Think tanks are obsessed with winning; little magazines, politics. What happened to a genuine interest in the complexity of life? “I am hardly the first to note how certain concepts—intersectionality, neoliberalism, Gramsci—have become unmoored from their specific referents and now float freely, like wayward blimps, into sentences where they have no other role than to advertise, in big, flashing type, the author’s moral righteousness and commitment. This, though, is only one aspect of the polemical—and bizarrely martial—vocabulary that has become a staple of leftist discourse in recent years. Since the conventional wisdom avers no issue can ever be safely siphoned off from any other, each becomes a pretext for calling for resistance and solidarity among allies—the proximate enemy might be the NRA, the DNC or Jonathan Chait—in a war against sinister forces. I do not mean to question this rhetorical approach as a matter of politics. From the purely sectarian perspective, it may well be justified. There is certainly reason to suppose that some political advantage can be gained from the repetition of certain words and phrases, or from the habit of making every issue appear to be a matter of existential ideological significance. (The potential effectiveness of these tactics has been amply demonstrated by the American right wing.) I only mean to point out what the approach means for the role of thinking. ‘Resistance Needs Ideas,’ reads a recent Facebook ad for Jacobin. If the intellectual at the think tank was the assistant to the legislator, here she has become the willing tool of the activist.”
Life sucks, and then you die. “Looks fail, the muscles fail, erections fail, the body fails; money loses its point. You become unrecognizable.” That, in a nutshell, is the poetry of Maximianus, the best classical Latin poet you’ve never heard of, says Michael Fontaine.
Patrick Kurp reviews the correspondence of Anthony Hecht and William L. MacDonald: “Friendships are autonomous regions with their own languages, folkways, and treacheries. Old friends are telepathic and get each other’s jokes. What they don’t say is heavy with significance. It’s not always a case of ‘opposites attract,’ nor are friends necessarily ‘two peas in a pod.’ Rather, long-lived friendships, more than some marriages, embody the nation’s motto: e pluribus unum. When Anthony Hecht and William MacDonald first met in Rome in 1954, both were young, unknown, and unproven. Hecht, 31, had just published his first poetry collection, A Summoning of Stones, and was on a Guggenheim Fellowship; MacDonald, 33, was on a Rome Prize Fellowship at the American Academy. Hecht went on to become one of the leading postwar American poets, and MacDonald would occupy a comparable place in the field of architectural history. A Bountiful Harvest, edited by the British publisher Philip Hoy, documents their 36-year correspondence. That may sound dry and academic, especially as both men were, in fact, academics. But it isn’t. Seldom has a collection of letters read so consistently laugh-out-loud funny, before turning unexpectedly sad. Hecht and MacDonald were men with well-exercised comic senses, not afraid to be ridiculous, whimsical, scatological, or scathingly critical of acquaintances and public figures. Their letters are filled with puns, put-ons, mock pedantry, and even a protracted exchange of Polish jokes. Both possessed a gift for inspired Monty Python–esque silliness.”
The greatest French museum you’ve never heard of: “Forty kilometres from Paris, the Musée Condé also boasts splendid grounds, formal gardens, and a singerie.”
Benjamin Schwarz named editor of The American Conservative: The former literary editor of The Atlantic to take the helm on June 16.
Why a copyright term extension is a bad idea: “Archives with recordings of music from the 1930s or 1940s would now have to clear permission before streaming their musical content even if the underlying work was in the public domain. Yet there is no registry of these owners anywhere. And while massive digital suppliers, such as Apple Music and Spotify, could probably afford to carry the burden, no public or non-profit website could even begin to bear the cost of assuring they were not committing a crime. The act doesn’t harmonize American law with international law. Indeed, it creates more disharmony. No other jurisdiction creates a similar right anywhere. The act is simply a gift, paid for by further weakening the ability of archivists to keep our culture accessible.”
Map: Medieval trade routes (HT: David Davis)
Essay of the Day:
In The Atlantic, Michael LaPointe tells the story of the Pearl of Lao Tzu hoax:
“Legend says the diver drowned retrieving the pearl. Trapped in a giant Tridacna clam, his body was brought to the surface by his fellow tribesmen in Palawan, a province of the Philippines, in May 1934. When the clam was pried open, and the meat scraped out, the local chief beheld something marvelous: a massive pearl, its sheen like satin. In its surface, the chief discerned the face of the Prophet Muhammad. He named it the Pearl of Allah. At 14 pounds, one ounce, it was the largest pearl ever discovered.
“A Filipino American, Wilburn Dowell Cobb, was visiting the island at the time and offered to buy the jewel. In a 1939 article that appeared in Natural History magazine, he recounted the chief’s refusal to sell: ‘A pearl with the image of Mohammed, the Prophet of Allah, is earned by devotion, by sacrifice, not bought with money.’ But when the chief’s son fell ill with malaria, Cobb used atabrine, a modern medicine, to heal him. ‘You have earned your reward,’ the chief proclaimed. ‘Here, my friend, claim this, your pearl.’
“In 1939, Cobb brought the pearl to New York City, and exhibited it at Ripley’s Believe It or Not, on Broadway. There, a new legend emerged, eclipsing the first. Upon seeing the pearl, Cobb said, an elderly Chinese gentleman ‘of highest culture and significant wealth’ named Mr. Lee ‘burst into an hysteria of trembling and weeping.’ This wasn’t the Pearl of Allah; this was the long-lost Pearl of Lao Tzu.
“Around 600 b.c., he told Cobb, Lao Tzu, the ancient Chinese philosopher and founder of Taoism, carved an amulet depicting the ‘three friends’—Buddha, Confucius, and himself—and inserted it into a clam so that a pearl would grow around it. As it developed, the pearl was transferred to ever-larger shells until only the giant Tridacna could hold it. In its sheen, Mr. Lee claimed, was not just one face, but three.
“On the spot, Mr. Lee offered Cobb half a million dollars, saying the pearl was actually worth $3.5 million. But like the principled chief before him, Cobb refused to sell.
“The mysterious Mr. Lee returned to China, never to be heard from again. But his spontaneous appraisal—$3.5 million—still forms the basis of a price that has steadily grown, from $40 million to $60 million to $75 million and beyond. And Mr. Lee’s recognition of Lao Tzu’s legendary pearl is at the heart of an 80-year-old hoax that has left a trail of wreckage across the United States—a satin mirage many try to grasp, before the jaws snap shut.
“Bits of the legend are true. The pearl really was discovered when a diver drowned; Cobb really did acquire it from the local chief; and gazing at the pearl, you really can discern the face of a turbaned man. The rest is a fantasy Cobb invented.”
Photo: Golf in the ashes
Poem: S. A. Leavesley, “The Life of a Fish”
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