Why the Dog Howled in the Night

Bear with me a minute:

Four travelers find themselves at a strange house.  They are greeted by a man who tells them he has a sick uncle upstairs who is near death, but not under immediate threat of death because the Black Dog, which comes around and howls when people are going to die, has not yet appeared.  Later in the evening, the men are startled to hear howling, and on looking out the window, they see a black dog is the source of the noise.  Thinking to frighten off the black dog, they begin to throw things at the dog. Some beef tea is thrown, whereupon the dog starts lapping up the tea.  It turns out it is a real dog, a stray which was wandering by.  Not a phantom after all.  Relieved, the men turn away from the widow.  The sick uncle is dead.

That’s the plot of Stephen Crane’s “The Black Dog.”  So, was the legend of the Black Dog who howls at the approach of death confirmed or not?

The modern mind has no trouble with this question.  There is no mystical black dog.  The fact that a real black dog happened to show up and howl right at the moment of death is one of those silly contrivances which happen in short stories, and is not worthy of serious contemplation.  But, pause for a second:  suppose the events just described did happen in that order—there is nothing impossible about that series of events.  But, even still, the modern mind has no trouble with the events:  sometimes strange coincidences happen.  After all, with 6 billion people and who knows how many black dogs (where would one go to look up the number of black dogs in the world? I suppose it could be pieced together from Google—I did find a guess that there over 500 million dogs, but I didn’t take the time to discover relative percentages of hair color), it would be highly improbable that at least some deaths do not coincide with the howls of black dogs even if there is no causal relationship between the two.

Suppose we did find a case of Actual Black Dog howling immediately prior at Actual Death.  Why would this not be evidence for the legend of a black dog which howls at the moment of death?  Why, for example, did the fact that the dog was real cause the reader of the story described above to decide this wasn’t a ghost story after all?

We have a curious bias toward physicality in the modern age.  Yet the evidence that all things can be explained by physical causes is shockingly weak.  One need look no farther than the human brain.  Does anyone really believe that an exact copy of your physical body and brain would literally be you—not a copy of you, but actually you?   If it is a copy of you, if it is somehow distinct from you, then there is something about you which transcends the physical structure of you.  As someone once put it: The only known way of reducing Biology to Chemistry is murder. 

So, is it possible for the Black Dog to be both just a normal old stray dog and an incarnation of a legendary being?  Why, if we have a hypothesis that a black dog will howl at death and then we have the existence of a black dog howling at death, do we not think that we have evidence for our hypothesis?  Why am I not now scouring the evidence for black dogs and death?

Truth be told, none of this really puzzles me at all.  It’s just a contrived short story.  (Is that redundant?)  But, why am I so convinced, and really I am convinced, that physical occurrences on Earth have physical explanations?  Why do I discount the mystical?  After all, I do believe in non-physical things; I believe in a non-corporeal soul and a non-corporeal God and non-corporeal angels and demons.  Yet, when looking for explanations of physical things, I immediately assume that the non-corporeal world is not the source of explanation.  I have no problem with a dual explanation—that there is a physical cause and a spiritual cause seems thoroughly plausible.  Consubstantiation in the Eucharist may well have a counterpart in human affairs.  But I have a hard time thinking of events other than the Incarnation (and probably the Resurrection) which I do not assusme can be explained by physical causes.  There is no evidence that this bias is merited.  So, why do I believe it?  There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.  Hamlet was right.  But why don’t I suspect that a causal relationship between the spiritual realm and the physical realm one of those things?

The obvious song.

Diary of a Madman

Tolstoy was an opinionated guy.  No surprise there, well at least it isn’t a surprise if one ever read a biography of Tolstoy, even a short one like that in Paul Johnson’s Intellectuals, well I suppose especially in Johnson’s because showing how absurd Intellectuals are was the whole point of Johnson’s book, a good book, by the way, highly recommended (Johnson’s, not Tolstoy’s (though of course many of Tolstoy’s books are also highly recommended))..  He (Tolstoy (though maybe Johnson too—I have no idea, to be honest)) was also a bit of a megalomaniac.  Yes, he (Tolstoy, not Johnson) wrote great, make that Great, novels.  But, even still, writing War and Peace does not give one license to inflict What is Art? upon an unsuspecting world.

The title of the book is an interesting question, one about which I have spent many a pleasurable hour puzzling with students.  When does something become Art?  Is the picture I draw on a chalkboard to illustrate a point in a lecture something which should be called Art?  With a capital A?  Is there Art with a capital A?  Is anything Art?  Is my desk a work of Art?  Does it matter if it is a steel, mass-produced desk or a handcrafted wood period piece?

A related question worth pondering: what exactly is the difference between Art and Science?  Everyone knows they are different, but what exactly is the difference?  Both are attempts to find something True, something which eludes us and needs investigation.  It is not clear that the motives of the Scientist and the Artist are all that different, but I have yet to find anyone who does not think a Scientist looking for the Essence of Nature with a microscope is not a fundamentally different exercise than an Artist looking for the Essence of Nature with a paintbrush. Why do we consider those activities to be unrelated?  Not different—obviously they are different—but in entirely different classes of action?

So, interesting questions here.  Tolstoy picks up pen to answer, definitively, the question. Or at least he wants us to think he is doing so.  His definition is some vague thing about how Art is some attempt by the artist to convey an emotion.  “Infecting people with the feeling felt by the artist” is how he puts it.  Not a helpful definition to be sure—is my scowl at my dog a work of art when my children see it and think, “Wow, Dad is annoyed at the dog. So the dog must be doing something bad and so maybe I should make sure the dog doesn’t do that thing?” In said example, I have consciously conveyed to others, by certain external signs, the feelings I experienced, and the others were infected by those feelings and experienced them—that’s Tolstoy’s definition of art.  But the vagueness of the definition is a relatively minor failing—which should tell you something about the nature of what is to come.  If a vague and poorly worded answer given to the question “What is Art?’ in a book by that name is a relatively minor problem, then what must the problem be?

I’d summarize it, but the Reader would not believe I was being accurate.  So, here is a quotation—really, this is a quotation:

“Every false work praised by the critics is a doorway through which burst the hypocrites of art.  
It is only thanks to the critics who, in our time, praise the crude savage and for us often meaningless works of the ancient Greeks: Sophocles, Euripides, Aeschylus, and especially Aristophanes,; or the moderns: Dante, Tasso, Milton, Shakespeare; in painting, all of Raphael, all of Michelangelo, with his absurd Last Judgment; in music, all of Bach and all of Beethoven, including his late period…[it goes on, but you get the point]”

Yep.  He said that.  What is Art?  Well it sure isn’t that utterly horrible stuff produced by Dante and Bach and Michelangelo.  Instead it is…well, religious songs sung by peasants and other such things.   

At one level, I want to think this whole thing is a joke, a 167 page joke.  But, alas, I know Tolstoy was serious.  He was that kind of a guy.  At another level, this book prompts a question I puzzle over frequently: which books have shelf life only because of the author’s other work?  If this book had been written by some anonymous Russian aristocrat, I doubt it would have been published let alone still be in print.  Yet, because Tolstoy wrote it, it is in print, with a new translation by Pevear and Volokhonsky (have you no shame?), published by Penguin Press.  Why?  Does anyone, anyone, take this thing seriously?  Sure, I can imagine it gets assigned in classes called “The Philosophy of Art” or some such thing, but why can’t we agree that it isn’t worth the bother?

We don’t want to end on such a negative note.  So here is one of those things which belong in the category of bad art.  (The exact quotation:  “’What, the Ninth Symphony belongs in the category of bad art?!’ I hear indignant voices exclaim.  ‘Without any doubt, ‘ I reply”)

The Long Tomorrow

“No city, no town, no community of more than one thousand people or two hundred buildings to the square mile shall be built or permitted to exist anywhere in the United States of America.”  Constitution of the United States, Thirtieth Amendment.

Thus begins Leigh Brackett’s The Long Tomorrow, included in the Library of America’s American Science Fiction: Four Classic Novels: 1953-1956.  The first thing to note about this novel is that it does cause one to wonder (once again) about the definition of Science Fiction.  When does a book deserve to be included in the genre?  The only futuristic aspect of this novel is that the world has been decimated by nuclear war.  Otherwise, no technological advance; indeed, there is very little of what would traditionally be considered science.  Indeed, most of the book takes place in a world which could be considered pre-scientific.  The closest we come is a discussion on the merits of nuclear power—and therein lies the interesting place of departure for reflection.

Post-nuclear war, the remaining citizens of the United States blamed cities for the war, and vowed henceforth to live in the Amish manner. No electricity, steam engines or anything of the sort.  Horses and buggies and small communities everywhere.  Our hero tires of this life, wanders off to find the rebellious, perhaps mythic, city in which they still use advanced technology.  Upon finding it, well, they still live in a ridiculously primitive manner, but hey, they have a functioning nuclear power plant.  The discovery terrifies our hero (Nuclear Weapons = Bad; Nuclear Power = Nuclear Weapons = Bad).  At which point we spend a small amount of time realizing maybe nuclear power isn’t so bad after all.  At which point, the realization dawns: the Reader no longer cares at all about this novel.  Here we have a curious “Science Fiction” novel; when we are reading about people who have reverted to Olden Times in the aftermath of a nuclear war, there is something at least minimally interesting; when we find the town using nuclear power, the novel just dies.

One virtue of the novel: it shows how little the opponents of nuclear power have evolved in the last 60 years.  They sound just like the opponents of nuclear power in this novel.

All of this got me wondering (shocking, to be sure), not about nuclear power (which, Truth be Told, I like—clean, safe, plentiful power), but about economic progress.  It is one of those facts which often surprises students when I mention it, but the age we live in when people expect rapid technological advances not just in their lifetime, but in the next decade, is a historical anomaly.  For most of human history, technological advance has been slow.  Yes, things were more advanced in 1500 than in 500.  But compare the shock of taking someone from the year 500 and putting them in a town in 1500 to the shock of taking someone from the year 1900 and putting them in a town in the year 2013.  It’s not even close.  Our current world would be overwhelming to someone from 1900.  Literally overwhelming.  And mostly unrecognizable.

So, why do we prefer the Modern world to the Older world.  Why is it obvious to us that people would be happier in the modern world than they would in a world in which the most advanced technology is something which predates the steam engine?  Yes, I have a hard time imagining going back to an earlier technological age—and it isn’t terribly hard to figure out why. (Think: no internet.)  But, now go the other way.  Imagine the current state of technology would be frozen for the rest of your life.  Nothing which exists now would go away.  Would you be content with that state of affairs?  I wouldn’t; I’d be sad about the cessation of technological advance, despite the fact that I have absolutely no idea what technological advance will make me happier in 20 years.  Two decades ago, I never imagined I would ever have anything like the iPhone 5.  Now that it exists, why do I think that if it was still the summit of technology in 20 years, that we would be really missing out on something?  And, again, the curious thing to me is not that I think this way, it is that for most of human history, nobody thought this way.  Does the rapid pace of technological innovation breed a hunger for itself?

Maybe.

 

Vagabonds

If memory serves correct, somewhere in the archives of this here space, I mentioned that of all the literary genres, the one which has long brought me the least pleasure is the Short Story.  I have never really known why this is so.  I have certainly read short stories I have enjoyed, but when I think about all the many things I have read which have resulted in both pleasure and profit (intellectual profit (I can’t think of anything I have ever read which brought me monetary profit)), I do not think there are any short stories on that list.  Odd, to put it mildly.

Since I don’t like literary failings, and I suspect a dislike of short stories as a class is a literary failing, I have decided to remedy this situation.  (I was tempted to say I would try to remedy this situation but then I remembered the immortal words of Yoda, words I have said to my children on countless occasions, “Do or Do Not. There is no Try.” (A very useful motto if you think about it (it’s also a useful motto if you don’t think about it (which is another thing I have tried to impress upon my children)).))  Since I know not how to compel myself to simply like a literary genre, I decided the best I can do is immerse myself therein.  So, one short story a day until further notice.

Now, as is common with succinctly stated goals, the policy of one short story per day, seemingly simple as it is, led immediately to the question of practical implementation:  which short story?  Spending time thinking about which book to read next is enjoyable; spending time every day deciding which short story to read next would be highly annoying.  And here, the Library of America comes in handy.  One author a week, one story a day, in order which they are printed.  Those handy ribbon book markers will hold the place until the author’s term comes up again.  Now all I have to do is decide which author to read the next week, not which story.

And at this point, the Reader (are there any Readers any more?  This blog has been, as one might have noticed, horribly neglected during my year in Administration), is wondering why these details of my Master Plan to Cure Myself of Having Insufficient Zeal for the Short Story is relevant or interesting.  Truth be Told, it is neither.

And so, to a review.  Last week’s author: Nathaniel Hawthorne.  And, rather than review all seven stories each week, I’ll choose one.  (Incidentally, the idea of having to review a short story each week brings a modicum of terror.  After all, short stories are not all that interesting (see above), so will it really be possible to actually talk (or more properly ramble on) about a short story each week?  Time will tell.  (Actually, that is an odd phrase now that I see it written.  Time has no voice, so how can it tell?  Time’s capacity to communicate is a subject worthy of further rumination.))

The story: “The Seven Vagabonds.”  Our narrator meets several (guessing how many is left as an exercise for the reader) itinerant individuals all on their way to a camp meeting at Stamford.  He talks to each one in turn, mostly finding out what they do to make a living, and then they all set out together to Stamford when they suddenly discover the camp meeting has ended, and so they all go their separate ways.  End of story.

The Lesson:  This is exactly why I am not a fan of short stories.  Our narrator meets someone, and just about the time he thinks the person might be worth traveling with for a bit, the person wanders off.  I start a story, and just about the time I think it might worth worth spending a bit of time in the story’s company, it ends.

But that got me thinking.  I’ve just spent a year in an Administrative job (today is my last day).  During that year, I have met a lot of people I never knew before.  Some of them are the equivalent of a novel—a long term relationship.  Indeed, one of my very best friends is someone I met this year.   There is another set of people whom I will run into now and again and we will exchange pleasantries.  And there are others whom I am likely to rarely, if ever, see again, let alone have a substantive conversation.  Now clearly the first set of people I am very glad to know, and I am very happy to know I will still be talking with them in the future.  It’s the last set that is interesting in this respect—I am also very glad to have worked with them this year; I enjoyed talking with them, we did some great work together, and that is enough for me to think it was all very worthwhile.  The same is true of the many students whom I have just had in a class for a semester and then wandered off into the rest of their lives; I am glad to have known them too.  The long-lasting relationships are obviously important, but the short relationships are also an interesting and enjoyable part of life. 

Now the importance of the short personal relationship is incredibly trivially obvious.  I cannot imagine anyone finding such an observation to be thought-provoking.  So, my puzzle: why do I feel so differently about short stories?  Why don’t I enjoy those literary vagabonds for what they are?

And moreover, I like songs.  Songs are short.  Songs are vagabonds too.  Like this one. 

Putting Coating on Paper

You have to be impressed with a publisher that takes the time to respond to a curmudgeonly gripe.  And so, according to the response to yesterday’s blog post, the Library of America has not changed the paper of their dust jackets—just the coating on the paper.

Which raises the interesting existential crisis for the day.  The Library of America notes that the changed cover is a technological improvement.  It’s progress.  And, so here I find myself (yet again) standing athwart history, yelling “Stop!”  I like the old glossy paper.  LOA says I will grow to like the new scuff-free matte finish.  Suddenly I wonder if my wife secretly works for the Library of America.

I habitually dislike change.  Janet (my long-suffering wife) is always merrily relating story after story (after story) of changes in my life which I instinctively disliked, but grew to love over time.  So, when LOA insisted that given time, I will like the new covers better than the old, my blood froze.

Also worth noting—the reply by Library of America says they made the change in coating years ago.  So, I checked my books.  My three volume Philip Dick set has the old coating, and it is recently published.  Then I noticed my Vonnegut volume (the 1963-1973 one) has the new matte finish—I hadn’t noticed (I haven’t read it yet).  Which then caused me to wonder why the change was immediately apparent when I got my Bierce volume but not when I got my Vonnegut volume.

All of this has reminded me of something I have occasionally lamented.  As noted many times here in the past—I own a lot of LOA volumes.  Every now and then, I end up with one without a dust jacket.  The volumes look good without the dust jacket, just not as good.  I’ve occasionally toyed with the idea of buying a new copy to get the dust jacket—but that seems a bit pathetic, and quite honestly, it isn’t worth that much.  The dust jacket market is the sort of market that would collapse under the weight of the overhead to even offer the product.  Sigh.

In the end, I will begrudgingly forgive the Library of America for changing the gloss.  (I am sure there are enormous sighs of relief and great rejoicing at LOA headquarters right now.)  I’m still not happy with the change, but far be it from me to resist progress.

The importance of paper

I have long touted the Library of America volumes as marvelous examples of craftsmanship.  The look and feel of the books enhances the enjoyment of the content of the volumes.  They had a great product.  I buy lots of LOA volumes.

So it is with great sadness, great, vast, overwhelming sadness, that I report that my most recent purchase of a Library of America volume (Bierce) has crushed my spirit.  They (the mysterious, omnipresent they) changed the paper being used for the dust jackets.  The old paper was a glossy, sturdy affair; it was nice to just hold the volume.  The new paper is rough, not glossy and just feels like…well, paper.  So suddenly instead of experiencing joy at the mere holding of the volume, I feel…well, it feels like an ordinary book and not like an Entryway into the Divine.

Yeah, I know times are tough and paper is expensive.  But, really now.  Would you put Our Lady of the Rocks in a frame from Wal-Mart just to save a few dollars? 

Best Served Cold

Five years ago I was supervising a really interesting senior thesis in which the student made extensive use of Karl Popper.  She also made extensive use of Homer, Dante, Joyce, Plato, and Marx—I had read all of those 5 authors.  I’d never read Popper.  The student kept trying to convince me to read The Open Society and Its Enemies.  I knew enough about the book to have a discussion about it, but she insisted (and rightfully so) that I really should read it.  She said it was a fast read, that I could read it in an evening.  I eventually bought a copy—well, the singular there is a bit deceiving, the book is actually two volumes long.  Smallish print.  It didn’t look like a one night read. 

So, here I am five years later and I read it.  It took a lot longer than one evening.  Now I wonder if my dear student, who shall remain nameless a) lest this look like I am casting aspersion on someone who ended up in Stanford Law School (perish the thought!) and b) so that this post will be unGoogleable for reasons delineated below…anyway, said student, unless being the type who goes to Stanford Law School is also the type who can read 750 pages of dense prose in an evening, was deliberately deceiving me in order to convince me to read the book.

Evaluating the book is a bit of a challenge as a result.  I spent most of the time reading it thinking, “This book sure is tediously long.”

Volume 1 was relatively fun.  In it, Popper skewers Plato. One gets the joy of watching an icon get destroyed.  (Yes, I am an iconoclast at heart.  Shocking, to be sure.)  In volume 2, Popper takes apart Marx. Yawn.  Get in line, Karl, get in line.

My advice: if you are going to read this, set aside more than a night.  And stop at the end of volume 1.  And if you ever meet a really amazing lawyer whose name has been carefully avoided throughout this post (initials: MH) but who was an MHC undergrad and a Stanford Law School grad, tell her that she really should have picked someone other than Popper for her thesis and don’t tell her how you know about the thesis.  That will be my revenge.

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Blog 2.0

As is obvious to anyone who has checked this space in the last month and a half, activity hereon has been something less than prolific.  Rest assured, Your Humble Narrator has not died.  But, it has become obvious that a change in format is needed. 

In Olden Times, when Your Humble Narrator served as a professor, this blog made for an effective and efficient diversion in the midst of a long block of time when there was nothing pressing.  It served in other words as an effective mental break, allowing a profusion of overwrought prose to serve as a mental release from long periods of concentration.  Brain refreshed, work would resume. 

But, on July 1, your Humble Narrator accepted an interim job in Administration.  First lesson of administration:  there are many meetings.  Many meetings.  The meetings themselves are not necessarily dull—free tip: it helps when you get to set the agenda for a meeting.  But, gone are the days of long blocks of uninterrupted time.  I now have many short blocks of time, but apparently in the last month, I have not had many days in which I thought, This would be a good time to ramble on about a book I read.

Hence it has become apparent that with a new job there necessarily needs to be a new blog format.  So, Blog 2.0 is going to be the remarkably brief post.  We’ll see how it works out.  (The “we” in that sentence being, of course, “I” and some imaginary reader.)