Mr. Keuner and the Flood

Mr. Keuner went through a valley, when he suddenly noticed that his feet were in water. He realised that the valley was actually an estuary, and that the flood tide was coming. He stopped immediately and looked around for a boat, and so long as he hoped for a boat he stood still. But when no boat came in sight, he gave up this hope and hoped instead that the water would like not to rise any more. Once the water was up to his chin, he also gave up this hope and swam. He had realised that he was himself a boat (Bertolt Brecht, Herr Keuner und die Flut).

With apologies for the undoubted looseness of my translation, I nevertheless offer this little morsel as a weekend reminder to be active and self-reliant. If we stand and wait for what we desire, the chances are we shall fail. We must assert ourselves and make the most of our resources, for the helping hand we desire is no farther away than the end of our own arm.

Of Baseball and Bowties

On game nights, I used to be able to see Fenway Park from my apartment. The floodlights and the blimp were unmistakeable signs that Americans were playing baseball. I used to pass the ballpark on my way to work sometimes, but that was as close as I came to entering that hallowed arena. You see, despite baseball’s storied past and its penchant for the poetic, most Europeans simply don’t get it. The standard questions – I can imagine a continent getting set to roll its eyes – go like this: why are these so called athletes overweight and chewing tobacco? When does something happen? Why does the atmosphere have to be manufactured by an old woman with an organ? And what’s with the ‘World’ Series anyway? I don’t see too many non-American teams taking part.

So much for the clichés. The real reason I didn’t much take to the thing – and I have tried, mind you – is that its men didn’t strike me as being particularly worthy of emulation. The sport’s leading lights do tend to carry too much weight in the gut; the spitting is ugly; there are rumblings about drug abuse and cheating; and the game is not rich in articulate speakers. In the main, there is not a lot of obvious joy in the game, and what grim determination there is tends to be concealed beneath an arrogant nonchalance. Whereas the game itself will richly reward the devotee in its surprising complexity, the playing staff simply do not reach comparable depths.

I am always, as I have oft noted, open to change, given a convincing enough argument. It strikes me that famous sportsmen are, first and foremost, role models. When I was a child I did not want to be like my heroes; I wanted to be my heroes. Since I don’t count myself as being particularly unusual in this regard, it ought perhaps to make all parents alive to the question of who it is their children wish to be. In baseball’s recent past, are there heroes that, without qualms, we would introduce to our offspring? Well, perhaps now there might be. I was really taken by the image of Tim Lincecum arriving for the final game of the World Series besuited and bowtied. That is a most welcome change. Having done a little digging, I found he had this to say:

But who doesn't want to believe their kid is amazing? I'm going to be hoping the same thing for my kid when I get older. What better feeling can parents have than when they brag about their own kids?

So, a man with an eye on the future; a man with an eye on being the best at his job; and a man with style. Oh, and he also does Sinatra. Baseball, I’m interested.

Charm: Offensive? Part III

I do not want to leave aside an important matter, a mistake that it is easy for a Prince to make unless he is very prudent and has good judgement. This concerns flatterers, of which the courts are full, for men become so obsessed with their own affairs, deceiving themselves in the process, that it is difficult to defend themselves from this plague. In seeking to combat it, one runs the risk of becoming hated. There is no other defence against flattery than letting men know that they do not offend you by telling you the truth (Machiavelli, The Prince).

Perhaps what should have been said is that charm as deceit is not charm at all, but simply deceit. Intention is all important when considering the charming, for indeed, true charm has good ends. We must be able to discern the difference between that which is shallow and that which is deep: the depth of true charm is its paradox of self-effacement that is in turn endearing. The charming do not self-promote, but rather accentuate the positive in those around them. As parties disperse and partygoers reflect on the evening, the man who was charming will be on their lips, not because of his accomplishments or charisma, but because he allowed others to see themselves in the best light.

But true charm is not mere flattery, for in accentuating the positive, the charming man must light upon genuine qualities that are in fact there. This author is no fan of flattery. I’ve said somewhere within these pages in the past that the question, ‘does my bum look big in this?’ is one of the most symbolically violent acts between the sexes in the West. If the answer is ‘yes’ then the straightforward man might feel loathe to say ‘no’, and yet he surely must, or at least have enough of an idea of his interlocutor’s wardrobe to be able delicately to suggest something else. At its worst, flattery is lying, and lying cannot be true charm. Mere flattery is simply deceit by another name.

The charming man must therefore be a man of great insight, for he must see that which redeems us. People are wont to project that which is negative, perhaps not perceiving the ways in which they tend to be received. We form instant judgements based on appearances, first utterances, a look in the eye, a tone of voice. The charming man sees through this to our greatest qualities and, as he affirms those qualities, we relax under his gaze and warm to his approach. We know not about him, and we do not realise that we have not asked. The charming man will be sought again, because people will think to themselves that they like him. Actually, they have simply realised that they like themselves. When people like themselves – when they feel that they are good – they are more likely to be good to themselves and to manifest their goodness to others. The charming man therefore facilitates the good.

Charm: Offensive? Part II

Not for the first time, my most faithful reader has pushed me to elaborate: ‘I should like to know what part of charm is flattery, what part deception, what part politic acts, what part generosity and what part pleasure’. Not wishing to disappoint, and thinking the subject worthy, I hereby undertake a more detailed look at charm – what it is, and what it’s worth. Further instalments will follow shortly.

Let us begin with deception, for here we find charm at its utilitarian worst. In the main I would like to distance my usage of charm, the word and the act, from its literal association with the casting of spells. When borne of temperate and decent natures, charm may intoxicate but it will never be the malignant concoction of the sorcerer; it will never cause the hypnotic state of the snake. Unfortunately, precisely this brand of charm has long been a feature of our literary villainy, with Iago as the patron saint. This could make one very wary of charm and the apparently charming, and indeed might make us take seriously those warnings of Anthony Blanche, warnings that might very well have applied to himself.

Where this works in literature and drama is precisely where it fails in life. Dramatic irony always underscores the naïveté of the beguiled victims, with the thinness of the superficial charm clear for the audience to see. This usually causes an unfavourable judgment of the victim, rather than the perpetrator, for being so gullible. It’s no different to the standard emplotment of stories concerning cowboy builders and phony meter readers. The vulnerability of the victim is always the leitmotiv. They are somewhat pathetic, pitiable creatures, who fall into the category of ‘one born every minute’. The despicably charming are scolded for their callousness, but we all assume that the trick would not have worked on us. These men are newsworthy because they are exceptional. On the whole, one cannot be deceptively charming in a sustained way. The pitfalls are too great; people are too wise, or else suspicious; and the web of deceit becomes quickly and horribly complex. Not for nothing is Othello a tragedy.

In sum, charm as deceit is not for us. True charm, insofar as it can be cultivated, is an expression of character. About that, we shall have more to say anon.

Save Standard English; or, Stop Being Mis-CHEEVY-ous!

One hears stories on the BBC, stories without a note of disapprobation mind you, about the ways in which the youth of today is bastardizing the English language without so much as a by your leave. It’s all most troubling. Apparently, the status of English as the new French is not the only route to its being sullied and abused. The bally natives can’t even get the thing right, apparently because they labour under the misconception that words ought to sound how they are spelled. Hence the pronunciation of ‘ate’ as 8, instead of ‘et’, which used to be how it was spelled, until someone made it deliciously ornate to ward off interlopers. The same is true of ‘says’, which the poor blighters are rhyming with ‘ways’ instead of ‘fez’. It will never do.

My pet peeve – you might have noted that I have a number of pet peeves; the apartment is a regular menagerie by now – is the insistence of the illiterate in pronouncing ‘aitch’ with an ‘h’ at the beginning. One might be forgiven for thinking that it is only English-speaking French people who go around putting aitches everywhere except where they are meant to be, but apparently the British have a great knack for it. I’m told it’s something to do with a rather silly neurosis about not appearing to be working class. That’s how Orwell identified his socially inferior comrades, don’t you know? He compelled the middle classes to join forces in an incoherent socialism, telling his stupefied readers that they had nothing to lose but their aitches. Well, more fool him for thinking that aitches were trifles. In the event, it turns out that the working classes fancied a bit of the capitalist pie after all, and figured that aitches were the only thing standing in their way. So, they put them every-bloody-where, including at the start of ‘aitch’, thereby ensuring that everyone can still readily identify them as the working classes they long not to be.

It's to the north, I believe

Those incorrigible scamps who dare to use polysyllables also tinker with the word ‘mischievous’, pronouncing a phantom ‘i’ before the ‘o’. I suppose it’s either a sick joke or that they are borrowing the ‘i’ from American aluminium, which apparently has one going spare. And all the while the politically correct linguists keep repeating that there’s no right or wrong; that this is how language evolves; each to his own, and so on. Well, I’m all for regional diversity: England has a great range of daft accents and dialects that help us to know where we are, and they are a wonderful source of pride and passion, as well as an endless mine for television comedians and advertisers. But, we’ve all always known that there was a correct way to speak that served for job interviews, meeting the vicar or the bank manager, and for generally being understood when outside one’s own village. To be ‘bidialectal’ was to be English. However, if we go around saying that anyone can talk any old way they please, it’s all the same to us, and sorry even for breathing, then before you know it we’ll be a barbarian backwater. Americans, instead of assuming that we’re all touched with genius and related to the Queen, will laud it over us for our inferior articulations, and laugh at our cute incompetency with the language we invented.

Save Standard English. It’s the only damn thing we have left!