Prufrock: A History of Ireland, the Beauty of Bacteria, and the Great Ty Cobb

* *

A new history of modern Ireland: “All these years later, much popular Irish history is still viewed through the lens of English colonialism. But the authors and editors of The Princeton History of Modern Ireland offer a welcome corrective to such narrow thinking: they want readers to (if you will) look beyond ‘the Brits.'”

* *

The beauty of bacteria: “The human body is home to 100 trillion microbes in mobile constellation (a mere 100 million stars, by comparison, make up the Milky Way).”

* *

In news that’s not news, Caroline Elbaor and Ben Davis have run the numbers and concluded that an MFA in painting or sculpture is not worth it financially: “Looking at the backgrounds of American artists born since 1966, you could sum up a potential lesson of the recent past like this: If you can get into one of the very top programs, it may well give you a better shot at cracking the puzzle of art-career success than going without. Even that decision, though, has to be weighed against the high number of artists who have skipped that step, with the time and expense that it entails. Outside of those elite brands, though, going to art school becomes a very different kind of choice. It may be worthwhile for a great many artistic reasons, but it does not have a noticeable career-boosting effect, at least not among the first rank of peers. You are essentially following your own path. Indeed, it looks very much like you could have not gone to school at all, and have been about as likely to capture the attention of the art market.”

* *

The strange origin of a modern film disclaimer: “Virtually every film in modern memory ends with some variation of the same disclaimer: ‘This is a work of fiction. Any similarity to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events, is purely coincidental.’ The cut-and-paste legal rider must be the most boring thing in every movie that features it. Who knew its origins were so lurid? For that bit of boilerplate, we can indirectly thank none other than Grigori Rasputin, the famously hard-to-assassinate Russian mystic and intimate of the last, doomed Romanovs. It all started when an exiled Russian prince sued MGM in 1933 over the studio’s Rasputin biopic, claiming that the American production did not accurately depict Rasputin’s murder. And the prince ought to have known, having murdered him.”

* *

The great Ty Cobb. “Charles Leerhsen’s Ty Cobb: A Terrible Beauty is the most important baseball book in decades. This definitive biography of the greatest baseball player from the deadball era, and one of the greatest players ever, is a welcome corrective to the egregiously dishonest portrayals of Cobb in previous pseudo-biographies. Leershen’s exhaustive research—he has clearly tracked down far more original sources than anyone who has written about Cobb—is a model any biographer, not just those writing about sports figures, would do well to emulate.”

* *

Essay of the Day:

In First Things, Yu Jie explains China’s complex relationship to Confucianism and continued antagonism towards Christianity:

“If Confucianism can only be considered an ethical and political philosophy but not a religion in the strict sense, then China today officially recognizes only five major religions: Buddhism, Taoism, Catholicism, Protestantism, and Islam. The government has created the State Administration for Religious Affairs under its United Front Work Department to keep a close eye and a short leash on practitioners, effectively installing itself as the high priest presiding over the internal affairs of religious organizations.

“This is exactly what Chinese President Xi Jinping is doing with respect to Christianity. At the National Conference on Religious Work in Beijing in April 2016, Xi declared that religion must adapt itself to China’s existing social order and accept the party’s leadership. As a leader, Xi seems rather insecure. He is suspicious of civil society and sees Christianity as a threat: It is the largest force in China outside the Communist party.

“In China, home churches outnumber government-sponsored churches three to one. Against home churches that refuse to cooperate, the government has waged a large-scale cleansing campaign in the eastern coastal province of Zhejiang, particularly in the city of Wenzhou, known as ‘China’s Jerusalem,’ where 15 percent of the population is Christian. In two years, more than two hundred churches in Zhejiang have been demolished, over two thousand crosses removed. The scene of the cross being removed from a church in Ya village, Huzhou city, on August 7, 2015, was typical. Migrant workers hired by government officials flipped over the parish car, then the police came. They arrested the pastor, intimidated parishioners, sequestered church grounds, and pepper-sprayed protesters. They charged into the church with dogs. Buddhist monks and Taoist priests hired by the officials came to chant and perform rites in front of the church. Dozens, including the church attorney, were detained and interrogated.

“Zhang Kai, a human rights lawyer who had been providing legal support to churches in Zhejiang province, was taken into custody on August 25, 2015, the day before he was due to meet David Saperstein, United States ambassador-at-large for international religious freedom. Six months later Zhang was forced to go on television, stating: ‘I have broken the law, disturbed the peace, endangered national security, and violated the ethics of my profession. I deeply regret my actions.’ Emaciated, his body cruelly bent by torture, he was virtually unrecognizable. In Xi’s China, television has replaced courts of law. Televised confessions are the fashion of the day. Sadly, the Obama administration sits and watches, reluctant to put more pressure on the Chinese government and push for reform.

“An internal government document obtained by the New York Times in May 2014 shows that the church demolitions are part of a larger campaign to curb Christianity’s influence on the public. According to the nine-page provincial policy statement, the Xi administration wants to put an end to “excessive” religious sites and ‘overly popular’ religious activities, but it names one religion in particular, Christianity, and one symbol, the cross. The strategy is easy to discern: first Wenzhou, then the rest of China.

“However, Chinese Christians have refused to give in. One of the phrases I have heard most often among them is: ‘The greater the persecution, the greater the revival.’ For Christian dissidents, cross removals and church demolitions are only the prelude in a story that repeats the Passion and Resurrection of Christ. They talk about how during the Cultural Revolution, the Christian population in Wenzhou actually grew many times over.”

Read the rest.

* *

Image of the Day: Faroe Islands

* *

Poem: Kay Ryan, “Even on the Greatest Subjects Too Much Can Be Said”

Get Prufrock in your inbox every weekday morning. Subscribe here.