eat the FROM THE AUTHOR OF of every month 1 exactly when and where seemed impossible carrots outright, stir them into the mashed IF THE GODS HAD MEANT US | at G im m e ! coffee to determine. potatoes, or save them for last, when the I on State Street. I don’t know what finally did it, but the kitchen door opened abruptly, to admit one TO VOTE THEY WOULD HAVE 7pm . revelation came to me in a flash. It was in of the waiters. The man was obviously dis­ I GIVEN US CANDIDATES v Free Argentina, in our first days in Buenos traught. He wore an agonized expression on Aires, while we were booked in a pension his face, and seemed initially unable to Viking ❖ Hardcover Gimme! coffee located at 506 W. State S t, Ith a c a in the outskirts of the town, the Pension speak. He looked around, sharing glances $24.95 Massen, which had provide^ a base as we with those assembled and, as utter silence P ) ) W .)/ 7 *:• ' ■' ' November 2003 The fiOOKPRESS page 9 Being and Nothingness

loves in the collapse of the twin towers, and biography filched from the life of found respect or out of profound poverty of Christopher Furst has had his philosophy (his civilized stuff­ Wittgenstein. Quent says, “Raw importuni­ the imagination? Where is the imaginative i ing?) knocked out of him. “I think I was ty assails him at every corner, and life is a response to what West calls the “Mecca- The Immensity of the Here and Now, once a philosopher, who now can remember jigsaw puzzle with no interlocking pieces. nization” of Ground Zero? It’s as if writers A Novel of 9.11 none of his concepts or precepts...It is no He takes it all on the chin.” were waiting to see who would respond first By Paul West use even trying to move forward. Panic has Part I of the novel, “The Burial of the before they, too, would commit themselves Voyant Publishing, 2003, Hardcover wiped out the best of me.” He lives in Zulu Dead” (a nod to the first section of T.S. to print. In the past, poets had the “matter of $23 Time, zero hours, zero minutes, the aviation Eliot’s ‘The Wasteland”), takes its epigraph Greece and Rome” to draw upon for inspi­ term for Greenwich Mean Time, but here a from Flaubert: “Anyone’s death always ration. Why do we shrink from the matter of A few years ago Paul West fired a warn­ condition of perpetual midnight. In the releases something like an aura of stupefac­ our own latter-day Troy? A lot of questions, ing flare with his essay “In Defense of vacancy after his double loss, Shrop seeks tion, so difficult is it to grasp the irruption of which, if we answered them honestly, Purple Prose,” not just to signal what he saw out his friend Quent, a psychiatrist who lost nothingness and to believe that it has actual­ would reveal our odd squeamishness, our as the descent toward minimalism in his lower legs and one eye in an earlier war: ly taken place.” Shrop and Quent, West’s unwillingness to come to grips with catas­ American writing, but to reassert the prima­ modem update of Flaubert’s duo Bouvard et trophe, with death. It’s a curious lassitude. cy of fiction that makes use of all the possi­ Perhaps I am consulting the wrong Pecuchet, are drawn again and again to Of course there have been countless jour­ bilities at its disposal. man, the wrong one among many Ground Zero, America’s embodiment of the nalistic responses to the tragedy, from op-ed I’m thinking of Virginia Woolf’s jazz of wrong ones, but it’s friendship that abyss. “They call it Ground Zero,” Shrop pieces to quick assemblages of eyewitness consciousness, Proust’s obsessive search for draws me. the desire to hear the awful says, “though there is nothing zero-like reports and news stories. But where are the lost time, Roa Bastos’s supreme improvisa­ news from a friendly mouth.Trouble is, about it except the absence of human life.” fiction writers willing to take on such a tion, and Nabokov’s secret nerves of art. though, as I’ve said, he could equip me Rather than inuring the men to the calamity, major contemporary experience? Recent Purple is not the sole color of West’s prose, with someone else's system. Or, worse, their visits to the pit keep their wounds open. novels by Iain Banks and Nicholas Mosley however; he ranges across the full width of re-equip me with my own without me Quent, too, becomes unhinged, and literally come to mind, but Paul West’s lyrical medi­ the spectrum, pulling in all the hues of visi­ ever recognizing it. Perhaps a few hints steps into the fire in an act of immolation. tation on destruction and grief stands as a ble light, as well as radio waves, back­ from my own system, proffered by him, Shrop contemplates revenge against the high watermark. His bold searching and ground radiation, and the most penetrating would bring the whole thing back to destroyers of delight even as he conjures up refusal to shrink from tragedy make him x-rays—like the Hubble Telescope and the me, as if you were to whisper “thrown” the image of his beloved, whose name we rarer than radium. Very Large Array rolled into one. to Heidegger or “monad" to Leibniz. learn on the last page. West’s new novel, a threnody on the Why have so few novels come out of the aftermath of 9/11, focuses on Shrop, a Instead of forcing him to retrieve his twin towers’ destruction? In the face of such Christopher Furst is assistant editor of philosopher who has lost the woman he memories, Quent feeds Shrop a substitute extremity do we remain silent out of pro­ Cornell Alumni Magazine. In Praise of Cassandra continued from page 1 ing the “helpful power of reason.” So did Mark Essig Albert Einstein and Hannah Arendt, who Socratically, “who attacked us?” His answer were among their countless soulmates and was that the aggressors were “those who felt supporters in the Diaspora. that they had been attacked by us, namely by What does it say about our own historical Mark Essig reads from Edison and the Electric Chair: A Story our peaceful conquest” under an imperial moment that while the Middle East is afire, of Light and Death. Technology, medicine, murder, gruesome umbrella, and who “accused us of being rob­ so few Jewish intellectuals have the learning, experiments and an American Hero. bers.” Of course, Israelis and Zionists coun­ courage, and integrity to defy the “megalo­ tered this charge with the claim that “this was mania of the leaders and the giddiness of the our country two thousand years ago and it masses”? Today’s crisis demands not prosaic was there that we created great things.” criticism but an alternative vision. It might be Though a sworn Zionist, Buber questioned well to recall that bi-nationalism actually was the credibility of this claim: “do we genuine­ a real historical possibility in Palestine until ly expect this reason to be accepted [by the the use of the forcible declaration of Israel’s Tom Eisner Arabs] without argument; and would we independence on May 14, 1948. To renounce accept it were we in their place?” Besides, or ignore unorthodox but well-founded Imagine beetles ejecting defensive sprays as hot as boil­ Buber recoiled at efforts to swathe the alternatives is to embrace a teleological ing water; female moths holding their mates for ransom; Zionist construction in religion, whose and determinist view of history which pre­ caterpillars disguising themselves as flowers by fastening instrumentalization he reproved as much as cludes genuine debate about the past, pres­ petals to their bodies; termites emitting a viscous glue to Sigmund Freud. ent, and future. rally fellow soldiers...Tom Eisner details this tiny world in Buber was convinced that, short of a major For Love of Insects. change of policy especially on the Arab Question, any future peace would “be a Arno J. Mayer is a Professor o f History, stunted peace, no more than [a state of] non­ Emeritus at Princeton University. belligerency liable to turn into war at any moment.” Such a tenuous armistice could temper neither mutual “suspicion” nor “the thirst for vengeance.” Besides, Buber argued, Chris Moriarty Israel would be “compelled to maintain a posture of vigilance forever,” at the enor­ Chris Moriarty reads from Spin State, the thrilling story of mous cost of “occupying the most talented one woman's quest to wrest truth from chaos, love from members of our society.” In January 1949, violence, and reality from illusion in a post-human universe when Israel was winning the war, he wistful­ of emergent Als, genetic constructs, and illegal wetware... ly mused that, while “’Everyone with one of his hands wrought in the work, and with the other held his weapon’ (Nehemiah 4:11), you , November 23rd, 2:30pm in the can build a wall, but not an attractive house, let alone a temple.” In their time the radical but loyal critics with a Cassandra-like sentience were, of course, “called defeatists . . . and were All events are co-sponsored by looked upon as quislings.” But, in Buber’s They are held in the Borg-Warner words, “they remained faithful to the ideal” and struggled against its being replaced “by the Green Street entrance the Asmodeus [evil spirit] of a political Books are available at 10% chimera.” Contemptuously referred to as 273-5055 • “certain intellectuals,” they overcame “despair” by keeping the faith and by invok­ c J ): i 3*i.l page 10 The BOOKPRESS November 2003 The River Runs Through U s and mastery of poetic technique that time nature and in the human mind. Nature from beginning to end through the atmos­ Jim McConkey (which permits the maturity of both vision destroys to create anew. The human mind is phere it evokes and the poet’s ability to con­ and skill) can bring to talent. Another is the as capable of destroying—the nuclear bomb vey sensations and emotions. As natural fact | Orioling mutual emphasis on song. And Yeats’ golden is the prime example—as it is of inventing and as metaphor, the river runs through this By Ann Silsbee bird is singing of past, present, and future— useful objects and contemplating, or giving story, and is given (much like the chorus in a Red Hen Press, 2003 the underlying melody of both Orioling and voice to, an encompassing spiritual insight. Greek tragedy) its own voice, its own com­ 87 pages. $13.95 The Book o f Ga. As for the “undertow” that “rises in the mentary. As Ann admits in the dedication But even as I was thinking of those similar­ flutist” as she plays—does it originate in the honoring her grandmother, the story is prima­ The Book of Ga ities, I was aware of the immense difference unconscious mind, as a kind of genetic or bio­ rily an imagined one: the intimate details, the By Ann Silsbee that separates “Sailing to Byzantium” from logical memory of the human genesis in some feelings ascribed to Miriam, come from the Custom Words, 2003 any poem in Ann’s two books. That differ­ unknown sea, a memory that, from this poet’s own life. It is true enough that any­ (Publication forthcoming) ence provides me a way to describe her song, moment onward, participates in nature’s body’s life—what she or he is doing, feeling, her voice—that is to say, the interpretation flow? “Undertow” is a significant word, for it or thinking during a day or a lifetime—is Ann Silsbee, whose unexpected death on she gives to our human existence. In connects the flutist’s mind to “prior minds,” a unknowable to another; we gain empathy and August 28 saddened all those who had come “Sailing” and other work of his poetic maturi­ phrase that no doubt includes the composer of understanding of other people through the to know and admire her over the decades of ty, Yeats conceives of an ideal completion the piece and previous performers of it and projection upon them of what we believe and her life in Ithaca, possessed a variety of tal­ denied us in our brief and fragmented span of possibly others even farther back in time. feel ourselves. Miriam’s story gains its ents. She was a painter, pianist and composer living and strives to achieve it through imagi­ Later poems in the collection amplify what authenticity through its creator’s knowledge as well as a poet, though poetry—or so I nation; his bird, gorgeous artifact that it is, is implied in this opening song. For Ann, it that the eternal river that runs through nature judge from the artistry of the two books I’ve sings of the passage of time from a remove, soon becomes apparent, we sing not because runs also, if much too briefly, through each just read—must have become the dominant for the bird itself is immortal—beyond we or our artifacts are immortal, but because, one of us. . i , , creative concern of her later years. nature, beyond change. For Ann, change as mortal creatures, we respond to the immor­ The Book o f Ga is preceded by a poem that Only a few days before she died, I phoned forms the very fabric of our living, and binds tality of nature as it flows through us, binding serves as overture to the narrative. It is titled Ann to say that I had agreed to review us to the changes of the weather, the changes past and future to the ephemeral present. In “What Do You Mean, Praise?” I read that Orioling, which had won the 2001 Benjamin of the seasons. We exist within, and are part Ann’s own song, such insight has an intimate opening poem on the same morning that I Saltman Poetry Award, for The Bookpress. of, the flux of nature itself. Her poems make relationship with all that she values—love heard of Ann’s death. Its introductory stanza During our conversation, she told me that a many references to water: the word “flowing” (particularly for husband, children, and kin­ struck me as if she’d had a premonition of her second book of her poetry, The Book o f Ga, often occurs," river” even more frequently. In folk), affectionate relationships with many death, for it begins this way: was about to be published. At my suggestion, its ceaseless flow, time is conventionally others, music, an appreciation of the natural she mailed me a copy of the manuscript so referred to as a river; in Ann’s poetry, we have environment, the pleasures of the body. (Her Yes, we could die tomorrow, that 1 could review them together. I am glad our moment of time within the flow of nature. ‘Tryst for the Adams and Eves” is as sensual A tvwxar crash, a second’s misjudgrig of speed that I asked to see that second book. Ann had The poems of Orioling are arranged not in a poem as I have read in a long time.) The Another plane might ram our woodsAnthrax been pleased that the first publisher to consid­ chronological order of their composition but affirmation—the praise of life—in her poetry could do it,a heart attack, cancer, even a stupid er The Book of Ga had accepted it at once; as a demonstration of the ongoing movement is anything but sentimental. Her poems fall down the back stairs. having read it, I can see the reason for such a in us and all the phenomena of nature. How acknowledge not only the bombs we make, quick and affirmative response. does one account for that mysterious impulse but the prejudices we are capable of, and they But the second and concluding stanza is Structurally, the two volumes are quite dif­ in humans to create, to sing, during the brief take into account the barbarous acts that took the answer given to the hard fact of death, ferent. Orioling is a collection of separate years that are granted us? The opening poem place in Serbia and Afghanistan during the an answer implicit in both volumes poems, each complete in itself. Some of the of Orioling provides the title for the collec­ composition of Orioling. And they speak, as under review: poems in The Book o f Ga can stand alone (ten tion. The orioles and thrushes that sing in that they must, of human endings. According to a of them were published in magazines, and poem are not hammered from gold—they are very loose translation of the Roman poet Haven’t we always been in line one of them was nominated for a Pushcart real birds, and their song is not for our aes­ Lucretius’ On the Nature of Things, “Life for some kind of ending? It’s enough for now Prize). Nevertheless, the book itself is one thetic pleasure but to claim territory and gain lives on/ it is the lives, the lives, the lives that that our son’s on the phone, telling us today’s long poem, all of its parts interconnected mates. The poem tells us that human song has die.” That is in harmony with Ann’s voice; griefs, yesterday’s joys.What matters is to tug through its story of a life as well as through a less obvious motivation, for (among other and so is this phrase from a poem by another lightly on the thin line of his voice, stretch it the river that is both a physical fact and the causes) it issues from the complexity of a long-time Ithaca resident, Archie Ammons: ewer the his and woods—what puts between us channel within which that narrative flows. mind aware of itself—from a consciousness “|T]his is forever, we are now in it...” wl not breakThis must be what praise is, singing In his later years, William Butler Yeats always seeking to know how or why it came Though I have devoted the majority of this the young men our bodies began, who go on wrote what most critics consider his finest to be: review to the song I hear throughout in this world with their wives, girls, boys, poetry, including “Sailing to Byzantium.” Orioling, nearly everything I have said about the mothers and fathers who go on in us, too, “Once out of nature,” Yeats writes as the con­ Human, you can’t help trying to understand that collection applies equally to The Book o f and ancestorswe never kne/vvtfo dwd irsuspected cluding stanza for that poem, What stalk you flower from, what undertow Ga. As a narrative—ostensibly, the story of in our corpuscles and ganglions, smiling us, rises in the flutist to quicken with breath the life of Ann’s grandmother Miriam Nye weeping us, walking with us all our lives long. 1 shall never take the arcs and dips of prior minds, or mind Loomis, “Ga” being the name given her by My bodily form from any natural thing. itself, playing with fugue, with E=MC2, her young grandchildren—the book is imme­ Not everything carried along in our blood But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make inventing wheel, organ, flute, B Minor Mass— diately accessible to any reader. It has the and nerves from the past is benign, of course. Of hammered gold and gold enamelling Buddha—the bomb.The song you bear buds appeal of a film by Ken Bums, for its story is A single word in the opening stanza— To keep a drowsy Emperor awake; Under your mind’s tongue like a first word. carried by a number of voices that are speak­ “anthrax”—reminds us of the plagues we are Or set upon a golden bough to sing ing against a documentary background of capable of visiting upon each other. The affir­ To lords and ladies of Byzantium Though it depends upon mind, human cre­ photographs, letters, newspaper clippings, mation at the ending encompasses that, Of what is past, or passing, or to come. ativity is analogous to nature’s creativity, as and a quarantine notice. From such evidence, though. Is this poem sufficient consolation, the references to “stalk,” “flower” and “bud” Ann constructs her narrative. In it, Miriam for those who knew and admired Ann? For My reading of Ann’s two books led me to imply. And clearly the repeated use of nouns grows up in a river town—Marietta, Ohio, at her, it was; for us, it will have to do. remember that stanza from “Sailing to and verbs beginning with “b” give these con­ the confluence of the Ohio and Muskingum Byzantium” for a number of reasons. One cluding lines of the poem the sound of one Rivers. She marries Charley, a photographer reason is that, like Yeats as an older poet, Ann explosion after another: those bursts of ener­ from Parkersburg, a nearby city on the other Jim McConkey is the author of several demonstrates in these books the assurance gy mark the act of creativity itself, both in side of the river. They become a family with novels and memoirs. two children, both boys. Five years after the Listen to marriage, Charley dies, a victim of typhoid fever. With her boys, Miriam returns to her PIANOS childhood home to live with her father, now a fo r widower. A flood inundates much of • Rebuilt progressive Marietta. The father remarries; Miriam must • Reconstructed WEOS be subservient to father and stepmother alike. • Bought and She escapes to Boston with her children. • Sold 89.7 FM/88.1 FM alternative Here she attends cooking school, to gain the • Moved credentials for a job—she gets one at a school • Tuned Geneva/lthaca news programs for girls—that will support her and the boys. Miriam and the woman who teaches French at the school buy a summer home far from Democracy Now!, m -f, 9-10 am. urban confinement. In that Maine farmhouse, close to rivers and lakes and surrounded by J k fields and woods, her life is happier than it Free Speech Radio News Unwelcome Guests has been since the death of Charley. Now Pacifica reporters against a program about wealth, grown, her children depart; then the French power and people's teacher marries, leaving her alone. Ithaca Piano Rebuilders censorship resistance to the Ultimately, Miriam enters a nursing home: Monday-Friday, her mind is failing. The moment of her death (607) 272-6547 New World Order 3104th St., Ithaca (Off Hancock St. 2 blocks from Rt. 13) is not recorded. 6-6:30 p.m. Sundays, 9-11 p.m. It is a simple story, one similar to the lives Complete rebuilding services. No job too big or too small. Call us. of many others. And yet it held my attention November 2UU3 T he BO u iu t u ^ s Luminous Moments in Paris” (2). The moment of birth has its cally, this poem fully embodies the spiritual Not a book for bedtime reading and not Edward A. Dougherty antecedent long before conception or even hovering of time and the possibilities as well poems for those who want narrative, Blue - : : • > l -' > meeting the father. Notice that she uses the as shortcomings of language to mediate Hour is demanding, but its rewards are at a Blue Hour present tense: the child “rows” as if he is still experience. In the list are indications of how whole other level. It bodies forth what it says By Carolyn Forchd approaching, still arriving. to read it. The phrase “a litany of broken but about the “world’s ensouling in a gallery of Harper Collins, 2003 The language is consistently rich. Even remembered events” is one way to conceive sadness” (60). At first, the images and the 73 pages, $24.95, clothbound when conveying harsh content, the writing is of the fragments, but she writes that “mean­ lyricism of the rich language stand out, then elegant and musical: “Beneath the ice, open- ing did not survive that loss of sequence” the complexity of the awareness impresses, In her notes about her previous book, The eyed but absent, she who I was, with ribbon (47) as if to acknowledge that sense breaks and finally the profound spiritual experience Angel of History nearly a decade ago, scars faint across her. Every tip of wheat- down in some fundamental way without typ­ of living “in the bardo of becoming” (43) Carolyn Forchd says that her eary poetic “has stalk lit by sun” (12), “...a broken clock, a ical linear sequencing. Still, there is mean­ releases joy. It is a book that will open itself given way to a work which has desired its boy wakened by his father’s whip, then the ing, a knowing. The form itself enacts the with each returning. own bodying forth: polyphonic, broken, world as if whorled into place—” (24), “so liminal experience of no-longer being lyri­ haunted, and in ruins, with no possibility of that the dead climb up out of the river to cal, linear poems but not-yet whole aware­ restoration.” Her new poems are still haunted blacken its banks” (53). From her first book, nesses. The mind seeks to unify the lines, Edward Dougherty is a poet who teaches at with various voices and maintain her lovely Carolyn Forchd has proven herself to be a particularly since they are set into stanzas. Corning Community College. He and his wife were peace volunteers in Hiroshima, lyrical, elegeic tone. They are paradoxically poet of remarkable lyricism and imagery, but Notice how the following lines build in the Japan, fo r 2 1/2 years. His poems have more broken yet more restorative. She writes starting in The Angel of History and even sequence of sentence syntax then almost dis­ appeared in many periodicals in the U.S. and in the title poem, “Even the most broken life more fulfilled in this collection, she makes solve: Japan, such as Poetry East, International can be restored to its moments” (2). As lumi­ language itself a voice among her many other Quarterly, West Branch, SLANT and Cream nous moments accumulate across the eleven voices, a presence and subject. With titles and it is afljosed that we are desmbrig the world City Review. poems in this collection, a kind of affirma­ like “Sequestered Writing” and “Writing and its corresponding moment in the past tion is practiced that is spiritual, historical, Kept Hidden” and even “Prayer” there is a and night, a knock at the window and personal. concentration on the life-work of writing and and night, a storehouse Mencken Solution Blue Hour opens with a quote from Martin language. Buber: “These moments are immortal, and She remarks directly on this with “that When the sequence becomes lists or as MMMM Ml’JiriM MMIIM most transitory of all; no content may be ing-ing of verbs in an eternal present” (54) connections and contexts become harder to [’][

continued from page 7 you get over a trauma? You return to the scene imaginatively, in your therapy, so that ordinary people, as these books all show in you can bring the experience to a better res­ various ways. And wherever there is compe­ olution and achieve closure. Well, I’ve tition (and none so fierce as in ballet), there returned to the scene, not via therapy—a JHUMPA LAHIRI will be hierarchies of talent and achieve­ cognitive return—but in the way dancers do ment. Be that as it may, I believe that we can everything, with my body. Of course, I can’t have the achievement ballet demands and really redo it: I can’t be sixteen again and the competition it inevitably entails without take class as a teenager and see my leg the particularly unhealthy forms they have extending above my head in second position taken, especially for women. I see this at and be a snowflake in Nutcracker and have a Ithaca Ballet, which has produced some fine different experience with ballet than the one professional dancers without the resources I had. But that’s okay, it’s enough to know of major company schools, which can and that the possibility exists for my daughters. 1 JljL lj do require that their students give up every­ And as for me, I’m over it; I can take pleas­ thing else in their lives, including serious ure in dance without the pain (psychic pain schooling, to pursue their careers. anyway, the physical is another story). NAMESAKE In “The Brahmins” Katie observes that Anyway, as Katie says, “hey, one could a novel those who continue ballet past the age of always look forward to reincarnation.” Houghton Mifflin twelve are “haunted by dancing” the rest of Hardcover ❖ $24.00 their lives. This was certainly true for me for many years, even when I stopped taking Wendy Jones is the author o f a critical An effortless and self- class and thought I would never return. study titled Consensual Fictions: Women, assured bildungsroman... What Sharp is getting at here is that ballet is Liberalism and the English Novel, forth­ — Book Magazine for many a traumatic experience— trauma is coming from The University of Toronto another thing that people don’t get over, or Press. do so only with great difficulty. And how do i >1 * i i. » V page 12 The BOOKPRESS November 2003 My Red White and Blue Guts Uncoil

1 8 My grandfather presented me with the gleaming bands His bones thread through the soil that took him in, this An ogre is abroad in the land he grabs of his cigars. I admired them looped on my fingers. sacred place, where he and my steely grandma engendered and stuffs into his maw One day he gave me an American flag ring. seven resemblances, six boys and last my princess mother. the figures reeling in his eye bulge Some of the rubies and diamonds were missing from the stripes And all could go to a public school and make speeches. but the blue sapphire comer field was whole. True, out of the city sometimes signs were stuck He chews and swallows them while others pinioned We both knew they were rhinestones No Jews or Dogs Allowed but that dangle from between his blooded teeth soon each bit although I didn't know what a rhinestone was. was just how it was. Until another miracle. is picked out and bitten falling into the gorge They were and were not rabies diamonds and sapphires. It was make-believe jewelry His ground bones now embroidering I know from fairy tales that the ogre to wear for pretend disguise. his love for this miracle America later meets his doom In that way I passed through my childhood toppling of his own weight and crashing 5 2 It's a free country I learned to say or slain by his former prey those barely breathing not to know My grandfather told me how he at 16 if anyone tried to bully me. The boy pointing when where freezing dread next would seize them and his little brother, Julius, to the white prayer book which shows he said therefore rejoicing dancing ran away from the family tyrant that you killed Christ. and before being dragged into the Romanian army It's a free country and anyone can salute no need now to huddle from which few Jews returned. 24 hours a day for the seven days in the week by wearing at that tread thundering They traveled through Europe with their stock in trade— the American Freedom Watch, its face a flag, shaking the countryside around the gold lions they stitched rearing on synagogue altar cloths, the National Anthem plaving at the press of a pinhead. with big fake jewels sewn in for gorgeousness. And with it you get an American flag pin free. I know that the hero of the tale He still sometimes made them on the dining room table— Hand over heart you pledge to each of the 365 days, allegiance slays the ogre the needle's prick and pull through, stitching the stiff cloth, to the year posted on a magnet mini-calendar flagging waves but this wily ogre grows each day more huge huge spools and monster scissors close at hand. of the American flag from the fridge door. He, Moritz, could even speak some French— You can promote your product by sending customers stretching himself until unseen and soundless Pomme de Terre, he announced, potato triumphant. a calendar with your logo and the flag as his invisible net it traps his living food I tucked away that nugget heading each of the 12 months. there is never enough If it isn't a free country, what on earth would become of me and my mouth? 9 3 The small Xmas ornament wreathes an American flag’s ripples. Grandpa told me how we had wandered in the desert 40 years 6 This would go well with the birdhouse and did not have what to eat Congratulations! You and its roof of American flags its sides a starry blue. and then down from the sky dropped manna. are a winner, the letter on the package said. Keyring necklace moneyclip earrings zipper pull I guessed that manna was like macaroons, Here is your prize. are offered in flag motif from Dream Products which I sometimes dropped, the soft Inside is a Teddy Bear, 12 inches high and jointed, and all the other catalogs clogging my mailbox. Flags upshaped little macaroons offered around on the holidays, cuddly with polyester fill. The tag says Pose Me link in bracelet formation, brooches and pins flow with flags. but I never asked. Without Manna and America, to walk sit stand wave. how many birthday parties would I have? Not many, not any? Teddy wears a little navy shirt with an American flag Show your pride in America the ad says. Grinning, Santa So now from this hole in my stomach which I cannot plug— knitted into its chest. waves holiday Old Glory wishes and brings flagwrapped parcels. not with American History lessons showing the Founders The black button eyes swivel to follow me. Rompers for tots teeshirts in all sizes—all are flagged. and We the People and Lincoln's face, not with the shivery Packed into his ears a Magni Ear These tell the world you know who you are. mountain folksongs and the calling beating blues brings every soundwave clear and close. But 1 no longer know. and the brave lonesome moving on over yonder— my red white and blue guts uncoil. When he waves, he takes palm-size photos. • Why do I sorrow? And I cry out for water and deliverance. When he walks, surveillance rays track and issue from his paws. My beloved proves false— When he stands, a motion sensor beeps a pitch unheard by us his smile curves with make-believe, 4 as from his furry belly button he signals your moves. I can no longer trust his eyes, his practiced pretending eyes. OK America he often trumpeted When he sits, that hidden between his open legs I do not understand how his hollow before pushing up from his chair, widely records talk. words can escape can rale without shame. and likewise Happy New Year after loudly blowing his nose. If I fail to walk sit stand wave like him, What will next betray the populace? Now my grandfather has turned to dust, this is at once computerized at least not out of season. Why do I fear? 7 I no longer know Poskuniok, rascals, horse thieves, my beautiful my only America mv grandfather rasps. From his chair —Carol Rubenstein he waggles his cigar at the TV talking heads Mencken —puzzle by Adam Perl

ACROSS 50. Floor 24. Well-known loser 51. Buzzer 25. Quality 1. Beginning 54. End of the quote 26. Brood 5. Soviet News Agency 58. Inlets 27. Author Jong 9. Eager 59. Ray’s relative 28. Outs 13. Flair 60. Computer command 29. Son of Suleiyman I 14. Detox 61. Relative of pinkeye 30. Permeate 16. Record 62. Latin conqueror? 31. End of a list 17. Start of Mencken quote 63. Harry's daughter 32. Kind of club 20. No alternative 37. Cuts 21. “Double Fantasy” artist DOWN 38. New Rochelle campus 22. “ Eleven” 40. Elroy and Judy’s dog 23. Flowery co. 1. Dare 41. Get more Time? 24. They're flicked 2. Cosmetic additive 43. Deadly insect 25. Part 2 of the quote 3. Clashes 44. Subject of many a joke 33. Not so well done 4. NY to Boston dir... 47. Kind of bar 34. Kind of colony 5. Fashions 48. Step 35. Roman Kubrick classic? 6. Dynamic beginning 49. Saving Private Ryan subject 36. Keep ! 7. Short 50. Part of SATB 37. Suffered 8. Undermine 51. Funny ending 38. Start to differ? 9. Optimally 52. They may be tight 39. Highway Dept. 10. Bash 53. They may clash on stage 40. 60’s Hoffman 11. Tournament 55. Alias 41. Unfinished 12. Best bits 56. On the _ 42. Part 3 of the quote 15. Like some lobsters 57. Impediment 45. Jeanne and others 18. Motor 46. Santa 19. Take place 47. Current 23. Guitarist’s worry? Solution p. 11