28. Book Notes VI
Planning to resume posting these after every five books I read. Like all my plans, I fell behind on this one. Nevertheless, here we go.
Vico's Axioms by James Goetsch (A) - Continuing my exploration of Vico. I found this to be an excellent companion, clearly explicating his thought in a manner that shed light on what was, to me, previously cloaked in darkness. The last few Vico posts have leaned heavily on what I gleaned from Goetsch, and he's also motivated me to check out Vico's autobiography when I get a chance.
If I can point to one fault, it's the insufficient appreciation of the medieval background of Vico. Goetsch does an admirable job drawing out the renaissance context from which Vico emerged, but he fails to note that the roots of this lay far deeper than the Renaissance (and this perhaps points to one of the perils that periodization leads to: severing connection between eras, obscuring the deep continuity between them)1
The Glorious Cause by Robert Middlekauff (B) - A very solid overview of the revolutionary years, ending with the ratification of the constitution. If you're not particularly familiar with the period, it would be a very good place to start. Unfortunately, I'm more familiar with the era than I imagined when I began the book, and I found very little new here though I did appreciate the discussion of the southern campaigns of the Revolutionary war as much of my previous reading was Washington-focused. I was disappointed that we didn't get more on the "home front" of the war, as that's an area I don't really know about, and there were surely interesting goings on during the eight years of war. There was little on the frontier as well, which I was curious about, having recently finished Eckert's The Frontiersman (which I recommend). This is all a case of complaining that a book is what it is and not what I want it to be, however. Like I said, very good introduction to the lead up to the Revolution, the major campaigns of the war, and the aftermath.
The Big Nowhere, LA Confidential, and White Jazz by James Ellroy (B, A, and B, respectively) - I'm going through a bit of an Ellroy phase, having recently read the Underworld USA trilogy and now working my way the LA Quartet. I remember trying to read these books years ago, since I've long been a fan of the LA Confidential movie, but I wasn't able get any traction years ago. As often happens, I've found them considerably more enjoyable this time around.
Generally, I like Ellroy, though the oppressive cynicism of it all start to wear on me as I read them back to back. I can only live amidst the sheer viciousness and depravity of his world for so long, so too with his prose style which at times verges on a sort of self-parody. It's probably no accident that my favorites in each set of books were the opening novels, American Tabloid and The Black Dahlia.
Ellroy's world is worth commenting on further. Essentially, just beneath the surface of American life is a simmering undercurrent of depravity, violence, and crime. Every character touched by this stream is compromised if not outright evil, with even good men-Bobby Kennedy in the Underworld books and Russ Milliard in the LA Quartet, for example-forced to compromise their principles in the face of it.
In this world, ordinary people, "squares", not implicated in the endless wickedness are barely worthy of mention. Meanwhile, every public figure, particularly politicians and the Hollywood elite, are directly caught up in it. Journalists too are part of this world, privy to the underlying viciousness of American life and serving as mediators between this world and the public, generally as allies massaging the narrative for the benefit of this or that faction of the wicked.
In an emblematic scene, a Mafia hanger-on is quizzed on his knowledge of the various perversions of public figures to demonstrate his worthiness to take the reins of a tabloid journal, to promote the goals of, variously, the FBI, Howard Hughes, and the Mafia. Knowledge of the undercurrent is what marks one as worthy of notice, worthy of exerting influence.
Essentially then, what Ellroy depicts is a world in which violence, avarice, and depravity, especially sexual perversion, are what drive history. Ellroy seems, though this is never quite made explicit, to believe this foundational wickedness acts as a sort of poison, a rot at the very core of American life, meaning that it cannot be anything but perverse.
Interesting though, how we might read this through the lens of Vico's thoughts on providence that I detailed very briefly in an earlier post. He would point out that the good which does result from these bestial lusts-and surely there are goods that result, even if they, like all products of humanity, are tinged with evil-is clear evidence of divine providence. God brings goodness out of wickedness. This one of the fundamental patterns of history.
One more thread, if Ellroy is right, then we live under what Vico called "the barbarism of sense" in which the above-described wicked passions run rampant and do indeed drive the creation of human institutions. However, we might suggest that this is in fact Ellroy's great mistake, that we do not live under a "barbarism of sense" but rather a "barbarism of reflection" in which evil results from an overly-abstracted perversion of their highest faculties a turn to reason so extreme that it severs us from actual experience and results in far graver e-mails than the earlier barbarism. 2
Or, it may be that Ellroy does depict the barbarism of reflection in his works, that is only the greatness, or former greatness, of American civilization that provides the breeding ground for the viciousness that courses underneath, with this viciousness slowly hollowing out society until it becomes nothing more than a façade, ready to crumble. Worth thinking about, and the books, because this is supposed to be a post on books, worth reading.
My private theory is that the Renaissance represents a return to older strands of medieval thinking just as much as a return to the classics. The medievals were, after all, nurtured on the classics as well.
Vico: “This barbarism of reflection turns such people into beasts even more savage than did the primitive barbarism of the sense. For early peoples displayed a generous savagery, from which others could guard or defend themselves or flee. But decadent peoples practice an ignoble savagery, and use flattery and embraces to play against the life and fortunes of their intimates and friends.”