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the breakfast table: An e-mail conversation about the news of the day.

Daniel and David Bell

the breakfast table
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from: Daniel Bell

The Paper Chase

Posted Monday, Dec. 13, 1999, at 11:13 AM ET

Dear David,

It has been 20 years since you left home, and we have been talking intermittently since then by telephone. You have gone far geographically, and, I was going to say, careerwise, but as your mother is a strict grammarian I knew she would wince at that "wise" ending. (We used to say that when you were an undergraduate at Harvard, you were one of the few students who knew that one should not begin a sentence with "Hopefully," and more, why one should not do so.) In any event, meander as I am wont to do, you have gone far in your chosen field. (I used to say that your sister and yourself, both Ph.D.s in early modern European history, would go to any lengths to find a subject for which your father could not give you a bibliography.)

Now we are talking by e-mail, an unfamiliar venue for me. Your mother has a computer; I don't, though I use hers fitfully. This is in spite of the fact that I taught courses on technology for more than 10 years before I retired and have even written books on the new technology. But as you know, I always consider myself in the position of the young man drafted into the Israeli navy who, when asked if he knew how to swim, replied: I know the theory of it. My interest is in theory because I am interested in the logic of technology and how that unfolds. And as a sociologist, I have long argued for the priority of theory, since theory allows one to take a finding or a proposition out of one context and apply these to different, and even unfamiliar ones. I stand by the old saw: If something works in practice, does it also work in theory?

As you can see, I am seeking to avoid getting started over this unfamiliar route and talking, as we are supposed to do, about the day's events as they unfold in the morning newspaper. But the morning newspaper, for me, is something I read at a distance, so to speak. Though we have now lived in Cambridge for almost 30 years, I do not see the Boston Globe, our local paper. Each morning, before we get up, the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal are delivered to our door. I have always found the Globe to be somewhat dull and parochial, and I would know what was playing at the New York nabes, rather than in Boston. But now the Times has a Boston edition, with the Boston weather and television schedule, and the "Tab," a "community" paper with special town editions, such as Cambridge, tells me what is playing at the local movie houses.

We get the Times because it is the Times and has all the news that it sees fit to print. And having recently been in Paris and London, we appreciate the Times all the more for its detailed news coverage, as against all the nattering about Tony and Gordon and Alistair Campbell that fills to overflowing the quality London papers. And the Wall Street Journal, for its intriguing front-page news stories and the succinct presentation of business and political news in two columns, even though the editorial page makes me gnash my teeth. I would prefer the London Financial Times, which is the only decent newspaper in England (and I mean decent in many senses, since they do not show tits and bums or print gossip about the marital adventures of cabinet members), but it is too expensive to get here daily. Besides, we read the Economist regularly, such a prize for its fine and lucid prose and its comprehensive worldwide coverage that fills the gaps left by the Times and the Wall Street Journal.

All right, to the news. ... But I have gone on nattering for the asked-for page and a half, so why don't you begin?

Love,
Dad

the breakfast table
entries
12345678910111213141516
from: Daniel Bell

The Paper Chase

Posted Monday, Dec. 13, 1999, at 11:13 AM ET
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Daniel Bell is professor emeritus of sociology at Harvard and the author of The Coming of Post-Industrial Society, which was recently re-issued (click hereto buy it). David Bell, Daniel's son, teaches history at Johns Hopkins University, and is the author of the forthcoming The National and the Sacred: Religion and the Origins of Nationalism in France.
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