Once I finally quit the New York Times, where will I turn?

Obviously to Dean Baker, who seems even more frustrated than I am at the nihilism of our "newspaper of record," which repeatedly feeds the (false) narratives that will help return fascist Trump to the White House. 

In keeping with its apparent commitment to ignore the data and insist homeownership is no longer possible, the New York Times ran yet another piece on how homeownership is becoming impossible for young people. The piece begins with the sad story of a young woman worried whether she and her spouse will ever be able to own a home....

It is unfortunate to hear about this nihilism. It would have been helpful to note that it does not correspond to the data. While homeownership rates have fallen back somewhat in the last few quarters, as a result of the sharp jump in mortgage rates, they are still above the pre-pandemic levels.

This is true across the board, including for young people. 

Progressivity

This article, based on a longer research paper, is interesting throughout. Working with an enormous database of distributional national accounts, the authors quantify the redistributive impacts of tax and transfer systems across countries. I repeat their key findings here: 

We establish five main findings:

1. Tax-and-transfer systems always reduce inequality, but with large variations.

2.About 90% of these variations are driven by transfers, while only 10% come from taxes.

3. Redistribution rises with development, but this is entirely due to transfers; tax progressivity is uncorrelated with per capita income.

4. Redistribution has increased in most world regions, except in Africa and Eastern Europe, where it has stagnated.

5. About 80% of variations in post-tax inequality are driven by differences in pre-tax inequality (predistribution), while 20% are driven by the direct effect of taxes and transfers (redistribution).

Some caveats are in order, some of which spring from somewhat arbitrary or at least contestable choices made in the classifications. First, they count "social insurance" payments such as social security as part of pre-tax incomes, and hence "predistribution." Second, conditional cash grants are counted as transfers; presumably this implies that "negative income tax" programs such as the earned income tax credit (EITC) are counted as part of the transfer system, not the tax system. And inevitably they have to make numerous simplifying assumptions about the incidence of taxes and transfers (who really pays?), etc.

Perhaps the biggest takeaway is the last: cross-country differences in the inequality of pre-tax income accounts for the lion's share of cross-country differences in post-tax inequality. Of course, predistribution includes lots of determinants, many of which are driven by government policies, such as educational systems. It would not seem to be a category error to think of educational equity as part of redistribution, rather than predistribution. 

Reading roundup

Slow couple of months for reading. 

Season of Migration to the North
Tayeb Salih

First published in 1966, this celebrated novel by the Sudanese writer Tayeb Salih covers a range of topical themes, including most obviously colonialism, but also the (mis-)treatment of women in Sudanese and Western society. It is also rich and subtle in its descriptive language and its mysterious doppelgänger narrative. I can't compare it with the original Arabic, but judging from the results, Denys Johnson-Davies's translation is exquisite. Highly recommended.

The Eye of the Heron
Ursula K. LeGuin

Well, not really a heron, but that's what the human colonists have decided one of the creatures looks like on the planet they have colonized– some of them against their will. The story moves right along, and LeGuin covers many of her themes– gender, freedom, authoritarianism. The effectiveness and limits of non-violent collective action play a central role. The book also offers a pretty decent fictional illustration of the Domar serfdom model. 

Vagabonds
Hao Jingfang

Earth vs. Mars, ho hum. I stuck with this sci-fi snooze-fest far longer than I should have.

Art of the Chicken
Jacques Pépin 

I consider myself a pretty good cook, and others seem to agree. I learned some of what I know from observing Mom, who is a very good cook, but I would say Jacques Pépin deserves the most credit for my competence and confidence in the kitchen. His cooking shows always struck the right balance between taste, technique, intuition, quality ingredients, and charm. Speaking of charm, that would be the right term for Jacques's colorful paintings of chickens, which fill many of the pages of this book. Part memoir, part cookbook, the recipes are casual and assume that you have watched Jacques enough to know what to do with them. 

Fungi!

A good day yesterday for fungus in El Corte de Madera Creek Open Space Preserve... In order: shaggy manes, some kind of big agaricus, pumpernickel bagel on old-growth redwood, tafoni, grisette, blackening russula of some sort, ramaria (coral fungus), bolete, questionable stropharia, Amanita gemmata (?).

Felicity

Roughly concurrently with the run of the greatest TV show of all time, another show featured an "innocent" but determined young woman making her way in the world. We watched the pilot of Felicity last night, and I doubt I'll watch many more episodes. Dated, earnest, and not really my demographic. But judging from the pilot, the show was really pretty good. And Keri Russell was already amazing. You see the steeliness and intelligence that made her so good in The Americans. There is a lot going on behind that angular, elegant, pretty face– vulnerability, sure, but also arrogance, and suppressed anger. 

Saliences

Nothing like a visit to rugged Pescadero Beach to be reminded of the contrast between the permanent and the ephemeral... concerns of Ammons in this great poem: "where not a single single thing endures, the overall reassures." 

Saliences

A.R. Ammons

Consistencies rise

and ride

the mind down

hard routes

        walled

with no outlet and so

to open a variable geography,

        proliferate

possibility, here

is this dune fest

        releasing

mind feeding out,

gathering clusters,

fields of order in disorder,

where choice

can make beginnings,

        turns,

        reversals,

where straight line

and air-hard thought

can meet

unarranged disorder,

        dissolve

before the one event that

creates present time

in the multi-variable

        scope :

a variable of wind

among the dunes,

making variables

of position and direction and sound

of every reed leaf

and bloom,

running streams of sand,

winding, rising, at a depression

falling out into deltas,

weathering shells with blast,

striking hiss into clumps of grass,

against bayberry leaves,

     lifting

the spider from footing to footing

hard across the dry even crust

toward the surf :

wind, a variable, soft wind, hard

steady wind, wind

shaped and kept in the

bent of trees,

the prevailing dipping seaward

of reeds,

the kept and erased sandcrab trails :

wind, the variable to the gull's flight,

how and where he drops the clam

and the way he heads in, running to loft :

wind, from the sea, high surf

and cool weather;

from the land, a lessened breakage

and the land's heat :

wind alone as a variable,

as a factor in millions of events,

leaves no two moments

on the dunes the same :

     keep

free to these events,

bend to these

changing weathers :

multiple as sand, events of sense

alter old dunes

of mind,

release new channels of flow,

free materials

to new forms :

ind alone as a variable

rakes this neck of dunes

out of calculation's reach :

come out of the hard

routes and ruts,

pour over the walls

of previous assessments : turn to

the open,

the unexpected, to new saliences of feature.

*

The reassurance is

that through change

continuities sinuously work,

cause and effect

        without alarm,

gradual shadings out or in,

motions that full

        with time

do not surprise, no

abrupt leap or burst : possibility,

with meaningful development

of circumstance :

when I went back to the dunes today,

        saliences,

congruent to memory,

spread firmingly across my sight :

the narrow white path

rose and dropped over

grassy rises toward the sea :

sheets of reeds,

tasseling now near fall,

filled the hollows

with shapes of ponds or lakes :

bayberry, darker, made wandering

chains of clumps, sometimes pouring

into heads, like stopped water :

        much seemed

constant, to be looked

forward to, expected :

from the top of a dune rise,

look of ocean salience : in

        the hollow,

where a runlet

        makes in

at full tide and fills a bowl,

extravagance of pink periwinkle

along the grassy edge,

and a blue, bunchy weed, deep blue,

deep into the mind the dark blue

        constant :

minnows left high in the tide-deserted pocket,

        fiddler crabs

bringing up gray pellets of drying sand,

disappearing from air's faster events

at any close approach :

certain things and habits

        recognizable as

having lasted through the night :

though what change in

a day’s doing!

desertions of swallows

        that yesterday

ravaged air, bush, reed, attention

in gatherings wide as this neck of dunes :

now, not a sound

or shadow, no trace of memory, no remnant

        Explanation :

summations of permanence!

where not a single single thing endures,

the overall reassures, 

deaths and flights,

shifts and sudden assaults claiming

limited orders,

the separate particles : 

earth brings to grief

much in an hour that sang, leaped, swirled, 

yet keeps a round

        quiet turning,

beyond loss or gain,

beyond concern for the separate reach.

What to blame for the sorry state of U.S. politics

The latest Times / Siena poll puts Trump in the lead in several swing states, and a quick perusal of the tables reveals where the blame lies: namely, the 19th Amendment. Sure, it gave women the vote, but it failed to take the next logical step, which was to take away the vote for men. Once again, the nation suffers the consequences.

Economics GOAT

This is a silly business, but as someone who has taught history of economic thought, I can't help but offer an opinion... or three. 

1. Adam Smith

2. David Ricardo

Tied for 3rd (alphabetically):

Kenneth Arrow

Gary Becker

J.M. Keynes

Frank Ramsey

Frank who? Look him up. As for Friedman and Hayek... oh please... Hayek wrote a very nifty essay that every economist should read; Friedman's inflation expectations stuff is important... the rest is ideology. If you must have a free-market economist on your list, Becker kicks both their asses. 

Malthus?! That proto-Trumpian pastor? Smith had already laid out the population theory and way better, and presumably somebody else preceded Smith.

Listen up, oldsters!

Some wisdom from Iggy Pop and Erik Loomis:

I [Loomis] really appreciated this Iggy Pop discussion about listening to new music when you are old. I am not that old, but this pretty much sums it up:

I keep reading that we decline in our 70s so I try to keep using my brain. Discovering new music opens my mind and the element of surprise keeps me connected. I feel like I’m mining for diamonds – and when you find the diamond, you know. When I heard Chaise Longue by Wet Leg I got really excited: it’s cheeky, with a wicked groove, but it’s the vocals – they’re almost metronomic. You could ask 100 people to sing it and it wouldn’t sound the same.

…

I’m sick of hearing old boys say you shouldn’t use synthetic tools. If you’re rich and have a garage and a car, you could start a rock band. But there’s people using synthesisers to play with guitars, horns, hypnotic breaths, and it’s fantastic. If I hear anyone say: “Things aren’t as good as they used to be,” I tell them to listen to the Moses Boyd remix of Pace by Nubya Garcia. It’s fantastically advanced contemporary music that tugs at the heartstrings. From Sons of Kemet to the Comet Is Coming, there’s so much good stuff about now. At my age, it helps to remain curious.

Not only is that Wet Leg song really great, but the principle is strong. If you have given up on new music, you have given up on life. What is the point of continuing to live if you are not curious about new things? It’s just sad. So put aside the ELP and Rush and fucking Jimmy Buffett albums a bit commenters and listen to some stuff by people under 30. Or even under 40! Just try!!

Stonecrest, FL

Can Music Be Perfect? Vol. 106

Had never heard of this very fine Chicano blues-crooner until this weekend, when this tune was played on our humble but also very fine local community radio station, KKUP. The Righteous Brothers' rendition is righteous, for sure, but this may be even better, with its slow, powerful, brassy groove.

 

A Tenured Professor

That's the title of JK Galbraith's gently satiric novel, published in 1990. A Harvard economics professor strikes it rich by shorting irrational exuberance. The banksters are not pleased and do what must be done to put an end to this nonsense, and our hero must resign himself to life as a tenured professor and expert on the economics of consumer durables. With the exception of its gentleness and civility, the novel could have been written today. As a novelist, Galbraith was no David Lodge, but he wasn't terrible either.

Galls at Stulsaft Park, Redwood City, CA

I don't think I'd ever walked around Stulsaft Park, a decent-sized city park on both sides of the Arroyo Ojo de Agua creek in suburban Redwood City. It has several varieties of oaks growing together along the steep slopes. This time of year, oaks come with galls in various shapes, colors, and textures. Wonderful life!

Can Music Be Perfect? Vol. 105

Very funny, very smart, very musical... and she sure rocks. 

Framing

Michael Hiltzik: 

The New Yorker's great press critic, A.J. Liebling, observed during a New York newspaper strike in 1963 that "the employer, in strike stories, always 'offers,' and the union 'demands.'"

The stories never say that the employer "'demands' that the union men agree to work for a two-bit raise; the union never 'offers' to accept more." The reason, Liebling conjectured, is that "'demand,' in English, is an arrogant word; 'offer,' a large, generous one." 

America Betrays Its Children Again

Yup. Krugman. 

Can Music Be Perfect? Vol. 104

Nobody better than David Murray. And hang in there for Hamid Drake's solo... so awesome!

Reading roundup

I'm way behind.  

Brideshead Revisited
Evelyn Waugh

The novel is packed with melodrama, romance, humor, irony, and Catholicism... and very well written. So I suppose it is the masterpiece people say it is. 

Crook Manifesto
Colson Whitehead

This sequel to Harlem Shuffle is really three novellas set in 1970s Harlem, the first and third featuring our hero, the furniture store owner and sometime crook Ray Carney, along with Pepper, a thug with a conscience, if not a heart of gold. The middle novella is a plot diversion revolving around blaxploitation film-making. For the most part Whitehead uses the conventions of the crime novel to show rather than tell us about his main themes of racism, political corruption, and economic striving, although occasionally he succumbs to the temptation to do a little lecturing. The climactic scene ties things up a little too neatly for my taste, but the book is a good read, and I'll be happy to see what's next for Carney in the inevitable follow-up. Whitehead has E.L. Doctorow's sensibility and ambition, if not quite his chops. But who does? 

The Quick and the Dead
Joy Williams

Williams is best known as a writer of short stories, and this novel reads like a collection of loosely connected stories. She writes well, but overall it's too quirky and precious for me.  

The Steel Crocodile
D.G. Compton

Not Compton's best, but a decent sci fi novel covering many of his concerns, including religion, individual freedom, and the misuse of psychology. It's also interesting as a vision of AI dystopia, published in 1970.

Evergreen
Naomi Hirahara

A mystery set in postwar LA, featuring the community of Japanese-Americans formerly "interned" during the War. The plot moves along and seems to be historically well-informed, but the writing is pretty pedestrian.

Innocent Blood
P.D. James

James was generally misanthropic; the "usual suspects" in her murder mysteries were typically nasty or weak, or both, each fully capable of being the guilty party. Of course to have a mystery you need to have multiple characters who could have "dunnit." Hers is a grim picture of human nature and modern society, but in the Dalgliesh novels the bleakness was partly offset by the fundamental goodness and humanity of Inspector Dalgliesh himself and, later in the series, his colleague Kate Miskin. 

Innocent Blood, from roughly the middle of James's career, has no Dalgliesh, and every character is pretty twisted and unpleasant. Still, the book is wonderfully written and really keeps you turning the pages; and damned if some of the nasties don't start to redeem themselves just a little, by way of... what's this? Love? And then, in the overly contrived climactic scene, it all crashes down, only to be set right again in an unsatisfying and in some ways quite disturbing epilogue. This is at once one of James's best books and one of the most problematic. I'm glad she brought back Adam D.

Can Music Be Perfect? Vol. 103

Perhaps someone asked Rhett Miller to write the perfect 2-minute love song. He failed: this clocks in 15 seconds too long. Aside from that, perfect it is.

Pee-wee, RIP

His show was an antic blend of kid stuff and double entendre. Something for everyone in the family.

Summerfield, FL

Lithium and how everything is connected to everything

I recently bought eight settings of dishes from East Fork. It is beautiful, and they care about things I care about, and it will last... forever? Worth the money, on many levels, I think. Here was interesting news.

We’ve switched our glaze formula because our current glaze contains Petalite: a mineral that contains lithium. As the battery industry has grown they have started to buy up all minerals containing lithium. First the price for any material containing lithium exploded, then the supply chain dried up completely. The disappearance of this mineral forced us to quickly switch formulas.

Tony Bennett, RIP

I don't go gaga for Gaga, so Tony's late forays into duets left me a little underwhelmed, but then, he was still sounding pretty good well into his 90s... And in his prime, he was damn good.

Mass decarceration

Some amazingly good and important news... 

"One obvious consequence of these findings is that any contemporary claims suggesting that 1 in 3 Black men born today will be incarcerated in their lifetimes are no longer empirically tenable."

Krugman on motivated reasoning in economics

He's right about this, and the pattern extends well beyond positions on inflation. Consider the employment effects of the minimum wage, or the wage effects of immigration. Economists who study these issues tend to be on one team or the other, and their careful and "objective" empirical analysis will more often than not support their team's views. A challenge for anyone who wants to believe in technocracy.

This says something uncomfortable about the economics profession: We’re supposed to be doing dispassionate analysis, but the fact that most economists are consistently either inflation optimists or inflation pessimists whatever the circumstances suggests that somebody is suffering from motivated reasoning. (But not me. I, of course, am totally objective. OK, I do sometimes catch myself engaging in motivated reasoning. But I try to fight it.)

Authorial cruelty

John Banville seems to have found his calling as a writer of very literary yet can't-put-it-down crime novels. April in Spain is a very good one indeed, the best of his books I have read. It seems that everyone in Banville's Ireland has an appalling history of abuse and/or abandonment. Banville believes in morality, but whether one's tortured personal history leads to a life of sin or redemption seems a matter of chance, and the redeemed life is not one that offers consolations– to the contrary, God (Banville) is as content punishing the righteous as the evil. The problem is that Banville's eagerness to punish even his most admirable characters sometimes leads to plotting decisions that stretch credulity. What he does to Quirke by the end of this novel seems cruelly gratuitous and, perhaps for that reason, predictable. And predictability is one sin a crime novelist should avoid committing.

Can Music Be Perfect? Vol. 102

From the inviting intro on tres, to the compulsively swinging percussion, to Ismael Quintana's vocals, to the awesome big-band horn arrangements, to the master's solo, channeling a little McCoy Tyner. 50 years old this year, and sounding better than the day it was born... Wow.

Yosemite

A couple weeks ago now. It's not possible to do justice to the roaring water at anything like the actual scale, even with video, but here are just a few snapshots from our hikes along Hetch Hetchy to Rancheria Falls, and up to Glacier Point and back down past Nevada Falls. The purple flower is (I think) harvest brodiaea, which looks a lot like our local Ithuriel's spear and is abundant and vibrant along the trail out to Rancheria. Wading knee-deep across the Valley floor flooded by the icy Merced is not something I would be eager to do again... or would I? (See my colleague MK in the last photo...)

Reading roundup

The Ghost Road
Pat Barker

The third novel in the Regeneration trilogy is thematically and stylistically the most ambitious of the series and, for the most part, equally as compelling as the first two. The book's characters are haunted by dreams, daydreams, memories, and ghosts– real or metaphorical– and by very real traumas and dilemmas. I was not completely convinced by the passages in which real-life protagonist William Rivers recalls and reflects upon his encounters with Melanesians in his earlier life as an ethnographer, but one cannot dismiss the brutal irony of a British colonial culture that could fear and condemn ritual acts of human sacrifice in the South Seas while sending countless thousands of its own youth off to the killing fields of Europe... "Dulce et decorum." 

The Lathe of Heaven
Ursula K. Le Guin

The multiverse plot done right. Le Guin's short novel blends her characteristic humanism with an Aladdin's lamp "be careful what you wish for" fable– the source of the story's humor as well as its sting. In its 184 pages you'll also get an alien invasion, a prescient portrayal of post climate-change Portland, and a very sweet love story, all wrapped up in a well-written 184-page package. Bravo! 

Bad Actors
Mick Herron

The latest Slough House; a solid addition to the series. The baddest (in the bad sense) of the bad actors is, as usual, a populist-authoritarian political grifter. It's all about politics, as well as the professional love-hate relationship between our "hero" Jackson Lamb and his ally-nemesis, head spook Diana Taverner. Their symbiosis and grudging mutual respect form the driving force of the series. Comparisons with Le Carré are not entirely apt, given the mischievously comic tone of Herron's books, but the two authors definitely share similarly cynical politics and a sense that the career British spies they write about are – to paraphrase Churchill – the worst people in the world, except for all the others. While recovering from my first-ever and nasty case of covid recently, I watched A Most Wanted Man, the film adaptation of Le Carré's novel starring Philip Seymour Hoffman. The plot is not Le Carré at his best, but the movie is solid, and of course Hoffman is always worth watching. He is ideal as the world-weary master spy with a conscience, a la Smiley. Jackson Lamb is cut from the same cloth, despite his cover of crass buffoonery and equal-opportunity bigotry. As the series continues (now up to #8), with each of Lamb's triumphs and acts of kindness and loyalty it has become increasingly implausible that any of the characters is really taken in by Lamb's schtick. The avid reader certainly knows better. I await #9 nonetheless.

The Wallcreeper
Nell Zink

There's little question that this novella is well written, and it features some appealing birds, in particular the eponymous little fellow, a distant relative of our beloved nuthatches. As for the first-person narrator, she is alternately funny and frustrating– in a book published in 2014, I find it a little difficult to buy a protagonist who is a smart woman yet so deferential to a series of untrustworthy dudes. Is she really just in it for the sex? And I wasn't sure what to make of the quick and tidy ending. Lesson learned? Or last laugh on her? Or on us?

Ithuriel's spear

Some years after I planted the corms, the flowers finally appeared under my black oak this spring. Abundant this time of year in our Bay Area hills, it is one of my favorite flowers. Ithuriel is an angel in Paradise Lost, and Milton may have invented the name. Gabriel instructs Ithuriel and Zephon to find the devil in the Garden of Eden, and they do...

Ithuriel and Zephon, with winged speed

Search through this garden, leave unsearched no nook;

But chiefly where those two fair creatures lodge,

Now laid perhaps asleep, secure of harm.

This evening from the sun's decline arrived,

Who tells of some infernal Spirit seen

Hitherward bent (who could have thought?) escaped

The bars of Hell, on errand bad no doubt:

Such, where ye find, seise fast, and hither bring.

So saying, on he led his radiant files,

Dazzling the moon; these to the bower direct

In search of whom they sought: Him there they found

Squat like a toad, close at the ear of Eve,

Assaying by his devilish art to reach

The organs of her fancy, and with them forge

Illusions, as he list, phantasms and dreams;

Or if, inspiring venom, he might taint

The animal spirits, that from pure blood arise

Like gentle breaths from rivers pure, thence raise

At least distempered, discontented thoughts,

Vain hopes, vain aims, inordinate desires,

Blown up with high conceits ingendering pride.

Him thus intent Ithuriel with his spear

Touched lightly; for no falshood can endure

Touch of celestial temper, but returns

Of force to its own likeness: Up he starts

Discovered and surprised. As when a spark

Lights on a heap of nitrous powder, laid

Fit for the tun some magazine to store

Against a rumoured war, the smutty grain,

With sudden blaze diffused, inflames the air;

So started up in his own shape the Fiend.

Back stept those two fair Angels, half amazed

So sudden to behold the grisly king;

Yet thus, unmoved with fear, accost him soon.

Paradise Lost, Book IV

Rose galls

Diplolepis is a genus of cynipid wasp that induces galls on our native wild roses. I'd never noticed them before this spring. Recently I stumbled across two different species that produce similar spiny galls. The first, D. bicolor, occurs along the stem; I saw it in Armstrong Redwoods State Park. The second, D. polita, grows on the leaf (photo below); these were at Hidden Villa. D. bicolor has the honor of being the cover photo of Ronald Russo's wonderful guide, Plant Galls of the Western United States. Lucky gall!

Chris Strachwitz, RIP

I didn't realize he had died, and heard this profile on KQED today. An underappreciated hero of American cultural preservation, and of great American music.

Congrats Terence Blanchard

SFJAZZ has appointed Terence Blanchard its new Executive Artistic Director, filling the shoes of SFJAZZ founder Randall Kline, who is stepping down after 40 years at the helm. It's hard to imagine another choice who would bring Blanchard's creativity, reputation, and influence across jazz and American music. Check out his soundtrack for the new Perry Mason series on HBO. The show is OK, the music is killer.

A few flowers

On the trails above Hidden Villa. Elegant clarkia, wind poppies and blue dicks, false babystars, and yellow Mariposa lily, respectively. So nice.

Reading roundup

The Eye in the Door
Pat Barker

This was the sequel to Regeneration, Barker's excellent anti-war novel of WWI. A psychological thriller of a sort, The Eye in the Door keeps a lot of balls in the air in its tightly written 277 pages, with its portrayal of the oppression and repression of homosexuality, pacifism, and leftism in wartime Britain, the psychological trauma associated with trench warfare as well as subterfuge, and the inner turmoil of characters navigating complex moral dilemmas. A justly celebrated book. I'll eagerly move on to the third in the trilogy.

The Feral Detective
Jonathan Lethem

A dystopian novel of post-Trump America, it takes place in the desert hinterland east of Los Angeles, and features competing tribes of off-the-gridders: the (male) Bears and the (female) Rabbits. Pitched as an edgy detective novel, it is also a fairly ham-handed allegory of Trumpian America and our gendered political and cultural divide. Lethem still seems to be phoning it in, compared to the brilliant promise of some of his earlier work, and only five years after its publication, The Feral Detective's message seems more stale than insightful. Still, Lethem phoning it in is a better writer than many: If you're in the market for a detective story as well as a quirky love story, you could do worse. 

The City Inside
Samit Basu

William Gibson goes to Delhi in this high-energy, near-future romp. I liked the characters, and I liked the buzzy language and plausibly bleak but somehow still hopeful vision of authoritarian India after post-Modi fundamentalist turmoil. 

Infinity Gate
M.R. Carey

It's the multiverse. Travel between dimensions is a bit like travel between planets or galaxies, but all you have to do is step on a platform and shazam! you appear in the same place and time, but in an alternative history. Alternative evolutionary paths across these histories have made some people look more like cats or bunnies than humans. Huh. Apparently a lot of people liked this book. Maybe it improves after the point where I turned off my kindle and re-joined the here and now... 

The Mercy
Philip Levine

Levine's poetic voice was disarmingly plain. One page of Levine is a good antidote to 150 pages of M.R. Carey. It will restore your faith in the beauty and power of the written word.

Amanita velosa

Quite a perfect late-season specimen... eminently edible... but be sure of your ID. I let it be.

Joe Biden Has Given Us the Greatest Economy Ever

Dean Baker says so. He's probably correct. Maybe this helps explain why the Republican Party is hellbent on tanking the global economy by refusing to raise the debt limit. 

Starting with unemployment, the current unemployment rate of 3.4 percent is the lowest in more than half a century. More than any time in this period, people who want a job are able to get one. The unemployment rate for Blacks is at 4.7 percent, the lowest number on record. 

Frogs won't actually stay in the pot as the water temperature rises... but humans?

So, the GOP and maybe some conservative Democrats plan to hold the economy hostage in order to repeal key climate provisions in the Inflation Reduction Act (and take food away from poor people).

Ocean surface temperature... nothing to see here...

Reading roundup

Days Without End
Sebastian Barry

As I read this splendidly written western, I was somehow reminded of the Black Knight in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, who as one limb after another is lopped off scoffs, "only a flesh wound," and carries on with the fight. If at some point you think everything bad that could possibly happen to Thomas McNulty has happened, and that it is time for him to give up, well, keep on reading. And you will, because in addition to being an exciting if brutal depiction of the violence of white America's expansion into indigenous territory, it is a quirky and affecting love story, and a celebration of the English language in the manner of which only Irish writers seem capable. If in the end the battle scenes are a bit excessive, the plot twists a bit far-fetched, and the wokeness occasionally obtrusive, you will still be glad you read it.

A New Life
Bernard Malamud

Sy Levin has left New York City and moved out west to start over as a professor of literature at Cascadia College, which he assumes, erroneously, is a liberal arts school. Instead, it turns out to be a state ag/technical college, where he is assigned as an adjunct instructor of freshman comp. Levin is lonely, horny, and a little troubled, but gamely tries to make the best of it. Misadventures both sexual and departmental ensue, in the typical fashion of academic satire. What sets this book apart, unexpectedly, is its lovely description of the Pacific Northwest– its forests, contours, moisture. Malamud himself was an instructor of freshman comp at Oregon State from 1949 to 1961, and the place left its mark. The overall tone of the book is amusing to outright funny, with occasional somewhat jarring intrusions of serious melancholy and sentiment. Worth reading.

Deep River
Shusaku Endo

Many years ago I read and admired what many consider Endo's masterpiece, Silence, as well as his twisted thriller, Scandal. In his late (1993) novel Deep River, four Japanese characters find themselves on the same tour to the Hindu pilgrimage site Varanasi, India– none a Hindu, each with a past of suffering or emotional turmoil that has led them to seek some kind of spiritual reckoning or meaning. Endo's voice is channeled through Ōtsu, a Christ-like Catholic priest who ministers to the dead and dying along the banks of the Ganges, and former lover of Mitsuko, one of the travelers. The reader, like the book's tourists, is left without much closure. One might suppose Endo believes his non-Christian characters are truly lost without salvation through Christ– but then, as the Jesuit missionaries in Silence and Deep River's Ōtsu illustrate, Christian faith provides little solace in the face of human cruelty and suffering. 

Joe Country; Slough House
Mick Herron

Books 6 and 7 in the Slough House series. Am I getting just a little tired of the formula after having read my fourth? Not so tired that I won't snarf up #8 as soon as the price drops...

The Lighthouse
P.D. James

This was one of her last Dalgliesh novels, and it is a good one. A locked-room mystery set not in a locked room but on a windswept, secluded island off the Cornish coast, the setup is exactly what you would expect: Just about everyone has a motive to murder the famous author Nathan Oliver, and somebody does. And as always, the fun is not in guessing who done it but in seeing how Dalgliesh and his comrades go about solving it. As usual, much of the work is accomplished in interviews with the suspects. The denouement is, unfortunately, contrived and over-plotted, but you'll want to continue to the happy and hopeful ending for the poet-detective AD, who deserves all the best.

Our classy once and future (?) king

I suppose those who voted for him are angry rather than embarrassed... I assume they know that there was a "porn star payment," but being in the position to make a porn star payment is something they admire, if not aspire to? But is it what they aspire to for their children? To be a profane, entitled, mean-spirited bully and bigot? His appeal still puzzles me...

Crazy nature, part 3

This is a cage stinkhorn (Clathrus ruber), which appeared as if by magic in my front yard under manzanita after the rains... It could be a kid's bike helmet, or a whiffle ball, but in fact it is a fungus, adapted for attracting flies as if to carrion. Lovely!

Crazy nature, part 2

Outcropping, Floras Lake State Natural Area, OR.

Crazy nature, part 1

Skunk cabbage, South Slough, OR. 

Reading roundup

Some novels recently read in their entirety or in part...  

Quartet in Autumn
Barbara Pym
The blurb on the cover states: "Written with the wit and style of a twentieth-century Jane Austen." Certainly this quiet 1977 novel about four lonely and aging co-workers is witty, in a very Brit stiff-upper-lip manner. But Ms. Pym seems not to like any of her protagonists, and the most one can muster for any of them is pity, rather than empathy, let alone admiration. At least with Austen there is usually one character to like per novel.

Spook Street 
Mick Herron
Another Slough House comic thriller. Solid entertainment.

The Alien Years
Robert Silverberg
I quite liked his Dying Inside, and Tower of Glass was decent if predictable sci-fi. So it was a no-brainer that I would grab a used paperback copy of The Alien Years, which is– good guess!– about an alien invasion. I love alien invasion stories, but I gave up at page 60 of this 488-page snoozer. Dated and perfunctory. 

Paul David, 1935-2023

Paul was my mentor and co-chair of my PhD dissertation committee. He was, overall, the biggest single influence on my intellectual and professional development, and among the most brilliant people I ever met. Given his stature and many accomplishments, it seems a little odd to say that he was an under-achiever, but it may be that the breadth of his interests sometimes obscured the depth of his insights– a hedgehog in fox's clothing, perhaps.

Wayne Shorter, RIP

One of the greats.

For your consideration: real movies!

Not watching enough movies these days. These days, it's easy gratification to get sucked into a series and stick with it through as many seasons as they produce... a harmless addiction. But how about cinema: a self-contained work that shows you something that will make you squirm, bore you into enlightenment, leave you stricken, amazed, or just a little different... or at least a little impressed? For your consideration:

Jafar Panahi's Taxi

Funeral Parade of Roses

Licorice Pizza

Terminator 2: Judgment Day

Two more novels by Elizabeth Taylor

Angel

A Game of Hide and Seek 

Was it purely by accident that I happened to read her two best novels first, or was I just in a more receptive frame of mind when I read them? I loved A View of the Harbour and Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont, and the books under consideration here share many of the same virtues: prose writing that takes your breath away, adept juggling of interior and exterior narrative. But how much interest can one generate in the sad life of a romance novelist who is a monster to everyone around her; or in a couple who, having fallen in love as kids, go on to lead separate lives of longing and misery? Not enough.

Trugoy, RIP

Tom Verlaine, RIP

Side 1 of Marquee Moon is my favorite side of rock music. There is nothing else in the rock canon that sounds remotely like it, or sounds as good. 

Nightmare Alley

There's a sucker born every minute, and whether by the laws of economics or predator-prey dynamics, there's also a steady supply of grifters to satisfy the demand: Trump, Holmes, SBF, Santos, to name only the latest crop.

Grifters and their marks (the suckers) figure prominently in many noire novels and movies, and William Lindsay Gresham's sordidly fantastic 1946 novel Nightmare Alley features one of the best literary grifters ever: Stanton Carlisle. 

Nightmare Alley traces Stan's path from the gritty carny tent to expensive private séances where, as the Reverend Carlisle, he summons spirits for the naive and vulnerable well-to-do. Stan's ascent illustrates all the talents a successful grifter needs to have: an ability to identify the most gullible and eager marks, whether in the carny audience or among the well-heeled dinner-party guests; enough talent for magic to pull off increasingly elaborate illusions and sleights; and a real gift for gab. The last of these talents is the most important of all, serving multiple purposes: to ingratiate the marks while all the time keeping them distracted from the real game at hand; to identify and exploit a personal weakness or trauma, creating an emotional stake in the grift; and to weasel out of jams when a cop or a skeptical mark calls your bluff.

Along Stan's journey, the reader is treated to a fine cast of characters, including the women in Stan's life– grifters and marks alike– and to writing in the best hard-boiled style, punctuated by booze-driven stream of consciousness soliloquies. Extended flashbacks and memories fill in the personal histories of a couple of characters, most notably Stan Carlisle. His Oedipal longing and resentments are fodder for his psychologist, lover, and eventual partner-in-grift Lilith Ritter. You'd think Stan might be a little more savvy than to fall for this femme fatale– but then, maybe there's a mark inside every grifter.

This being noire, it's not a spoiler to reveal that Stan's ascent will inevitably lead to a hard fall. You might say he had it coming; but for the gods or spirits who govern Gresham's universe, justice has got nothing to do with it.

Nope

Jordan Peele's latest film is further evidence of his greatness, even if this shaggy dog of a story is not totally great. It is certainly worth watching: funny, at times scary, and full of amusing social commentary that ranges from broad to pretty clever. It lacks the punch and discipline of Get Out, but like that film it does feature Daniel Kaluuya, who is fantastic. In a movie where the cloud-like alien invader will eat you if it catches you looking it in the eye, a fellow like Kaluuya with eyeballs that nearly jump right out of his head is at a distinct disadvantage. Peele plays that for all it is worth, with darkened scenes in which Kaluuya's dark skin nearly disappears, his bug-eyes all aglow. 

Horses play a role here, and I felt the movie could have made more of them. Horses are, after all, the most alien of animals that humans regularly commune with. Note to self: EVs are great, but a horse is better during those times when an evil alien is using some kind of electromagnetic pulse to shut down all electrical devices. 

Recommended.

Can Music Be Perfect? Vol. 101

Lately it seems like I've been listening to at least one Oscar Peterson YouTube every night. There's a surprising number of them out there. All of a sudden he is my favorite musician. Peterson knew his Bach, and you can hear it in this 1964 version of C Jam Blues, as he passes the counterpoint between left and right hands. But always rooted in the blues, and always swinging. Swinging is underappreciated. Supported by his classic trio-mates, Ed Thigpen and Ray Brown.

Can Music Be Perfect? The First 100

1. San Jose Jazz Festival 2011

2. The Pogues, Rum Sodomy & the Lash 

3. DeBarge/ Andy Bey 

4. Rob Base and DJ EZ Rock 

5. Wussy, This Will Not End Well 

6. Louis Armstrong Plays WC Handy 

7. Adele, Rolling in the Deep 

8. Bob Wills, Stay a Little Longer 

9. The Flamingos, I Only Have Eyes for You 

10. Aretha Franklin 

11. Keith Whitley, I’m Over You 

12. Lisa Stansfield, Affection 

13. Peter Stampfel, Goldfinger 

14. The Ravens, Don’t Mention My Name 

15. CCR, Fortunate Son 

16. Pet Shop Boys, Rent 

17. Luther Vandross, A House is Not a Home 

18. Frank Sinatra, One for My Baby 

19. Domus, Faure Piano Quartet No. 1 

20. Randy Travis, Reasons I Cheat 

21. Willie Colon, The Hustler 

22. Joni Mitchell, Free Man in Paris 

23. Willie Colon/ Ruben Blades 

24. Bootsy Collins, Psychoticbumpschool 

25. The Byrds, So You Want to Be… 

26. Randy Newman, Marie 

27. Marty Robbins, El Paso 

28. Duke Ellington and Johnny Hodges 

29. Ray Charles, You Don’t Know Me 

30. Quincy Jones, Hicky Burr 

31. Lucinda Williams, Joy 

32. Alexi Kenney and friends, Dohnanyi Serenade 

33. Duke Ellington, Jazz Party 

34. Stevie Wonder, Bird of Beauty 

35. Ella Fitzgerald, What Are You Doing New Year’s Eve? 

36. Horace Parlan, Dexi 

37. James Carter, Round Midnight 

38. OutKast, Gasoline dreams 

39. Anthony Braxton, You Stepped Out of a Dream 

40. Caetano Veloso, Voce e Linda 

41. La Quatuor Signum Joue Haydn, Haydn Quartet. 77(1) 

42. Spanish Harlem Orchestra, Pa’ Gozar 

43. Benny Carter, On Green Dolphin Street 

44. Gladys Knight & the Pips, Midnight Train 

45. Stevie Wonder, You Haven’t Done Nothin’ 

46. The Housemartins, The Light is Always Green 

47. Nirvana, Smells Like Teen Spirit 

48. Amy Rigby, The Trouble with Jeanie 

49. Murray Perahia, Bach English Suite No. 2 

50. David Murray Octet, India 

51. Miles Davis, Right Off 

52. Dusty Springfield, Breakfast in Bed 

53. James Brown, Papa Don’t Take No Mess 

54. Men of Robert Shaw Chorale, Tom’s Gone to Hilo 

55. Billie Holiday, I’ll Never Be the Same 

56. Beach Boys, I Just Wasn’t Made for These Times 

57. Ray Kane, Pauoa Liko Ka Lehua 

58. Gal e Caetano, Minha Senhora 

59. Prince, Partyup 

60. Kate Tempest, The Beigeness 

61. Oumou Sangara, Iyo Djeli 

62. Louis Jordan, School Days 

63. New Order, Weirdo 

64. Bee Gees, More Than a Woman 

65. Ligeti, Mysteries of the Macabre 

66. Flying Burrito Bros. and Aretha, Do Right Woman 

67. Ella Fitzgerald, I Wish I Were in Love Again 

68. Guarneri Quartet, Beethoven Rasumovsky 

69. Count Basie and Sarah Vaughan, You Go To My Head 

70. Duke Ellington, Wig Wise 

71. McCoy Tyner, Atlantis 

72. Biggie, Things Done Changed 

73. Mostly Other People Do the Killing, Obelisk (For Dave Holland) 

74. Moraíto - Sor Bulería 

75. Stevie Wonder, Tuesday Heartbreak 

76. Cuong Vu Trio Meets Pat Metheny, Acid Kiss 

77. Noura Mint Seymali, Arbina 

78. Billie Holiday, Me Myself and I 

79. Charles Mingus, Duke Ellington’s Sound of Love 

80. Stan Getz, Só Danço Samba 

81. Kanye West, We Major 

82. Tribe Called Quest, Scenario 

83. Riton & Kah-Lo, Ginger 

84. Jungle Brothers, Doin’ Our Own Dang 

85. Allison Miller’s Boom Tic Boom, Congratulations and Condolences 

86. Go-Betweens, Darlinghurst Nights 

87. Los Lobos, Don’t Worry Baby 

88. Rudresh Mahanthappa and Indo-Pak Coalition, You Talk Too Much 

89. Murray Allen Carrington Power Trio, Perfection 

90. Sly and the Family Stone, Stand! 

91. Courtney Barnett, Elevator Operator 

92. Sousa, The Stars and Stripes Forever - "The President's Own" U.S. Marine Band 

93. Billie Eilish, bad guy 

94. Al Green, Let’s Stay Together 

95. Carsie Blanton, Harbor 

96. Chic, Good Times 

97. Annie Ross, I've Grown Accustomed to Your Face 

98. David Murray, All the Things You Are 

99. Safri Boys, Paar Linghhade 

100. Alexi Kenney, X Suite (Wiancko)

Can Music Be Perfect? Vol. 100

The centenary of this series calls for a bit of nepotism. The artist does not believe in perfection, I believe. But he and his friend Paul Wiancko get close enough for my standards. Don't miss him if he visits a concert hall near you...

Escaping the Malthusian Trap

An awesome visualization from Kieran Healy. Makes you wonder what happened in the 18th Century? Could it be... hmm... capitalism? I also want to see the 20th Century using a logarithmic scale. Thankfully he provides a link to the code.

Russell Banks, RIP

Two of his novels have really stuck with me: Cloudsplitter and Lost Memory of Skin. Different as they are in theme, what both books share are humanizing portraits of deeply flawed, troubled, complex men, and an accompanying exploration of what it means to lead a moral life. I have sometimes wanted to read some of his other books, such as The Sweet Hereafter, but the movie version was devastating enough. Banks did not flinch at the sad or the ugly.

Yup

ChatGPT.

Firuzabad

When Alexi is visiting, it's time for jigsaw puzzles. We did a city map of San Francisco, and then this Frank Stella painting. We followed Alexi rules for both: No peeking at the picture on the box. It came together. I'd say my contribution was about 15%.

Fred White, RIP

Obituary writing may be the last stronghold of virtuosic journalism, and Alex Traub nails the lede on this one. Bravo:

Fred White, who as a drummer with Earth, Wind & Fire propelled some of the funkiest songs in pop history, helping to provide a soundtrack to the nation’s weddings, bar mitzvahs, high school reunions and any other function at which people of all ages dance, died on Sunday. He was 67.