George Stade

We all remember each and every one of our truly outstanding teachers. One of mine, George Stade, died last month. Stade taught my two favorite courses at Columbia--modernist fiction and popular fiction. The syllabus for his modernist fiction was literally impossible--a race through the greatest English-language novels from Conrad on--but it's still surprising to me how much of it was retained by my scattered brain, especially his lectures on Conrad and Joyce's "Ulysses." His populist fiction course was almost impossible to get into and the first of its kind--we worked through the likes of Edgar Rice Burroughs, Bram Stoker, and Mickey Spillane. Like most people who appreciate serious fiction, Stade backed into a love for serious literature from an early passion for what is usually considered pulp trash, and for that reason he saw significance in it instead of apologizing for it. Stade was a tall, lanky former football player gifted with eloquence and a natural charisma not based on histrionics or cheap classroom tricks. He also wrote three novels of his own and served as the chair of the English Department for many years. He was Kate Millet's advisor on her PhD thesis that became the feminist manifesto "Sexual Politics," but he became embroiled in sad controversy due to his prickly insensitivity to that movement. George Stade had a rare gift in his passion for literature and his ability to share that with young people, and it's not an exaggeration to say that I got a lifetime of benefit from having been in his classrooms.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/obituaries/george-stade-pop-minded-literary-scholar-and-satirical-novelist-dies-at-85/2019/03/10/814490d8-433e-11e9-90f0-0ccfeec87a61_story.html?fbclid=IwAR0OE9P2hc__CLSM4Ef_zEZN09ELM4BWkzkijpoS7h7vABtxb4_fM_szsIY&noredirect=on&utm_term=.c44eba4f1e2e

Fighting Dirty

A proposal to split California into three separate states won enough votes in last night’s primary to be added to the midterm ballot in that state.

It’s a great idea. It just doesn’t go far enough.

I saw a poll today stating that 61% of Americans would like to see major updates to our system of government. You don’t have to be a genius—or a partisan—to see that we’ve spiraled down into a state of paralysis.

There’s just one huge problem with those “major updates.” Most of them can’t be done without amending the Constitution, and we are at the point that this is literally impossible, given that an amendment requires supermajorities in both houses of Congress and the blessing of two-thirds of the state legislatures.

What kind of “major updates,” then, are even possible without making a change to the Constitution?

I just read a fascinating book on this topic, “It’s Time to Fight Dirty: How Democrats Can Build a Lasting Majority in American Politics,” by David Faris, a political science professor at Roosevelt University in Chicago. Faris is an unapologetic Democratic partisan who, like many of us, are ready for taking bold steps to relevel the playing field in American politics. “It’s Time to Fight Dirty” is a short, highly engaging read on a deadly serious topic. And it makes clear-headed, specific suggestions that at first read struck me as audacious or beyond the pale but now seem sensible, pragmatic, and—possibly—doable.

Some core precepts of the book:
• The book’s title is provocative, not literal. Nothing that Faris proposes is illegal or unethical.
• None of Faris’ supposed changes would require a Constitutional amendment. “If progressive leaders are going to craft workarounds to some of the problems of contemporary American politics, they are going to have to do so within the framework of the U.S. Constitution rather than outside of it.”
• The actions proposed by Faris are only possible if the Democrats take control of both houses of Congress and win control of more governorships and state legislatures. (These are possible outcomes from this year’s midterms.)
• Faris wastes no time on delusional pipe dreams like impeachment or the invocation of Article 25 to depose Trump. First of all, those actions will never happen, and Faris is focused on steps that are at least theoretically achievable. Second, Faris is concerned with our outdated system of government, not the deficiencies of its key players.
• “Almost all of the design flaws in U.S. politics today empower Republicans at the expense of Democrats.”
• “The GOP has proven that it no longer exists somewhere along the ordinary two-party ideological spectrum in America. Rather, they have morphed into an antisystem party, whose goal is to destroy voter participation and erect a kind of ‘hybrid democracy,’ where façade elections are held but where real executive power is not at stake.”

Faris lays out a convincing host of actions that progressive Democrats can take if and when they achieve power, beginning with this year’s midterm elections. I strongly recommend that you read this book, so I don’t want to telegraph all of Faris' suggestions in this post, but I can mention some of the most impactful ones.

Chop California up into three states? Faris contends that we should create SEVEN states from what is now California. And give Washington, D.C. and Puerto Rico statehood, too. This would address what Faris contends is the biggest problem keeping us from making progress in this country: the representational structure of the Senate. California has 37 million people. South Dakota has 869,000 people. Yet both states have two votes in the Senate. Insanity, and a built-in recipe for a tyranny of the minority. Congress has the power to create new states.

Still (for good reason!) fuming about the theft of the Garland Supreme Court seat? Reclaim it, says Faris, by adding another seat. Better yet, says the author, add FOUR more seats to the Supreme Court. Congress decides how many justices are on the Supreme Court; it decided on nine in 1869.

Faris goes on to offer concrete suggestions on other important actions, including changes to Senate rules, the abolishment of winner-take-all elections, and a modern Voting Rights Act to ensure that voting is universal and easy.

Of course, each of Faris’ recommendations has major implications and is worthy of an in-depth, coherent rationale not possible on Facebook, and he does a great job of setting the context for each change and making the case for why they are not just doable but essential to our survival and to our progress.

Check out “It’s Time to Fight Dirty.”

Fifty Cents and a Box Top

Just finished reading "50 Cents And A Box Top," the new memoir by legendary harmonica ace Charlie McCoy. Charlie recounts his amazing personal journey from young blues freak and rockabilly singer to a completely unique harmonica stylist to one of the most in-demand session players in the history of popular music to best-selling recording artist to international music star to member of the Country Music Hall of Fame. What a ride! My favorite chapters were the ones about the thousands of sessions Charlie did behind folks like Brenda Lee, Loretta Lynn, Bob Dylan, and Paul Simon. (There's a jaw-dropping anecdote about a Leonard Cohen session that confirmed all my personal suspicions about that artist.) Harmonica players will especially appreciate the appendix with complete details of the harmonica model, key, and, in some cases, special tunings that Charlie used on his own stunning instrumental recordings. Charlie is one of the great musical geniuses of our time and one of the nicest guys in the business. If you have any interest in music, you will love this book.

Krazy Kat Sings the Blues

"Krazy"

Just finished reading Michael Tisserand's "Krazy," a fascinating biography of George Herriman, the genius behind the “Krazy Kat” comics and a cartoonist who for a half century ensured that fine art and poetry was available six days a week to anyone who a had a dime.

“Krazy Kat” is the tale of a perverse love triangle anchored in violence but executed with such faithfulness and constancy that it becomes one of the great love stories. For thirty years Herriman drew the same plot line daily: Krazy Kat is in perpetual swoon for Ignatz Mouse, who responds to this adoration by hitting Krazy in the head with a brick. Officer Pupp, a bulldog policeman, relentlessly pursues his goal of incarcerating the brick thrower.

With these endless variations on the same theme, Herriman created an art form as iconically American as the 12-bar blues. Herriman’s drawing is justly celebrated as being the apex of cartooning. His economical pen strokes speak volumes. His language is a wild patois of Shakespearean English and minstrel-show slang. After Herriman, who lived in Los Angeles, discovered the Arizona desert, he began to place his characters in a gorgeous landscape of mesas, adobe haciendas, “luffly” clouds, and looming cacti. In his stunning full-page Sunday episodes, Herriman fearlessly experimented with his spatial real estate—optionally telling the story vertically, horizontally, and diagonally—and with bold expanses of blacks and vibrant colors. Younger cartoonists made regular pilgrimages to see Herriman and elicit advice. Herriman was a taciturn man who was self-effacing to a fault, but the one thing he always suggested to his worshippers was to “be original." and Herriman was certainly that. (Krazy Kat's gender was kept purposefully fluid throughout the years, for instance.) Herriman showed that the comic strip had no limits, and in so doing he paved the way for Dr. Seuss, Charles Schulz, Walt Kelly, R. Crumb, and Art Speigelman—all of whom revered “Krazy Kat.”

Tisserand does a marvelous job of recounting the career of a famously reclusive person who tried to leave as few footprints as possible. Tisserand keeps the book interesting and entertaining by giving us vivid accounts of the early days of the comics, the influence they had on silent movies and vice versa, Los Angeles in the ‘20s and ‘30s, and the passion that American artists and intellectuals had for Herriman’s work.

The book also opens a window into an under-investigated aspect of Jim Crow era racism—the American blacks who passed for white. Herriman’s grandparents were all African Americans, and Herriman’s birth certificate lists his race as “colored.” Herriman was raised in the Treme section of New Orleans in a Creole family well-known for being active in Republican politics. His father moved his family to Los Angeles when George was ten and thereafter the Herrimans passed as white. This fact was not publicly known during Herriman’s lifetime. The reality that America’s greatest comic artist was an African American is only now beginning to sink in and take its rightful place as a key part of Herriman’s story. Tisserand does a brilliant job of demonstrating that there are clear clues to Herriman’s racial background in those daily strips. Just another reason to celebrate and be fascinated by “Krazy Kat.” Well worth reading, if only to inspire you to experience, or reacquaint yourself with, Herriman’s brilliant fable.