Summary

My Summary

This series for me has been one of the highlights of the semester. I have thoroughly enjoyed the seminars, the literature and the journey through which we have just emerged. I definitely feel more learned and I remember the first thing that confounded me at Paul’s first seminar was how little I knew about the world staring point blank at me!

I have learned a great deal in a very short time about current issues, history and even the future as the journey this module has taken me on now makes me the world quite differently and aid me in forming better informed views.

We have seen the recent world through the eyes of cynical, the optimist, the pessimistic, the academic - Lefebvre and not so academic – King Vidor. Through the eyes of the ascetic - Veblen and hedonists – Rodolfo Valentino, through the eyes of radicals – The Beat Generation etc and I feel I have had an unbiased education in this module. I can now interject trivial conversations amongst my friends with a deeper view and understanding of what goes on behind the scenes in our seemingly transparent world.

Some of the literature have also made me more aware of the sad situation of my third-world home country and I have come to understand better the sort of tragedy that was bound to befall its middle class nationalists struggle to wriggle itself free from colonialism.

Virtue is another theme that comes to mind over this reminiscence. A quality that has become so rarefied but was portrayed powerfully by Thorsten Veblen and contrasted by Mr Ford.

And what will the whole journey be without the stark realisation of that ancient conflict – The individual against the collective? Indeed, much of the wrongs in our world today stem from that source.

I may not have 20/20 vision yet but the passion has been ignited and I eagerly look forward to future sessions in the quest for enlightenment.    

Short Cuts

Short Cuts – John Lanchester

It is all together fitting and proper that the metaphorical spectacle we started with culminates in the actual spectacle complete with some naming and shaming and jaw dropping figures!

This deal with Northern Rock and Virgin Money! Whichever way one looks at it, it is the profit machine at work here and at the expense of the hardworking taxpayer too. We pay £1.4 billion for a reckless bank, we may get £1 billion back depending on profits increment (I wonder if profit means before or after lavish bonuses?) and the new bank will be 15% less safe than the former. What happens to the spare capital? The taxpayer has to lick his wounds and forget that a penny of the spare capital will ever cross his/ her sight?

The MF Global scandal accentuates the perceived recklessness of financial institutions and could serve as a preamble to global financial crisis. Irresponsible and greedy speculations of a few people based on hypotheses alone left countless more dangerously exposed to financial ruin. And as if that is not enough, to ‘mislay’ customers’ money, $1.2 billion of it? This is hardly a needle in the haystack scenario.

Jon Corzine, former governor and erstwhile Master of the Universe was swaggering all the way to the end. Vanity Fair dissects Corzine's MF Global debacle in its February issue, and adds this little tidbit: Corzine and wife Sharon went chateau shopping in France -- two weeks before MF Global filed for bankruptcy.

For those of you who didn't take French 101, a chateau is not a fancy hat but a triple sized McMansion with provenance. Sacre bleu!

Corzine resigned from the leadership of holding company MF Global days after it filed for bankruptcy – the eighth largest bankruptcy filing in U.S. history. The company's troubles were rooted in its bets on European sovereign debt.

Corzine testified before Congress that he did not know what had happened to the $1.2 billion in investors’ money that investigators found missing, earning him the dubious distinction of being The Star-Ledger’s 2011 Knucklehead of the Year. (http://www.nj.com/njvoices/index.ssf/2012/01/jon_corzine_and_the_mf_global.html)

Wow indeed!!!

The Olympus scandal again highlights the difficult prospects of the individual against the collective with Woodford bearing the brunt of it all. Was he wrong to have raised concerns or is the board determined to keep the lid on a much more sinister activity? To have lost three-quarters of its value in less than a year may suggest that Olympus is perhaps going for a Henry Ford (Tin Lizzie – Dos Passos) 1920s style financial manoeuvre but to arouse suspicions of involvement with criminal activity, leaves more questions unanswered.  

Again, suggestions offered by Badiou and Eagleton will prove very pertinent to disseminating this ‘vicious obscurity’. There is an urgent need for both political and ideological rupture where new forms of belonging which are multiple rather than monolithic, can challenge the status quo and create a very different order of things. 

The Dos Passos Chapters

Tin Lizzie (USA) – John Dos Passos

This is concise biography of Henry Ford’s paints the picture of a gifted and ruthlessly entrepreneurial Ford who always had an obsession with machinery. Born to a farming family, he was not a keen labourer but was good with his hands and worked hard in his spare time to develop a motorcar.

When he was forty, he started his own production company with the innovative vision of speeding up production rather than following the mainstream idea of racing to advertise. He came to demonstrate shrewd business acumen which brought him huge success. But he was characteristically restless with an appetite for profits seemingly irrespective of the means.

His restlessness and penchant for ideas would bring him to purchase a newspaper to peddle his ideas. This would put him in a position to think he could stop the war, needless to say a delusional thought. Target of much ridicule, he returned home ‘under wraps’.

The Americans joined the war two years later. Ford’s restlessness will see him manufacturing ammunitions and weapons and promised to give his profits to the government. Again he seemed to fail in his promise.

A selfish, tactical business manoeuvre in 1920 saw Henry Ford become even wealthier when he defaulted on loan repayments, shifted his liabilities onto his dealers, cancelled his orders from suppliers and shut down his business. Both dealers and suppliers were annihilated but he and his business emerge unscathed when he reopened.

Ford’s restlessness lead him to dabble into politics, made him the richest man in the world and his corporation exploited workers ever more ravaging until they went home at night ‘gray shaking husks’.

Ford eventually goes senile and four degenerate protesters, consequences of a financial crisis, looking for work were shot dead at Ford’s in 1932.

As an old man, Ford becomes a passionate collector of antiques. He walls himself up in paranoia on his father’s farm, which as a young man he could not stand, and lived in a seemingly intentional oblivion to the plight of everyone else but that which was his he guards passionately selfishly. He tries to recreate everything he had despised and left behind in his youth. A dissatisfied and sad old Ford wanted all creations of recent history far away from him.

This informative text again highlights the point that material success does not guarantee true sense of fulfilment. Henry Ford’s story is very reminiscent of Professor Silenus’s analogy of life as the revolving wheel. It seems Ford had gone through, ruthlessly obliterating anything and everything in his path, to reach the hub of that wheel but in the end, he despises his achievements and might well have stayed in Wayne Country.

The Bitter Drink (USA) – John Dos Passos

The exemplary life of Thorstein Veblen is portrayed also in a concise biography which furnishes us in the first, with a wealth of background knowledge on the ways of his people and the strong influences of his formative childhood years.  

Born to a family of hardworking farmers of Norwegian descent, who moved to America during the early nineteenth century due to changes they could not stomach at home, Veblen was brought up to be meek, direct and sceptical of profiteers. As an attempt to suppress early individualistic tendencies that were not in keeping with the dogma of his people and which Veblen was showing; reputable laziness and caustic tongue, his Father sent him off to become a priest.

Much of Veblen’s ideals were shaped by the influences of a changing world and his wits honed by constructive debates with worthy adversaries. Little did Veblen know that he was embarking on that ancient conflict; The individual against the collective as played out in Rand’s Fountainhead. Howbeit with a different ending. Or is it?

Veblen the eschewed ‘yesman’, ascetic and prime-mover would endure years of chequered career with the hope that there was still a chance to ‘take charge of the magnificent machine before the pigeyed speculators and the yesmen at office desks irrevocably ruined it and with it the hopes of four hundred years?’ In the end, Veblen retires deflated, disappointed and withdrawn. He goes senile and eventually quits the stage.

Although here, there is no discernible cause for celebration (as in the triumphant court scene in The Fountainhead, much to the contrary) and it seems in fact, the battle was lost, Veblen had died for what he absolutely believed in. And he did so, without surrounding himself with material comforts like Mr Henry Ford, still true to his original self and with highly dignifying virtue indeed. In that sense, the principles and ideals of individualism becomes immortal.

VIVA VEBLEN!

The Adagio Dancer (USA) – John Dos Passos

The story, written with some very funny expressions in parts, trails the life and untimely death of a man who enjoyed quick, easy material success, the highlife of celebrity and all its perquisites.

Having been sent off from his native Italy to America for being unruly by his parents, Rudolfo Guglielmi, an innately lazy and vain individual armed with nothing but good looks, pursued a quick path to fame. He made his shallow success; went on dance tours, starred in movies and adopted the name Rodolfo Valentino.

But ill fate struck and he is afflicted with appendicitis and gastric ulcer. Although he survived the corrective surgery necessary for both of these, he died six days later having developed peritonitis. The whole city of New York goes crazy like in a riot, the police lost control, property got destroyed, public disorder of the highest order and it took two days to normalize. There were news of despondent fans committing suicide. Valentino was mourned by his fans the world over and becomes something of an icon.   

But I had to laugh when I read this bit; ‘...his valets removed young women from under his bed’ and ‘actresses leching for stardom made sheepseyes at him under their mascaraed lashes’. For me though, he was not of the enviable calibre because he wanted success with the least amount of input and projected an image of inconsiderate consumerism; stucco villas, bridalsuites of hotels, silk bathrobes, limousines, fine horses etc Maybe I am a relic of the lost age Eagleton sounded so passionate about in After Theory but I am at the same time not hedonistic enough to support such flamboyant consumerist lifestyle Valentino led.

The Architect (USA) – John Dos Passos

This chapter looks at a young Frank Lloyd Wright (FLW) and contrasts it with a more mature one. We see a young and passionate FLW arriving in Chicago and landing himself a job in a prominent architects’s office the same day.  After seven years of practice with the office of Alder and Sullivan, he moves on to go it alone in own unique style of architecture.

Pioneering a new approach to design with complete disregard for historical precedents (a view shared by Zaha in the Meades interview), he happily embraced new materials and soon became a reverend and some sort of ambassador for the American future in construction based on uses and needs with suppressed desire of monetary/ financial benefits. However, he remained more of a ‘paper architect’ and endured many difficult times.

He is vindicated of his unconventional ways when one of his buildings survived an earthquake in 1923 Japan and he considers this a victory over historicism. FLW progresses with work on a model city (reminiscent of Zaha’s Hadidopolis wish in the Meades interview) with interns from the world over working with him.

For FLW, his is a battle between a proclamation that ‘buildings determine civilization as the cells in the honeycomb the functions of bees’ and putting his money where his mouth is especially when he has always had money problems and wealthy lady clients willing to pay for unnecessary agglomeration of their homes for prominence’s sake. Usonian city, a project which he developed all his life might have offered him some sort of escapism. 

The Fountain Head

The Fountain Head – Ayn Rand

A thoroughly cheesy and funny movie in parts, thanks to the director King Vidor, is based on a novel written by Ayn Rand in the 1940s. Albeit camp, the movie does address a number of important issues which we have come across before in previous readings. This movie focuses on the struggles of individualism against restrictive collectivism – the world of the mob.

Rand explores these two ideas through her main character, a young architect – Howard Roark, who chooses to abide by his values with uncompromising stoical fortitude in the face of relentless difficulties and his relationship with various other personalities of human character. Roark, an ardent individualist, believed that to achieve intuitive brilliance, a person must be free to express his individuality and not subjected to the opinions of others which only serve to compromise or water-down the brilliance of the original idea. Although, he faced relentless impediments in his quest, he goes on to build a number of significant buildings and refuses to tow the line of ‘normal’ convention.

Rand contrasts Roark with Peter Keating; a subservient university colleague of Roark’s who is everything that Roark is not. Keating’s insatiable pursuit of material success is often at the expense of moral values. His willingness to dance to the tune of others earns him temporary success and he often lets his morals get blunted in making decisions and then considers the implications much later. There is little that is sincere about Keating as he often relied on Roark to get work done.

Roark’s ultimate prize and the movie’s heroine is Dominique Francon - an idealistic and temperamental character. Although she was initially of defeatist disposition, engaged to Keating and later married Gail Wynand, it was only in Roark that she met a worthy equal for her love of adversity and independence. Eventually she learns to; ignore what anyone thinks or does, live for herself and no one else and no longer care for whether the world is worthy of her expression. She falls in love with Roark and joins him romantically as well as in his perspective and purpose.

Another prominent character in the movie who shares a few character qualities with Roark is the owner and editor-in-chief of The Banner newspaper, Gail Wynand – a tragic figure who could have been a heroic individualist except that his success depended on his ability to indulge public opinion. It is this same flaw which leads to his downfall as he failed in his attempts to wield power, lost his corporation, his wife and his friendship with Roark. Ultimately Wynand took his own life entrusting one last legacy to Roark.

The most colourful of the characters in the movie in my opinion though, has to be Roark’s antagonist, Ellsworth Toohey who writes an art criticism column in The Banner. A manipulative and outspoken socialist who falsely styles himself as representative of the will of the masses in his secret plans of rising to power by shaping public opinion through his privileged social status and position as columnist. Toohey is the embodiment of evil and represents the restrictive, immoral forces of collectivism. His biggest threat being the free individual spirit of Roark and having no true genius, he set out to destroy Roark through a series of carefully orchestrated plans.

We see the ultimate triumph of individualism over collectivism in the courtroom scene when Roark gave his impressive defense cum summation speech and talks about the value of ego and the need to remain true to oneself. But my favourite bit has to be;

Look at history. Everything we have, every great achievement has come from the independent work of some independent mind. Every horror and destruction came from attempts to force men into a herd of brainless, soulless robots. Without personal rights, without personal ambition, without will, hope or dignity. It is an ancient conflict. It has another name. The individual against the collective.

Decline and Fall

Decline and Fall – Evelyn Waugh

This is an enjoyable book to read and very hilarious as a whole. A social satire which explores the British social circles through the story of Paul Pennyfeather, a descent third year student at Scone College in Oxford preparing for priesthood.

An unfortunate incident with members of the Bollinger Club saw Paul unfairly expelled on the grounds of indecent behaviour. Paul also subsequently lost his allowance and inheritance to his greedy guardian who capitalized on the unfortunate turn Paul’s life had taken. He got a job, despite not meeting any of the job requirements and after a bogus interview with the proprietor of a school - Dr Fagan, as a schoolmaster at the poorly rated Llanabba Castle in North Wales where he met a number of colourful characters.

From this point, Paul’s life will make a complete vicissitudinous cycle with almost the same characters reappearing at different stages of this cycle. One of the characters, a mirage of good fortune, instrumental to Paul’s most damaging decline was Margot Beste-Chetwynde. Mother to one of the pupils in the school where Paul was schoolmaster, Margot became the object of Paul’s affection and would come to marry her.

Except, there was a hitch just before this could happen. Another wave of unfortunate events, orchestrated chiefly by Margot, lead to Paul’s arrest and then incarceration on a seven year jail sentence. After a while in jail, the culpable socialite who got him in the soup in the first place, worked some magic and got Paul out. She had married some important government official as bargain for Paul’s release and Paul’s death had to be faked to allow him a transition back into society.

In the period immediately preceding the rapid development of affairs between Paul and Margot, He had met a number of her friends. Notably among them, the architect Margot had hired to design her controversial new home – Professor Otto Silenus. A fleeting character cut out as; miserable, opinionated, obstinate, dissatisfied and peculiar young man who had had little accomplishments, suffered from insomnia and had a penchant for the mechanical. Indeed, sometimes it was difficult to tell whether he was human;

He had not moved from where the journalist had left him; his fawn-like eyes were fixed and inexpressive, and the hand which he had held the biscuit still rose and fell to and from his mouth with regular motion, while his empty jaws champed rhythmically; otherwise he was wholly immobile.

This obsession with machines became a popular phenomenon after the First World War when machines became tangible. It had opened everyone’s eyes to what was possible with the advent of machines or mechanical intervention and it is hardly surprising that a lot of architecture of that period derived from machines. Le Corbusier springs to mind under this awning as he is quite famous for his ardent interpretation of a house as a machine for living in.    

A particularly pessimistic analogy of life as a revolving wheel (another indication of his mechanical obsession) was made by Silenus when he re-emerges in Paul’s later life, which gives a clear idea of how he sees existence. Life as he sees it might mean either simply existence, with its inevitable characteristics of growth, organic change and death. Or, a constant struggle to stay on and get to the centre of the revolving wheel. Delusional Silenus, who thinks he is very near the hub of this proverbial wheel, is convinced the centre is just as static as never getting on.

I think this is a rather dull view of life and that if one must go through life, one must engage and endeavour to enjoy it reasonably, one must be of the mind that we measure life by loss, not by gain. Not by the wine drunk but poured forth (Hudson Taylor). But I equally believe that great things must be done greatly, with a great purpose, a great mind, a great courage, a great energy and a great persistent patience (Elizabeth B. Browning).

It seemed fate, a much-maligned lady, brought Paul back to the exact same point he was when we first met him at Scone where he hopes to complete his preparation for priesthood. Altogether, I think there is something innately too agreeable and resignedly defeatist in this Pennyfeather fellow that does not quite appeal to me. If it were a case of him being totally virtuous and abiding by a set of absolute moral values, I might afford him my sympathy or respect but he demonstrates this only in his desire for Margot (a seemingly profitable venture). Often, this character whom I find too docile, allows his rational mind to be clouded by popular belief in a characteristically taciturn manner and with no strong enough opinions of his own.

The Tragedy Of Development (unfinished)

In this beautifully written literature, we trace the story of Goethe’s Faust (a metaphor for modern development) in the three stages of transformation he goes through driven by an insatiable desire for development. Faust tragic development goes through three main stages; dreamer, lover and developer.

To fully understand Faust’s metamorphosis, we are taken right to the inception of Faust’s desire for development with his deep dissatisfaction for his achievements and lonely life. He is restless, eager to engage more actively with the outside world in contrast to the summation of all his inwardly triumphs and his quest takes him to tap into powers from the depths of the underworld, personified by Mephistopheles.

We see Faust gradually transforming under the docentship of Mephistopheles and indoctrinated with ideas that will prove very significant in the later stages of his transformation. Faust bought into ideas such as selfishness with no moral remorse, a willingness to destroy in order to create freely, the worship of money and acquisition of speed. After a while in Mephistopheles’ company, Faust acquires wealth and mobility, becomes more handsome, confident, radiant and exciting but equally more imbued with an interest in other people and ready for genuine love.

He becomes enthralled by Gretchen, an epitome of all that is most beautiful, innocent, humble and simple in a world he had grown so estranged from. It was a doomed union because by getting involved with Faust, Gretchen grasps the possibility of developing and all that Faust loved in her disappears at the disapproval of all but Faust. Faust unable to deal with the demands of their complicated union and being a free spirit left and left her exposed to the persecution of little world she belonged to. Consequently, she dies. Mephisto tries to absolve Faust of the guilt he feels and reinforce the idea of destruction without remorse. However, the fundamental differences between them would have meant totally different trajectories and endings anyway so there was no real need to be downcast – it was inevitable.

Then Faust enters the final stage of his metamorphosis and confirms the old adage that if the student is not better than the teacher, the teacher is a failure. He astounds even Mephisto with his visionary concrete programs and operational plans to harness nature’s energy and convert it to the driving force of collective human purposes. He enters into politics as a means to gaining control over territory and a large number of people to achieve his visionary projects. Faust is convinced that speed was of the utmost essence and nothing or no one should be spared in the amalgamation of his thought and action in transforming the world for the collective good of all. But it is precisely in achieving this vision that the tragedy emanates. He deludes to creating an ideal world with clean hands and not ready to take the responsibility for the suffering and casualties that pave the way for the realisation of his visions.

In recognition of all his achievements, Faust might seem like a hero but on the other hand, in light of all that he does not want to see, details he does not want to know about, his vision is tragic. He seems only to be keen on the end result

The Job

The Job – William Burroughs

This is neither a straightforward book nor a straightforward set of interviews. Burroughs like Ginsberg is a member of the Beat Generation whose primary objective was to defy the idea of the normative or popular convention through free expression and unrestricted language. The book sheds a light on a variety of areas which Burroughs, like other members of the radical Beat Generation, is interested in; drugs, sex etc. But it also covers Burroughs’ unique style and play on words (a montage of texts by cutting and pasting) and often development of theories by well structured and organised thought.

Burroughs’ explanations of his methods of the montage of selected texts (and tape recordings) and responses to the resulting topics, is both an unusual and interesting approach but with the advent of computers, which allow more variations in less time, this part of the process is now superseded. This topic was brought up by the interviewer but to be fair to Burroughs, doing things on the computers of that time would have been very complicated and cumbersome.    

We get an insight into his opinions on writing and pushing the boundaries of language to which he is not convinced is always helpful and warns might be dangerous if it becomes purely experimental. Often, some of his answers to the questions posed to him are surprisingly serious and rational although one might be doubtful of the reasons he gives for them. An example of this is his view on why the use of controlled drugs is illegal, to which he postulates an interesting theory (as is most of his outbursts against the government) but he is equally aware of the dangers of addiction and the individual.

All through the book, one is aware of Burroughs’ contempt for the government and the idea of nationhood and he puts forward some very reasonable explanations for these but some of his explanations were way over the top. 

His interest in science is apparent and some of his ‘science’ is very interesting. His theory of the word-virus; ‘I suggest that the spoken word as we know it came after the written word.’ ‘My basic theory is that the written word was actually a virus that made the spoken word possible.’ This is a very clever idea and he gives a logical explanation of this and the consequences of this disposition.

The short introductory piece is beautifully metaphorical. It confronts us with the significance of travel (meaning freedom), deeming it more important than living itself. Space is a metaphor for complete freedom, freedom from the restrictive past conditioning of religion, nationalism, politics and emotions. ‘Anyone who prays in space is not there’! He warns that freedom is gradually being ostracised from youth however, all hope is not lost. There are ways to rediscover complete freedom and The Job offers some of them.

In his answers to questions on the variety of topical issues discussed in The Job, one gets a very good sense of Burroughs approach to writing and insight to the workings of his thoughtful mind. Above all for me though, a sense of Burroughs’ absolute virtue!