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Peter D. Kramer and Andrew Solomon

the breakfast table
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from: Andrew Solomon

Mad About the Classics

Posted Thursday, July 12, 2001, at 2:05 PM ET

Dear Peter,

Well, I'm in bad shape for responding here because I've never actually seen A Thousand Clowns. Sometimes I feel I've lived the life of a thousand clowns, but I've never seen the movie, and I confess with shame that I don't even know exactly what it is. I'm with you, however, on the general question of classics. People seem to think they should read them because they're nutritious, even if they're punishing. And there are some classics that are punishing but are worth reading anyway because you learn so much from them. (Back to Lucretius: The sublime is the art of exchanging easier for more difficult pleasures.) One of my college professors recently became the rector of a church not far from where I live, and he's been teaching classes in the church basement, and a bunch of university friends and I have been going. This winter, on Tuesday nights, we did Paradise Lost. I sort of went along at the beginning because I thought it would be good for me, remembering how far I'd gotten (about Page 8) last time I tried Paradise Lost. But this time around, I found myself really enjoying it. Our priestly leader was not reading for its religious content, and he was not doing anything fancy with critical theory; he was just sort of guiding us through it, much the way a good travel guide lets you see the interesting things in Rome by proposing appropriate walking routes and putting stars next to the best sights. Oh, it was terrific, and it made us all feel young again to be talking about this stuff and then going out for pizza afterward and arguing about favorite bits. He's doing Dante this winter (Rev. Roger Ferlo, basement of St. Luke's, Hudson Street, NYC), and I'm psyched for it.

Anyway, I wouldn't have done Milton on my own, though I'd like to be someone who would, and Dante has been on my list of things I've meant to read for decades. But lots of other classics I missed at school are nutritious and pleasurable, sort of like fresh summer tomatoes! I'm a Tolstoy nut, and so many people I know finally get around to reading War and Peace and then express incredulity at how much pleasure it gives them. My problem, actually, is that I tend to think the classics are all that's worth reading, and then I feel useless at cocktail parties when people start talking about the latest this and that. Besides which, as a contemporary author myself, I always think I should be reading lots of contemporary authors. Sigh.

And now back to the news. I am completely horrified and appalled by this business of the Salvation Army trying to get permission to discriminate against gays. Bush's nearly supporting the plan is not surprising to me, but it's disheartening anyway to find today that Karl Rove, Bush's senior adviser, was in on the whole plan all along. And the Salvation Army! I've so often given my dollar to those Santa Claus men on holidays, thinking that they were vaguely involved in good works. Next Christmas, I'll be spitting at them and stealing their red hats, and I'll crack their skulls with those god-damned bells. I just can't stand this national tolerance for prejudice, the institutionalization of prejudice. It seems so anomalous to me that such prejudice receives (well, nearly received) the backing of our democratic government. I know there's lots of prejudice everywhere, but when it's official, and trying to get more official, that somehow seems to make it so much worse. You know, I lived briefly in South Africa, and when the official prejudices were lifted, it was so thrilling. Why can't we do that, too? It makes for such pure joy for everyone.

Sadly today,
Andrew

the breakfast table
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from: Andrew Solomon

Mad About the Classics

Posted Thursday, July 12, 2001, at 2:05 PM ET
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Peter D. Kramer is a professor of psychiatry at Brown University and author of Listening to Prozac and the new novel Spectacular Happiness. Andrew Solomon is the author of The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression (read a "Book Club" discussion of it here) and also of the recently reissued novel A Stone Boat.
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Reader Comments From The Fray

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[Notes from the Fray Editor... or perhaps we should call them footnotes. There was a recommendation for David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest here, and a splendid line from Tim Button here: "Footnotes are justifiable in philosophy, but philosophy as a whole is very hard to justify." KC is expecting footnotes to these exchanges. The Fray team would like to recommend Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire as having the best footnotes ever. We were glad to see that the poster Shark agreed with us: he is looking like the new star of the "Breakfast Table" (eat your hearts out Neill Hamilton and Amber) with his cutting-edge offer of a Kaus-like Star Poster skipping service. Find it here, on the WillV post below, and here.]


You wrote about anarchists who capture the popular imagination? Obviously, you didn't know about the merry band here in the Fray, a group that perfected popular anarchy long ago. Come join us as those from the left, center, and right are terrorized for intellectual pretensions, grammar and punctuation, and bourgeois status symbols. Your sequel could write itself.

--WillV

(To reply, click here.)


It has been suggested that liberals backing down on their opposition to nuclear power is equivalent to conservatives backing down on the rights of children who cannot yet defend themselves against abortions. I'm not going to bother with the actual debates, but I would like to say that liberals and conservatives alike view the nuclear power question as a balance of risk vs savings. Nuclear power is cheap, plentiful, and the electricity is the same either way. The only questions are these: can the plants be run safely, can the waste be disposed of safely. These are practical concerns, and as the need for power increases, the risks seem less ominous. If we were to suddenly find unlimited sources of sulfer free oil, or a way to cheaply produce reliable solar energy, conservatives would find the risk of nuclear power unpalatable. Nobody opposes nuclear power on moral grounds, everybody has practical concerns.

Abortion, infanticide, pornography, etc: These are moral issues, not practical issues. No conservative would say that he opposes abortion because there are too few babies being produced. Moral issues are fundamentally different from practical concerns.

In any case, conservatives and liberals frequently change their positions on practical issues, as things become palatable or circumstances change. When they start giving up moral positions, there had better have been a revelation, because abandonment of a moral position out of expediency is ... immoral

--Ben Kirkup

(To reply, click here.)

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