The State of First Things, December 2010

A. Must Read Articles:
Sadly, none.

B. Worth Reading
1. Goldman, "Why We Can't hear Wagner's Music"
 I almost put this in the first category, simply because it is sad to see that category empty.  (I weep for First Things.)  But, in the end, the conclusion isn't really all that earth-shattering.  Nonetheless, the article was a very interesting discussion of Wagner.  Wagner is a curious case: as Shaw put it, Wagner's music is better than it sounds.  There is much that is truly great in any Wagner opera, but, truth be told, there is much that is overdone and long, long, long.  Goldman argues that the very length of the matter is the point of Wagner--he deliberately breaks the idea of time in music.  Western Music before Wagner is the imposition of order; Western music after Wagner is the destruction of order.  We can't hear Wagner anymore because we no longer expect order in music.  So, where does that leave us?  Oddly, still eagerly looking forward to seeing The Valkyrie when it comes to the Met.

2. Altman, "Whit Stillman is Running Late"
Curiously, this article was written for someone exactly like me.  If you have never heard of Stillman, the article would have been boring and pointless (I suspect).  If you actually know something about Stillman, then the article would have been boring and pointless (I suspect).  But, if like me, you had recently watched Stillman's first movie, Metropolitan (which I mentioned in a post some time back), really enjoyed that move, had no idea who the director was, and so learned something about him in the article, then it was a pretty interesting article.  Stillman only made three movies.  Reading the article made me want to watch another one of his movies--so I did.  The Last Days of Disco is also pretty good--not as good as Metropolitan, but still pretty good.  His third movie, Barcelona, is now in my Netflix queue.  He is working on a fourth movie; from the sound of it, it may actually get finished, but don't hold your breath.  At any rate, it is better to watch Metropolitan or The Last Days of Disco than to read this article, but after watching one of them, the article is nice.

3. Samuels, "The Perfect Harmony" and Weigel, "Fail, Britannia"
Neither of these articles alone had any particular measure of Greatness, but combined, they are quite good.  (They are published sequentially in the magazine, but the first one is in the new glossy section and the second one is in the old-fashioned, not-glossy section (if you have seen a recent issue of First Things, you know what that means).  So, it isn't clear if the editor knew the two articles made a pair of bookends.)  The general point of the two combined:  Modern Leaders in the West are a feckless bunch, faced on the one side by genuinely malevolent people like Ahmadinejad and on the other side by genuinely benevolent people like Benedict.  Western leaders are, in other words, neither hot nor cold. It is pretty sad to see an unwillingness to side with good against evil--the pair of articles makes it pretty clear that this is happening.  In the face of evil, the West cannot stand up and oppose it.  In the face of good, the West pushes back in all sorts of silly and, truth be told, pathetic ways. 


Come to think of it, perhaps items 2 and 3 are related.