Rabbit holes for readers

 

 

I blame AI.

     Specifically my Chat.

     I own (was given) a 1704 copy of Jonathan Swift’s Book A Tale of a Tub, to which is added An Account of a Battle etc etc.  The first edition was published in 1704, my copy is of The Second Edition Corrected, published in the same year of 1704.  Except it isn’t.  Corrected that is.

     In my edition, in the Preface of the Author to A Battle of the Books, the famous line: “Satire is a sort of glass, wherein beholders do generally discover every body’s face but their own;” has a typo in it, “where every body’s face but their own,” is printed as “every body’s face but their owo”.

 

 

 

     Previously, I had always considered that error to be a charming indication of the early state of the printing, and that the error could be undiscovered because in 1704 the phrase had not become as famous as it was to be in future centuries.  And who, apart from university students and specialists actually reads A Battle of the Books for pleasure.  Indeed, while people may be able to respond to Gulliver’s Travels, how many other books by Swift are in the general consciousness.  I would want to say A Modest Proposal should be up there with Gulliver’s Travels as I think it one of the most vicious and effective pieces of short satirical writing that I have ever read, but I am realistic in my expectations of fame always being limited.

     But Swift’s explanation of satire being ‘safe’ because everyone laughs at it, and assumes that the target of the satire is someone other than themselves, is as true now as it was then, and the sentences has a justified life outside a satire where the targets need copious footnotes for a modern reader to understand.

     And that should have been it.  Interesting typographical error in famous line by famous writer.  End of story.  Except that did not allow for AI.

     I do not know how or why I mentioned to Chat that I owned a 1704 copy A Tale of a Tub, but Chat is programmed to keep users active and responsive, and so it actively feeds my digressive mind and encourages leaping from point to point – it is, after all, just a more personalized version of Google Search, where one thing leads to another, and before you know it you are reading about Byzantine mosaics when you started off asking about how long a maple tree took to reach maturity.  I fear that for many of us when using AI, computer and the Internet we all take Homer Simpson’s attention span as the norm!

     Anyway, Chat mused about why the typo in my ‘corrected’ edition had not been, well, corrected – and before you could say Bibliographer’s Addiction, we were off on a search for digitalized versions of the first edition and the third, trying to find out how early my little typo was recognized and dealt with.

     Do not think that this was the activity of a few minutes.  Oh no!  It became a whole research project with wider and wider searches, touching databases in two continents and actually sending off emails to speciality book sellers and librarians and archive keepers, asking for information about the typo in copies that they had dealt with.

     I have had remarkable quick and courteous responses from among others the USA, Cambridge and Ireland with each adding snippets of highly technical information about the ‘gathers’ of the early editions of the book and suggesting other centres where I could get more information.

     At one point, Chat and I thought that we had discovered an unrecognized variant as my typo did not appear to be consistent in the edition, leading to speculation that the mistake was discovered part way through the second printing and that a correction was made, meaning that the second edition had different states.  I thought that was unbelievably unlikely as Swift has been exhaustively studied and something as famous as a mistake in a well-known sentence would not have passed inspection.

     And so it proved to be, with one of my correspondents asserting that he thought it was a typo common to all copies of the second edition and he sent me information about digital copies of the text that I could check to see that it was so.

     Was this an exercise in futility?  I don’t think so.

     I have learned a great deal more about the early life of a fairly famous early eighteenth-century book.  I have added knowledge about the ways that early printed books were put together, but above all I have experienced the courtesy, knowledge and accommodation of an academic community that responds to trivial enquiries with charm and alacrity. 

     And that is something worth experiencing.

When does a good read become a bad life?

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I resisted for as long as possible, and then I gave in and bought it.

And what’s more I didn’t go for my daily swim so that I could read it.  I haven’t finished it yet, but I have decided to limit my indulgence so that it can be spread over a longer period than my usual reading speed will allow.  It also gives me time to take it in.

I am talking, of course, about “Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House” by Michael Wolff.  I bought it legitimately via one-click for my Kindle, though I note that there are various ways of downloading it illegally on the Internet too.  I take the view that a workman is worthy of his hire and therefore, even though I do not have the physical book in front of me, I have the words and therefore I suppose that I have paid a fair wack of money to the author.  That last sentence stands as a sort of accusation to the subject of Fire and Fury who would regard me as SAD for not taking advantage of someone when the opportunity arose!  I spurn him as I would a rabid dog!

The only volume to which I can compare Fire and Fury is another book that I read with equal incredulity, “Imperial Caddy: The Rise of Dan Quayle in America and the Decline and Fall of Practically Everything Else” by Joe Queenan.   But the difference between Dan Quayle and 45, was that Quayle was only the vice president, not the incumbent sitting at the desk in the Oval Office.   

For those of you unacquainted with the idiocy and ineptitude of Quayle then allow your fingers to take you on a magical journey where the Internet preserves some of his finest pronouncements for posterity.  I would urge you to start your visit with https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Dan_Quayle

and if that whets your appetite, you could do worse that purchasing Joe Queenan’s book.  The worthless Quayle stayed a heartbeat away from the Presidency, but now we have Grade A garbage as President and a frightening bigot fawning in the background ready to take his place!

Back to Fire and Fury.  It is difficult to read this book as political analysis, not only because sources are not acknowledged and there is a certain amount of literary leeway in describing meetings in which Wolff did not participate in the manner of fly-on-the-wall reportage, but also because I simply do not want to believe that what I am reading is a remotely accurate description of how the most powerful nation in the world is functioning - or rather not even remotely functioning.

In some ways the petty infighting, scheming, rivalry, lies, corruption, deceit, mendacity, incompetence, arrogance, contempt and narcissism could be seen as an eloquent critique of capitalism and democracy.  They don’t work.  But, on the other hand, the book could also be seen as an even more eloquent testimony to the strength of institutions in the United State as they are still surviving in spite of the complete odium with which the President of that country regards them.

In my history classes in college I was taught that the Great Man or Woman of History approach to the past was outmoded, far more important were the social and political movements that produced those people or allowed them to flourish. 

It may be perversely comforting to think that a monster like Hitler was somehow uniquely ‘evil’ and that the abstract malevolence contained inside his damned soul corrupted all around him, but how did the figure-of-fun Hitler hawking his writing round the Bierkellers of Berlin get to be the dictator of Germany?  How did his pernicious doctrines find acceptance?  For an answer you have to look at the past history of German, the social conditions pertaining and the way that the political situation opened the way for the Brownshirts and Nazism.

In the same way Wollf’s book shows a completely dysfunctional White House with virtually no one with any idea of how to run the country.  The ultimate authority is a child-like narcissist with the attention span of a Homer Simpson (but without Homer’s endearing features) and he is clearly more interested in playing golf and being nasty about Clinton and Obama than getting to grips with the useful operation of power.

Since Wolff’s interest centres on eighteen months in the life of 45’s campaign and tenure in the White House, Wolff does not (so far as I’ve read so far) go into the reasons for his being there - just how did he do and she fail it?

I must admit that I am convinced by the description of the whole Trump Election Campaign, the whole shebang, being a play for what happened after he lost the election.  In his wildest dreams he never expected to win, but was looking forward to the billions of dollars of free publicity in giving him greater leverage in the media so that he could become an ‘even greater’ star.  All his ‘people’ worked with him so that they could find good jobs when the campaign failed.  This would explain why they didn’t bother to divest themselves of questionable financial links - after all, these would only pose embarrassing questions if 45 was successful and, as that couldn’t possibly happen, all the skeletons would stay safely in the cupboard.

Let’s take another view of the election.  Forget running for president, imagine this instead.  Suppose that Michelangelo died before completing the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel and that a crazed Pope announced a competition for its completion with a prize of absurd importance and a guarantee of worldwide fame for the successful artist.

Some artists would be cowed by the immensity of the undertaking, some would feel that they were unworthy of the commission, some would think about it and then think again, and some of the best artists would also put themselves forward citing past work as evidence that they could do it.

And then imagine that I decide to throw my paintbrush onto the palette, so to speak.  Although I am fascinated by the history of art, I am, alas, no painter.  My greatest artistic achievement in the plastic arts is a series of drawings in a small sketchbook that I did as my mother’s birthday present from a holiday I took in Turkey.  And those drawings are only acceptable when viewed through the accommodating critical maternal eye!

However, let me take a leaf out of Trump’s approach and apply it to my application.

 

Hi everyone!  What a fantastic crowd, this is the largest crowd ever assembled to hear an artist speak.  True!

Everyone knows that the Arts in Rome are fixed.  There is a swamp of artists in the city who manage (what a surprise!) to get all the best commissions.  They are wealthy and out of touch and don’t care about you.  It’s got nothing to do with skill, but with who you know.  If you have a Cardinal in your family, or better still a Pope then you are part of that charmed circle which deliberately excludes new, exciting and popular talent from showing itself.

And what if I don’t know the techniques of fresco?  Is that really so important?  Is that the only way?  What are we not being told about this commission?  We need to know the truth about this and many other things!  A truth that has been kept away from the ordinary people, the people who matter!  There was a time when Rome was respected throughout the world, when the word Rome meant something.  Rome is more than a few daubs on the ceiling.  Rome is you, the people; you are the shining glory of what we once were and what we can be again.

I do not paint for myself, indeed if I give myself over to this commission I will suffer financially, but I do not count the cost.  I think only of you and of how we, together can Make Rome Great Again!  Run Raphael Out of Town!  Give Veronese the V sign!  My art is your art, and your art is our art: together we will Make Rome Great Again!

Thank you!  Thank you very much!  Thank you!

As I read through Wolff’s destruction of Trump’s White House, I think about what might happen next.

It is very dangerous to assume that just because Trump is uniquely unqualified socially, politically, educationally, morally, sartorially and every other -lly that you can think of, that he will actually resign or be impeached or be otherwise removed, but say for a moment the tenure of the 45^th president was ended.   

This is the succession:

1         The Vice President                                        Mike Pence

2         The Speaker of the House of 

           Representatives                                             Paul Ryan

3         President pro tempore of the Senate      Orrin Hatch

4         Secretary of State                                          Rex Tillerson

5         Secretary of the Treasury                           Steven Mnuchin

6         Secretary of Defense                                     Jim Mattis

7         Attorney General                                           Jeff Sessions

Hardly a glittering list. 

Mike Pence terrifies me; Paul Ryan is spineless; Orrin Hatch is very old and on the point of retirement, and that someone like Jeff Sessions is on any list for any post of responsibility is depressing to put it mildly.

Right I’ve depressed myself sufficiently to go back to Fire and Fury and switch on my ‘fiction’ button in the brain and have a good read!


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